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Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

hizook.com

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Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#121

Post by olefoo »

jemka wrote: post #32
olefoo wrote: post #25

Two points: 1. This is not a problem with Google's Customer Service, it is a problem with their vendor relations. When Google publishes ads on your site, you are selling that space to them. Google is your customer and isn't obligated to tell you a damn thing except that they don't want to buy from you anymore. 2. There is a market opportunity here for an ad network that is willing to find good sites dropped from Goog…

While you make valid points, the major issue in question is Google's lack of customer service for the advertisement brokerage service they provide. Google may not have to "tell you a damn thing", but they should at least make themselves available to deny any requested information.

Google is the customer here. They happen to be a very big customer who is aggregating and organizing adspace inventory for thousands of their customers. But as with any such relationship, they are free to walk away at any time.

And yes it sucks; but there must be advertisers out there who think that a site that gets 10,000 impressions a day and is linked from most of the popular news sites is worth something; selling to them is a better move than whining about how Google doesn't love you anymore.

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#122

Post by gjm11 »

dcurtis wrote: post #80
gjm11 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really mean that they closed your husband's account and walked away with money they owed you, then this seems like exactly what the legal system is made for. (Though I'd expect them to settle rather than actually go to court, unless they think you're lying outright.)

If your customers have to invoke the "legal system" to get around your incompetence, you've failed in every way that matters.

To clarify: I was not in the least suggesting that the fact that it might be possible to get your money back from Google by suing them means that Google haven't failed. I was suggesting that it might be a more effective way of getting them to take notice than going through their (clearly rather useless) support channels and blogging about it.

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#123

Post by gjm11 »

ahoyhere wrote: post #116
gjm11 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really mean that they closed your husband's account and walked away with money they owed you, then this seems like exactly what the legal system is made for. (Though I'd expect them to settle rather than actually go to court, unless they think you're lying outright.)

He lives in Austria. Which legal system? And even if it was in the US, you'd be very hard-pressed - as a professional - to justify going through the time and effort required, even in small claims court, for $2k. For Google, it is a win/win/win situation... until people holler about it.

If you actually expected them to fight it all the way, that might be true. I suspect, though, that "Google found guilty of stealing customer's money" would be an unpalatable enough headline that they'd settle pretty quickly once the threat was made.

But yeah, not being in a country where Google has enough presence to bring them under its jurisdiction could be a problem.

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#124

Post by ahoyhere »

youngian wrote: post #98
trezor wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the hundreds of millions of users, tens of millions of webmasters, and many advertisers and publishers that Google interacts with, it would be difficult to have one-on-one conversations with all of them even if everyone at Google did nothing but try to provide that support. Not saying it is easy or free to get there, but the same arguments can mostly be said for Microsoft and they seem to be doing pretty OK. I'…

Your last sentence is dead-on. Microsoft ascribes to the traditional enterprise-y business model. The products work okay but often need support, and if you pay enough you get great support (and if you don't pay enough you get passable support). This has made them (and many other companies) a ton of money, but Google is absolutely killing all competition by following a very different path. It's hard to say how much of…

PayPal also grew this way, with collateral damage - until they were slapped with several class action lawsuits, which went through, and (I believe?) they ended up being at least partially classified as a bank. Or threatened with being classified as a bank. Something to that order.

In any event, they really had to clean up their act.

That's going to happen with Google, too, I would expect, and there's no way they are going to be surprised.

If you ask me, it's no different than a chemical manufacturing company deciding that it is more cost-effective to pay the EPA fines than to clean up their act. It's about pure numbers.

That is a point of view I will never condone.

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#125

Post by cedsav »

MattCutts wrote: post #42
patio11 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As happy as I am that you're Google's unofficial ombudsman, Matt, you're a big billion dollar company who many of us are intensely reliant on for our businesses. There needs to be a support channel other than "make a PR issue for Google and Matt Cutts will swoop by to save the day". I had a big issue with AdWords earlier this month. Google made it all but impossible for me to reach anyone about it. Earlier this year,…

There is a support channel for appeals, and it sounds like hizook.com submitted an appeal via that channel earlier this week. My guess is that the Google team is already looking into it; I just wanted to let people know that I'd ask the relevant team from my side as well. Given the hundreds of millions of users, tens of millions of webmasters, and many advertisers and publishers that Google interacts with, it would b…

The problem is that the support channel is a black hole. There's no way of knowing where your request is in the queue. Has it been reviewed? dismissed? do you need to be more patient? should you submit it again?

What about starting with giving out the average response time and queue length when submitting a request? That'd be a good first step...

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#126

Post by barrkel »

MattCutts wrote: post #102
barrkel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the way you deal with having too many users to economically support is to have a support route with a high barrier to entry. That's not to say that the route should be hidden; but, for example, it could cost money, which is refundable in the case where there's a genuine grievance.

barrkel, I can speak to some of the thinking on the search result ranking side. I believe the feeling has been that asking people to pay for support creates worse incentives, because it turns something that people shouldn't have to do (contact Google for support) into a source of revenue. It's a similar situation to pay-for-inclusion in the search index: a search engine should include as many pages/sites in its index…

Fully agree about perverse incentives in search result / ranking, but do not think it applies in nearly the same way when there's a business relationship, such as adwords etc.

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#127

Post by dhimes »

MattCutts wrote: post #102
barrkel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the way you deal with having too many users to economically support is to have a support route with a high barrier to entry. That's not to say that the route should be hidden; but, for example, it could cost money, which is refundable in the case where there's a genuine grievance.

barrkel, I can speak to some of the thinking on the search result ranking side. I believe the feeling has been that asking people to pay for support creates worse incentives, because it turns something that people shouldn't have to do (contact Google for support) into a source of revenue. It's a similar situation to pay-for-inclusion in the search index: a search engine should include as many pages/sites in its index…

it turns something that people shouldn't have to do (contact Google for support) into a source of revenue

That's why the model stipulates that [the money] is refundable in the case where there's a genuine grievance

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#129

Post by stanleydrew »

ahoyhere wrote: post #117
calambrac wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A part of that frustration has to be from that email that gets sent out. I haven't been on the receiving end, but I've read it in a couple of blog posts about this sort of thing, and honestly: that letter is awful. It contains exactly one piece of "useful" information, the link to the disabled account FAQ. The rest is just simply terrible. It starts with a very serious accusation, intoning "significant risk" and "fin…

I love your characterization. Except it's not just breaking up with you, it's breaking up with you -- and stealing your TV, your sofa, and your cat!

Not really. In Google's eyes (or Google's algorithm's eyes) you "earned" your Adsense credits in a way that was unfair to the advertisers. So basically Google's returning the TV, sofa and cat that you "stole" from advertisers in the Adsense network in the first place. Obviously the process by which Google decides what accounts are fraudulent is imperfect, so some of the time legitimate accounts will get flagged.

I do agree though that this is a big enough problem that Google should devote more time and effort to improving the systems they use to flag Adsense accounts, and certainly improve the letter and general customer support experience once your account has been flagged.

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#130

Post by petenixey »

jhancock wrote: post #92
lucifer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how this is "evil". The evil one worries about in context of a company like Google is information privacy.

Google and PayPal both fall into the category of not putting enough profits into customer support. This is what most fear from market consolidation and extremely large companies. They squeeze more profits from doing things that a company without monopoly-like characteristics could not get away with. To me, when you cross this line, you have become evil. fyi, I spent more than 2 hours last night getting my PayPal pers…

It's great to see this discussion here and especially to have Matt Cutts weighing in.

It does seem like this is an endemic problem in Google and comes right from the top. Some startups focus on customer service and use it as a differentiator. Others focus on product and believe they can build their way out of support.

Google is and always has been in the second category. The mindset is from what I understand firmly held by Larry and Sergey and manifests itself through the whole company. Until they change, it seems unlikely the support teams will change.

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