I posted the article because I think Google can do better and thought it would stir up some discussion. Google has had this issue for a long long time. The process appears to be highly automated and potentially impacting innocent people buying into the platform and investing time building up a base. I also may be a bit hypersensitive given the many articles I keep encountering regarding the United States govt and detention of citizens based on their Facebook and Twitter comments along with my own dislike for the ways the multinational corporations operate these days. I wouldn't say it is fear mongering as you will find no shortage of sites and blogs with stories of disgruntled customers. Just hope Google addresses the issues and remembers part of what makes them a great company.
Goodbye AdSense
21–30 of 70 posts
Re: Goodbye AdSense
#22I had my account disabled last July and went through a similar experience in my appeal attempt. The interesting fact I pointed out to Google was that they sent me about 80 percent of my visitors via organic search. I didn't try to game the system or blend the ads to increase ctr or mislead consumers.
I offered to help diagnose the issue by going through server logs and anything else to no avail.
I guess when Google is making so much money from advertisers they rather just error on their side rather than spend time reviewing appeals.
Re: Goodbye AdSense
#23Google adsense support and appeals has always had problems, it seems if you're disabled your chances of getting any sort of support are non-existent and I assume this post is an attempt to get the issue seen by people at google (I hope it works). On the topic of their "secret" detection, it doesn't work well. In 2007 when I was in high school an acquaintance had a web page with google adverts on, there was no content…
I have had s similar experience... A friend of mine had an Adsense account and would click on his own advertisements while in school. He would do this every day in the same class. He would also ask other students in the class to do the same thing. Each month, he would show me the check he received from Google. I too had an Adsense account but I ended up losing my account about a month later. Only problem is, I was ru…
>Once I lost my Adsense account, I reported my friends account but nothing ever happened except he kept receiving his check each month.
If that's all there is to the story, you come across as a bit of a dick. If you didn't have any problem with his behaviour when you were getting paid, why did you report him when you were banned? I'm not saying reporting him, out of context, was the wrong thing to do, but the context you provided makes you seem petty.
Re: Goodbye AdSense
#24The appeal seemed half-hearted to me. His answers were basically "no", "no", "no idea", "i don't know"... Maybe he doesn't really care to be reinstated. Although he cared enough to write an article and post it to Hacker News...
err and did you read the questions?
not like if he could invent replies.
pretty obviously if he had replied yes to any of those it would mean he had been able to find out what caused adsense to disable his account.
Re: Goodbye AdSense
#25I once used their very strict account disabling policy to get a competitor kicked from Google AdSense. It was not even that difficult. I just spent a couple of minutes every day visiting his website, clicking all the adsense links, closing all the openend tabs, reloading the page and so on. It took a few weeks, but then the ads just stopped showing up (despite the Javascript code still being loaded) and a few days la…
Remind me to never compete with you.
Re: Goodbye AdSense
#26This is all bad karma for Google. At some point they'll do this to the wrong person and, when that happens, I do hope that they pay the price in mega-bucks. This is no way to treat decent and honest partners. It is, without a doubt, being evil.
I experienced another surreal variant of this a few years ago. We had some 200 domains in GoDaddy's "Cash Parking" program. They were there for probably a year when someone made the observation that the ads on these parked domains were all served by Google. Google, at the time, offered something called "AdSense for Domains". We decided to switch all domains to Google's domain parking program and cut out GoDaddy. No delusions here, neither service was going to make any money but it seemed a better idea to let parked domains host relevant ads without unpaid GoDaddy ads.
Now, to be clear, when you make this switch Google controls the content on the domains and, of course, they own search.
All went well. The domains started to show ads as expected. Then, out of nowhere, Goggle kills our account. No recourse. No intelligent conversations. A totalitarian and decidedly-evil "we are done" of sorts.
Not one person from the office clicked on any ads. Far too busy making real money to do crap like that.
Several of the domains we parked belonged to clients for whom legitimate sites were being created. Google's actions were brutally violent. There's almost no other way to describe it.
Being that they are a de-facto monopoly I would imagine that a time might come when they migh lock horns with exactly the wrong person or entity and end-up on the receiving end of congressional action or some such thing. I really do hope this happens and that they suffer serious damage because of it.
It is so ironic and frustrating to come across site after site with crap content full of Google ads and, on the other hand, to see honest site operators being punished by having an important source of revenue cut-off like that.
I love many of Google's products but AdSense and AdWords' management, policies and their brutal handling of honest users who add nothing but value is nothing less than evil.
Re: Goodbye AdSense
#27This is all bad karma for Google. At some point they'll do this to the wrong person and, when that happens, I do hope that they pay the price in mega-bucks. This is no way to treat decent and honest partners. It is, without a doubt, being evil. I experienced another surreal variant of this a few years ago. We had some 200 domains in GoDaddy's "Cash Parking" program. They were there for probably a year when someone ma…
I never seen any value from parked domains. People only get there by mistake.
Re: Goodbye AdSense
#28This is all bad karma for Google. At some point they'll do this to the wrong person and, when that happens, I do hope that they pay the price in mega-bucks. This is no way to treat decent and honest partners. It is, without a doubt, being evil. I experienced another surreal variant of this a few years ago. We had some 200 domains in GoDaddy's "Cash Parking" program. They were there for probably a year when someone ma…
I never seen any value from parked domains. People only get there by mistake.
Absolutely agreed. That said, Google offered this "AdSense for Domains" and we used it. As a reward for doing so they killed our account. Unbelievable!
Re: Goodbye AdSense
#29At what level of scale does Google modify their treatment? Obviously major websites serve Google ads, and couldn't risk this kind of impersonal, imperious ability to just cut you off and steal your money.
Re: Goodbye AdSense
#30I had my account disabled last July and went through a similar experience in my appeal attempt. The interesting fact I pointed out to Google was that they sent me about 80 percent of my visitors via organic search. I didn't try to game the system or blend the ads to increase ctr or mislead consumers. I offered to help diagnose the issue by going through server logs and anything else to no avail. I guess when Google i…
Diagnosing an individual case probably costs them more than they make from it in years. But not investigating individual cases could carry a cumulative cost in terms of perception that could bring down the entire advertising ponzi scheme.