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Sacked by a Google algorithm

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Re: Sacked by a Google algorithm

#51

Post by vladd »

archgoon wrote: post #11
iwwr wrote: post #2

The disease of PayPalism is spreading.

Hi! I'm sorry to be dense, but could you explain what encompasses PayPalism? I'm guessing you're referring to: -Excessively complex user agreements -Ability to arbitrarily suspend accounts -Ability to void credited funds Are there any other aspects that you (or anyone else) feel should be included?

I'd define PayPalism as businesses with a significantly risk of fraud as a result of conducting financial activities and transactions with "online" customers.

Such businesses take huge risks since they are dealing with money and their bad phenomenons (tax evasion, credit-card/identity abuse, money laundry) without having real face-to-face contact and customer identification. Therefore, in order to stay competitive and manage their risk, they have in their agreements termination clauses which enable them to disable suspicious accounts unilaterally without providing explanations.

For both AdSense and PayPal, sustainable competition at feature-parity failed to appear. There aren't any agencies that allow a guy with only a few thousand impressions per month to earn a buck with a pay-per-click model, or any banks that allow you to open an account with them just by providing an email address. Which leads me to believe that the account closures are just part of the business model assumption which allows PayPalism corporations to manage their risk and survive.

But maybe I'm wrong and something better will emerge. The trick is to improve interactions with legitimate accounts while keeping abuse detection algorithms secret. Which might be a very, very difficult problem to solve...

Re: Sacked by a Google algorithm

#52

Post by rbanffy »

illdave wrote: post #45
mayank wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But instructing your visitors in some way to click on your ads does cross the line. If you think that crosses the line, then you just gave anyone with access to a small botnet (or who knows how to cleverly use Tor) an easy, cheap way to cut off the income of people who rely on AdSense. And there are a LOT of those. Outright, criminal fraud is one thing, but I would argue that it's unethical to hold up the funds he…

I wonder if the money is withheld because it'll be returned to the advertisers - or whether Google actually keeps it. I'd be surprised if Google charged the advertisers for traffic that it detected to be fraudulent.

Google says it's returned to the advertisers.

Re: Sacked by a Google algorithm

#53

Post by rbanffy »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #37
mcyger wrote: post #13

For as many articles that there are about how great, smart, [fill in another positive adjective] Google is, I'm surprised that no news source has pointed out the ridiculous behavior of Google. Who else would you work with (i.e., display advertising for) without having the ability to speak to someone by telephone when a difficult situation has occurred? None of our customers would tolerate this -- why do we continue t…

vimeo

That solves the YouTube part of the problem, but not the AdSense part.

Google has for all purposes a monopoly on mass-market web advertising

Re: Sacked by a Google algorithm

#54

Post by rbanffy »

mpk wrote: post #21
Gidion wrote: post #4

I'm a big fan of the "let's find an algorithmic solution" approach to everything (because it scales), but if the so called specialists (still assuming they are human specialists) are already involved, would it have hurt to send a little more information about the issue that just a link to the FAQ? You know, the human factor...

> would it have hurt to send a little more information about the issue [..] Call me a cynic but I think they don't send any information on purpose . They're not required to send information and Legal probably doesn't want anything sent out in these cases that involves writing from a non-lawyer.

Google arguments that giving details on what happened would hinder their ability to enforce their rules and police their partners.

Re: Sacked by a Google algorithm

#55

Post by rbanffy »

stanleydrew wrote: post #33
arn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. Google makes more money when they pay you more money. The income is tied together. They get a cut. So, it's not that they feel like they are paying you too much. Many sites/individuals make a lot more money than this guy did on Adsense. In this case, they felt the guy was sending fraudulent clicks through the program.

While this is true of Adsense for domains, it's not true for YouTube apparently. Ads still run beside this guy's videos whether or not Google/YouTube decides to give him a cut of the revenue.

It makes some sense: the videos are hosted on Google servers and served through Google bandwidth.

Re: Sacked by a Google algorithm

#56

Post by rbanffy »

stanleydrew wrote: post #41
motters wrote: post #7

This seems to be a not uncommon tale for people who make money out of Adsense.

Yes. I think the problem is that people don't really understand Adsense. They think they are "earning" money by placing ads on their sites. In reality they are outsourcing the placing of ads on their sites to Google, who manages the customer relationships with advertisers and shares a portion of the revenue with the site owner as an incentive. In agreeing to outsource the ads and relationships, site owners put themse…

Still, helping non-compliant site owners into compliance would create greater revenue opportunities and a healthier market for media buyers and sellers alike, as well as a better environment for the middleman.

Re: Sacked by a Google algorithm

#57

Post by rlpb »

illdave wrote: post #45
mayank wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But instructing your visitors in some way to click on your ads does cross the line. If you think that crosses the line, then you just gave anyone with access to a small botnet (or who knows how to cleverly use Tor) an easy, cheap way to cut off the income of people who rely on AdSense. And there are a LOT of those. Outright, criminal fraud is one thing, but I would argue that it's unethical to hold up the funds he…

I wonder if the money is withheld because it'll be returned to the advertisers - or whether Google actually keeps it. I'd be surprised if Google charged the advertisers for traffic that it detected to be fraudulent.

I've had money refunded automatically due to Google detecting fraud later.

Re: Sacked by a Google algorithm

#59

Post by jonprins »

rbanffy wrote: post #53
kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vimeo

That solves the YouTube part of the problem, but not the AdSense part. Google has for all purposes a monopoly on mass-market web advertising

In that case, blip.tv (per view, content producers can make more money through us than through YouTube).

Full disclosure: I am employed by blip.tv.

Re: Sacked by a Google algorithm

#60

Post by rlpb »

rbanffy wrote: post #39
arn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not too much ad revenue. It's suspicious ad revenue. He had 6% CTR, which is high, and also seemed to encourage his visitors click, at least to some extent. It's not clear to what extent he encouraged clicks, but asking visitors to click your ads is like asking for your account to be terminated.

My visitors were usually smart and probably figured out on their own (since many of them had blogs - and AdSense accounts - themselves) that clicking on banners meant supporting the site. Too bad Google shoots first and never asks any question. It's really comfortable to live in a space without meaningful competition.

If I were an advertiser, why would I want to advertise on your site, if I know that visitors are supporting you by clicking but have no intention of converting? I care about the effectiveness of my ads. They are far less effective if visitors do this.

Ultimately the advertisers are paying for your AdSense income. It may not be your fault, but if you're providing less value to the advertiser, then it seems only fair that you don't participate, since your participation harms the whole market.

This is undeniably a problem with the current AdSense business model, but we all know this, choose to participate and accept the risk.

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