I lost my Adsense account two years ago, due to valid violations. This saddened me, and was the end of web development for me. The stats were my heroine.
Fast forward to Spring break of this year, I developed a few Android apps and one took off. I signed up for AdMob in early March.
I kept clean and got my fill of daily stats and was once again happy with my new home on the internet.
Fast forward a week and a half, I get an alert saying Admob accounts will be merged with Adsense, uh oh. I was generating decent income at this point, because let's face it, the Android market is just wide open.
I decided to make my second appeal to Adsense, 2 years later, asking for another chance and explaining my understanding of the previous violations. I noted my clean record on Admob and my apps as my reason for appealing.
6 hours later, my AdMob account is banned without any kind of notification. My wife looks over at me and wonders why I'm so sad at the laptop after 10 hours of class. It had become my daily habit to kiss my wife and check the AdMob stats. It's not actually about making money, it is something about watching the growth/lotto.
So, I have now given up on Android apps and just disabled all but the most popular one. I removed ads and cleaned up my last push.
I wish there was some type of leniency. My wife offered to make an account in her name and just take over my Android apps, but the initial thrill is gone. There is a looming realization of Google controlling the majority of online advertising and that one mistake will probably haunt me for many years/services to come.
It was with adwords...it was back when I was just getting started and I did affiliate marketing. I promoted this weight loss clickbank book...it didn't pan out, so I paused the ads.
My mistake...TWO YEARS later, I get a notice that they've shut down the account with bots because apparently that type of advertising is no longer allowed. So my old approval got tossed...and my account got perma banned over something that happened 2 years prior.
I filed an appeal, and that got ignored.
So I just said screw it, and created a new account. If Google won't play by its own damn rules, and will apply rules retroactively, I don't see why anyone should follow the rule about no duplicate accounts.
So I just signed up for adwords with a po box and did everything via VPN to avoid getting banned for duplicate account(matched via ip address). And it worked just fine.
That's the thing, all this bullshit that Google does...only hurts legitimate publishers.
The black hatters(who these rules are actually supposed to be for) only get a slight slap on the wrist...since all they have to do is just pay $5 to get a legitimate approved Adsense/Adwords account. Then just continue doing whatever they were doing before.
When I was 12, I built apps to automate MMOs. I was making about $350/mo. from AdSense - not bad money for a kid my age - when my account was shut down on the last day of the billing cycle (ie., the day before they were going to send me a check).
After some initial disappointment I changed to a subscription model, which increased my profit by an order of magnitude and incentivized me to work a lot harder on creating a quality product. Because of this, I don't regard my AdSense shutdown as a bad thing. Knowing nothing about the sort of apps you make, I'd encourage you to try to explore more options to monetize them. Clearly a number of people were using your apps. A different approach to monetization may be just as thrilling and rewarding.
Other advertising solutions for Android apps often pay more in my experience anyway, like Millennial Media, for example. I don't know why offhand, maybe there are fewer apps on them, so advertisers end up paying more for fewer slots. There's also AdWhirl and Mobclix which can act as mediators farming out your slots to other networks as needed. They are all just about as easy as AdMob to integrate, which is pretty straight forward, since most ad libraries are basically just dropping an extra WebView into an app somewhere.
I appreciate the gesture of expediting the appeal process from one of our members. The fact remains that I cannot participate in the AdSense conversion in May. When it comes to Google and money, I might as well be a pirate trespassing in royal seas, unless it is Wallet!
It motivates me to push my custom app that avoids some permissions breaking on Galaxy Notes and S2s, Thanks!
When things are this broken, it's an opportunity. Maybe it's time for someone to start an AdSense competitor whose focus is customer service. It seems to be deeply embedded in Google's DNA not so much to abuse AdSense users as to treat them like components in a machine. They treat AdSense users much as they do servers. Uncertain about a server? Toss it; the system is designed to be fault tolerant.
Maybe Google thinks they have to behave this way to scale. But my gut tells me they could get away with being a lot nicer and still scale. If so there is an opportunity for a competitor to move in here and surprise people with better customer service, as Zappos did in shoes.
It could help to have better fraud detection technology. The more accurately you can tell the innocent from the guilty, the less draconian you need to be with the innocent. And while it sounds unlike Google to have left room to do significantly better, the way they treat the innocent implies their technology may be insufficient.
But who are the "customers"? There are no less than FOUR parties at play here: Google, the ad buyer, the content provider, and the consumer. And none of their interests are very well aligned. Being "nice" to questionably fraudulent activity (because let's be clear: delaying a fraud ban means that on the margins, they will miss some valid bans and thus lose money for themselves and their advertisers) hurts Google and the consumer at the expense of the interests of smaller content vendors.
I think the audience here is skewed. People here (pg included) are too wiling to see through their web site admin glasses and not think things through from the other perspectives.
PG I'm not defending google but there's a tremendous amount of fraud in this business. Any solution has to account for the fraud factor.
From my experience neither Yahoo or Google has the correct algorithms to prevent fraud. I know this because we have parked domains and I can tell when various parked domains get spidered and all the sudden we get a check in the mail for the revenue that bots must have created.
The reason google/yahoo don't do a better job is that the fraud clicks earn them money. But when they are alerted (by the advertiser) they come down hard and fast (as show by the OP)
This is probably a great opp for regional newspapers - they have the ability to have feet on the ground, they are 'local' (ad spends keep money in the region/state/etc) - they should know something about the local/regional players/economy, etc. But... it would require an investment in technology and a commitment to customer service that most newspaper orgs probably don't have and don't want to make. Bit of a shame, as many will go away without adapting, and there are still opportunities for them to adapt/pivot and carve out new niches. Instead, they're happier to outsource all their ad stuff to big players like google.
The sheer mass Google has and their control of search represents a huge barrier to entry in this field. Like it or not, they are a monopoly.
The majority of advertisers are familiar with Google's advertising platform as search users. Given a choice between an unknown startup and Google to advertise their own business they'll choose Google, hands-down.
You and other investors would have to throw tens of millions of dollars (ore more) at a startup in order to mount a serious challenge to Google's supremacy.
If you can beat them at search you can probably mount an attack on their advertising business. Without that it'll probably be very difficult to convince publishers and advertisers to switch sides.
There are hundreds of alternatives...none of them seem to get any major traction.
Most of it is due to the fact that only a tiny portion of people are actually affected...and because these alternatives offer much lower quality of advertisers...and much lower earnings.
That sounds like a great idea, (the "opportunity" you mention) but how does one avoid becoming "just another ad network"? There are so many fringe players out there who provide low value and poor customer service that many website owners (myself included) prefer to avoid them.
I'd love to see ideas in this space. I'd even collaborate with other hackers to build something along these lines if there was a clear vision of what success looks like.
Agreeing with people who criticize google, I have to say it is really beautiful to see PG response where he is seeing opportunity in everything. Me too :).
This is actually an incredibly common practice of Google's, although in most cases they only make off with a few hundred dollars of ad revenue. I personally had it happen to me with a blog. They accused me a of "click fraud", disabled my account, and disappeared with the money they owed me. I did some research and found the same story repeated dozens of times. This has been going on for years.
Basically, Google's policies mean that if you don't like a website which uses AdSense for revenue, you can screw over the owner by sitting at their site and repeatedly clicking their ads. Google will see the "fraud", assume it was the site owner doing it, and shut down their account with little to no opportunity for appeal.
The second paragraph seems like something one could test. Have you?
Fraud detection is just hard. And my expectation is that for every legitimate friendly fire instance there are six or ten "marginal fraudsters" trying to spin their troubles with Google via blog posts like the one in the link.
I clicked on this thinking it would be a clear case of Google doing something "evil", and had to read through very carefully before I figured out that it was just another account freeze. Meh. If it's seriously $40k, then sue them and figure out what really happened in discovery. That would be a blog post I'd want to read.
also, they are sure they are on the winning side. my understanding is that in most court proceedings, the winning side has the right to be fully reimbursed for legal costs occurred up to a reasonable point.
Take them to a small claims court for damages (money, plus wasted hours dealing with it at your hourly rate). They will probably send some clueless legal intern without any proof.
I hate to suggest this. I repeat, I really hate to suggest this:
It is time for those affected to unite behind a push to initiate Congressional action against Google (and possibly others) for these practice. They are highly destructive and unfair. These companies ARE huge monopolies. They just can't be allowed to behave this way.
I am the first one to raise my voice against more government incursions into our daily lives. However, there are cases where very few options remain on the table.
Unless Google, eBay, Paypal and others who are committing these kinds of acts on a daily basis change their tune in a hurry I think that a collision with government action is unavoidable.
A united front with government backing is probably the only viable option.
Unfortunately, this is a reality of using AdSense.
I have never encountered anyone at Google that is malicious and/or gleeful about this happening. The lack of response comes down to the fact that Google would rather make sure they get all bad actors and throw out some good than be more lenient and let some bad actors stay.
There are tens of thousands of AdSense spammers that try to take advantage of the system. 30-40% of impressions on Google Content Network ads (which run on AdSense) are complete junk. These impressions are via sites that take advantage of how easy it is to get in to make a quick buck before Google catches them.
The ecosystem perpetuates itself because Google's priority is to maximize overall reach in the market: the more people using AdSense, the more impressions they get and the more people cookie'd for behavioral data. There is little concern with banning people unjustifiably as they have a different priority.
Hatchlings did the right thing by diversifying and if you rely on AdSense, then you should to. Make sure you work with several networks (many pay better anyway) and look for other sources of revenue. This is what separates the sad stories from successes.
Is it my imagination or have I seen many "Google Screwed Us" posts and never one "Google Made It All Right" posts? It seems to me to be the opposite of Amazon, where I've seen many glowing posts about CS and very few posts about things going incredibly bad.
Edit: Amazon is also relevant due to their Android app store and soon in-app purchasing. I expect them to start an ad network for apps too.
"I realize that this probably wasn’t done maliciously and that we were probably caught up in some algorithm gone awry"
I realize the diplomatic and empathic intent here but to me the whole episode is really damning if this is how they handle customers. Depriving people of payment for services rendered goes several steps beyond plain old shitty customer service.
The issue with google ads is that it only takes one bad vistor to get your ad sense account disabled.
Go ahead find a site with google ads start clicking the google ad over and over again until your IP is flagged (ads won't be displayed based on your IP). With in 30 days the sites ad-sense account will be disabled.
It's frightening that this would happen to a company that actually has a relationship with google in as much as having an account rep. Those of us nobodys who are just running generic ads with no personal contact would have no recourse at all.
I will say though, in every one of these cases there is always a little something odd. You never read about this happening without some small thing that was wonky about the setup. In this case there's a mention of the personal site without any details of what that is. I'd be curious to know what that was.
This is a textbook example of why it's never smart to hinge one's profitability upon the whims of another company.
I've been down these paths with Adsense, EPN, and others and I learned the hard way that affiliate programs and ad revenue can be booming one day and gone the next.
Now I only build PaaS and SaaS sites (not counting freelancing work on the side) and I'm a lot happier with a much more stable income from my web apps that is not dependent on the whims of anybody.
What else could Hatchlings have done to prevent this? I know people are saying, "don't rely on someone else for your profitibility", but if you are going to work with Google what other steps can you take?
He seems to have done all the right things:
1) Found an account manager.
2) Formed relationships with public google folks.
3) Opened discussions to further integration through continued sales.
My name is Tom Siegel and I work on publisher and ad traffic quality at Google. Our objective us to keep fraud out of the network while ensuring a fair process with as much transparency as we can justify. We'll take a look at the cases mentioned on this thread. If anyone has additional questions or comments you can email me at [email protected]. We appreciate the feedback.
This is too large for a small claims court, and too small to retain lawyers and suit Google.
But the USA has another, well worn, route - class action lawsuits.
This seems ripe for class action, where the class is everyone who has been locked out of AdWords without reasonable explanation, or reasonable reason.
What is required is a lawyer/firm to assess the amount at stake and winnability, for them to get a representative case (this one is good) and to recruit thousands or tens of thousands of members of the class. The lawyers get a huge percentage of any damages, but the class members get rewarded too, and the main issue is the Google will take notice and change their behaviour.
In other countries we can use legislation to change the way Google operates. Check the jurisdiction of your contract with them - and use the appropriate system.
Not trying to refute you, but how can that be the problem? From the email you cite,
"Please be assured that your Adsense account remains in good standing and any actions taken on this domain do not affect the performance of your other Adsense ads."
The author of the blog post states after receiving that email he took the Adsense ads off. This was also in Feb. 2009 and the account was closed in April 2011.
Does the Adsense team (or whoever) go back and look at incidences from 2+ years in the past when looking for people to ban?
He said he took it down and that Google said everything was ok.
"Debby assures us on February 12 that “your AdSense account remains in good standing and any actions taken on this domain do not affect the performance of your other AdSense ads.” This is the only issue that has ever been raised by Google in regard to our account."
Are you implying that the Google rep was incorrect and that this issue ultimately manifested itself two years later?
It appears that our account rep mis-typed the URL in that email reply. My site was actually guitarhero-4.com, here's the orignal email we got from them: http://i.imgur.com/2mcfo.png
I honestly don't think that site had anything to do with the ban though as there was over 2 years in between those two incidents.
its hillarious you present valid evidence, and people vote you down. Google is evil.. rabble rabble. Yes this was just one case.. without hearing the full story .. this example just proves that theres more to the story.
When Google inevitably smooth this over to avoid the bad PR, just spare a thought for the hundreds of smaller sites who don't have the option to generate that kind of press (Google screwed me out of $50 on my blog about kittens doesn't have the same ring to it)
That's the main problem with automating as much as possible, and having as few customer service reps as possible. It feels like talking to a brick wall when something non-standard happens.
If this issue gets resolved in light of the publicity it's now getting, it just further shows that the Google system is deeply flawed for it's users.
My personal experience with Google is that they have almost a pathological obsession with making it as hard as possible for you to get in touch with them.
They operate off the notion that pretty much everything is self-service and there are no requirements for human support. When Google Enterprise first started, their only offerings were M-F, don't call us, we'll call you support. It certainly clashed quite a bit with the traditional expectation of enterprise customers.
To me this highlights a much wider issue. Basically, you fall fowl of some web-admin and that's you banned for life with absolutely no come back what so ever. And the sad fact is that too often it boils down to a bruised ego, and then colleagues backing up their friend.
I do not know what to do about it, except for an internet arbitration organisation to exist that can negotiated between a user and a web site. Problem is, it would need to be voluntary and as we all know, these sites have so many users they couldn't care less about the odd user.
[+] [-] ambiate|14 years ago|reply
Fast forward to Spring break of this year, I developed a few Android apps and one took off. I signed up for AdMob in early March.
I kept clean and got my fill of daily stats and was once again happy with my new home on the internet.
Fast forward a week and a half, I get an alert saying Admob accounts will be merged with Adsense, uh oh. I was generating decent income at this point, because let's face it, the Android market is just wide open.
I decided to make my second appeal to Adsense, 2 years later, asking for another chance and explaining my understanding of the previous violations. I noted my clean record on Admob and my apps as my reason for appealing.
6 hours later, my AdMob account is banned without any kind of notification. My wife looks over at me and wonders why I'm so sad at the laptop after 10 hours of class. It had become my daily habit to kiss my wife and check the AdMob stats. It's not actually about making money, it is something about watching the growth/lotto.
So, I have now given up on Android apps and just disabled all but the most popular one. I removed ads and cleaned up my last push.
I wish there was some type of leniency. My wife offered to make an account in her name and just take over my Android apps, but the initial thrill is gone. There is a looming realization of Google controlling the majority of online advertising and that one mistake will probably haunt me for many years/services to come.
[+] [-] vaksel|14 years ago|reply
It was with adwords...it was back when I was just getting started and I did affiliate marketing. I promoted this weight loss clickbank book...it didn't pan out, so I paused the ads.
My mistake...TWO YEARS later, I get a notice that they've shut down the account with bots because apparently that type of advertising is no longer allowed. So my old approval got tossed...and my account got perma banned over something that happened 2 years prior.
I filed an appeal, and that got ignored.
So I just said screw it, and created a new account. If Google won't play by its own damn rules, and will apply rules retroactively, I don't see why anyone should follow the rule about no duplicate accounts.
So I just signed up for adwords with a po box and did everything via VPN to avoid getting banned for duplicate account(matched via ip address). And it worked just fine.
That's the thing, all this bullshit that Google does...only hurts legitimate publishers.
The black hatters(who these rules are actually supposed to be for) only get a slight slap on the wrist...since all they have to do is just pay $5 to get a legitimate approved Adsense/Adwords account. Then just continue doing whatever they were doing before.
[+] [-] typpo|14 years ago|reply
After some initial disappointment I changed to a subscription model, which increased my profit by an order of magnitude and incentivized me to work a lot harder on creating a quality product. Because of this, I don't regard my AdSense shutdown as a bad thing. Knowing nothing about the sort of apps you make, I'd encourage you to try to explore more options to monetize them. Clearly a number of people were using your apps. A different approach to monetization may be just as thrilling and rewarding.
[+] [-] Father|14 years ago|reply
If you use another ppc provider on your page, you might get penalties affecting your ranks http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&... Similar with affiliate links, http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&... Even though that's worst case scenario and might be a bit tendentious; there's no clear way to interpret what you can or can't do, or how google might interpret it.
[+] [-] lnanek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ambiate|14 years ago|reply
It motivates me to push my custom app that avoids some permissions breaking on Galaxy Notes and S2s, Thanks!
[+] [-] httpitis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg|14 years ago|reply
Maybe Google thinks they have to behave this way to scale. But my gut tells me they could get away with being a lot nicer and still scale. If so there is an opportunity for a competitor to move in here and surprise people with better customer service, as Zappos did in shoes.
It could help to have better fraud detection technology. The more accurately you can tell the innocent from the guilty, the less draconian you need to be with the innocent. And while it sounds unlike Google to have left room to do significantly better, the way they treat the innocent implies their technology may be insufficient.
[+] [-] ajross|14 years ago|reply
I think the audience here is skewed. People here (pg included) are too wiling to see through their web site admin glasses and not think things through from the other perspectives.
[+] [-] larrys|14 years ago|reply
From my experience neither Yahoo or Google has the correct algorithms to prevent fraud. I know this because we have parked domains and I can tell when various parked domains get spidered and all the sudden we get a check in the mail for the revenue that bots must have created.
The reason google/yahoo don't do a better job is that the fraud clicks earn them money. But when they are alerted (by the advertiser) they come down hard and fast (as show by the OP)
[+] [-] mgkimsal|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robomartin|14 years ago|reply
The majority of advertisers are familiar with Google's advertising platform as search users. Given a choice between an unknown startup and Google to advertise their own business they'll choose Google, hands-down.
You and other investors would have to throw tens of millions of dollars (ore more) at a startup in order to mount a serious challenge to Google's supremacy.
If you can beat them at search you can probably mount an attack on their advertising business. Without that it'll probably be very difficult to convince publishers and advertisers to switch sides.
[+] [-] vaksel|14 years ago|reply
Most of it is due to the fact that only a tiny portion of people are actually affected...and because these alternatives offer much lower quality of advertisers...and much lower earnings.
[+] [-] zupreme|14 years ago|reply
I'd love to see ideas in this space. I'd even collaborate with other hackers to build something along these lines if there was a clear vision of what success looks like.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] desireco42|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanp2k2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistercow|14 years ago|reply
Basically, Google's policies mean that if you don't like a website which uses AdSense for revenue, you can screw over the owner by sitting at their site and repeatedly clicking their ads. Google will see the "fraud", assume it was the site owner doing it, and shut down their account with little to no opportunity for appeal.
[+] [-] ajross|14 years ago|reply
Fraud detection is just hard. And my expectation is that for every legitimate friendly fire instance there are six or ten "marginal fraudsters" trying to spin their troubles with Google via blog posts like the one in the link.
I clicked on this thinking it would be a clear case of Google doing something "evil", and had to read through very carefully before I figured out that it was just another account freeze. Meh. If it's seriously $40k, then sue them and figure out what really happened in discovery. That would be a blog post I'd want to read.
[+] [-] JustinChaschowy|14 years ago|reply
Scripting that will only display the adsense advertisement once per IP visiting your site... yet guess what, Google disallows this practice!
[+] [-] papa_bear|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joering2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rorrr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jQueryIsAwesome|14 years ago|reply
https://support.google.com/adsense/bin/request.py?&conta...
[+] [-] robomartin|14 years ago|reply
It is time for those affected to unite behind a push to initiate Congressional action against Google (and possibly others) for these practice. They are highly destructive and unfair. These companies ARE huge monopolies. They just can't be allowed to behave this way.
I am the first one to raise my voice against more government incursions into our daily lives. However, there are cases where very few options remain on the table.
Unless Google, eBay, Paypal and others who are committing these kinds of acts on a daily basis change their tune in a hurry I think that a collision with government action is unavoidable.
A united front with government backing is probably the only viable option.
[+] [-] kposehn|14 years ago|reply
I have never encountered anyone at Google that is malicious and/or gleeful about this happening. The lack of response comes down to the fact that Google would rather make sure they get all bad actors and throw out some good than be more lenient and let some bad actors stay.
There are tens of thousands of AdSense spammers that try to take advantage of the system. 30-40% of impressions on Google Content Network ads (which run on AdSense) are complete junk. These impressions are via sites that take advantage of how easy it is to get in to make a quick buck before Google catches them.
The ecosystem perpetuates itself because Google's priority is to maximize overall reach in the market: the more people using AdSense, the more impressions they get and the more people cookie'd for behavioral data. There is little concern with banning people unjustifiably as they have a different priority.
Hatchlings did the right thing by diversifying and if you rely on AdSense, then you should to. Make sure you work with several networks (many pay better anyway) and look for other sources of revenue. This is what separates the sad stories from successes.
[+] [-] mikecane|14 years ago|reply
Edit: Amazon is also relevant due to their Android app store and soon in-app purchasing. I expect them to start an ad network for apps too.
[+] [-] Steko|14 years ago|reply
I realize the diplomatic and empathic intent here but to me the whole episode is really damning if this is how they handle customers. Depriving people of payment for services rendered goes several steps beyond plain old shitty customer service.
[+] [-] knodi|14 years ago|reply
Go ahead find a site with google ads start clicking the google ad over and over again until your IP is flagged (ads won't be displayed based on your IP). With in 30 days the sites ad-sense account will be disabled.
[+] [-] misterjangles|14 years ago|reply
I will say though, in every one of these cases there is always a little something odd. You never read about this happening without some small thing that was wonky about the setup. In this case there's a mention of the personal site without any details of what that is. I'd be curious to know what that was.
Even still, it sounds like a gross over-reaction.
[+] [-] zupreme|14 years ago|reply
I've been down these paths with Adsense, EPN, and others and I learned the hard way that affiliate programs and ad revenue can be booming one day and gone the next.
Now I only build PaaS and SaaS sites (not counting freelancing work on the side) and I'm a lot happier with a much more stable income from my web apps that is not dependent on the whims of anybody.
[+] [-] paulhauggis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ceol|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] civilian|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgrote|14 years ago|reply
He seems to have done all the right things:
1) Found an account manager. 2) Formed relationships with public google folks. 3) Opened discussions to further integration through continued sales.
[+] [-] TomSiegel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lancewiggs|14 years ago|reply
But the USA has another, well worn, route - class action lawsuits.
This seems ripe for class action, where the class is everyone who has been locked out of AdWords without reasonable explanation, or reasonable reason.
What is required is a lawyer/firm to assess the amount at stake and winnability, for them to get a representative case (this one is good) and to recruit thousands or tens of thousands of members of the class. The lawyers get a huge percentage of any damages, but the class members get rewarded too, and the main issue is the Google will take notice and change their behaviour.
In other countries we can use legislation to change the way Google operates. Check the jurisdiction of your contract with them - and use the appropriate system.
[+] [-] JoachimSchipper|14 years ago|reply
I think we've found the problem...
[EDIT: original comment was: Looking at http://web.archive.org/web/20110203092609/http://guitarhero-... (via http://i.imgur.com/wWyNd.png), it appears that this "personal site" was a seedy affiliate site using a brand name without permission.
I think we've found the problem...]
[+] [-] jdq|14 years ago|reply
"Please be assured that your Adsense account remains in good standing and any actions taken on this domain do not affect the performance of your other Adsense ads."
The author of the blog post states after receiving that email he took the Adsense ads off. This was also in Feb. 2009 and the account was closed in April 2011.
Does the Adsense team (or whoever) go back and look at incidences from 2+ years in the past when looking for people to ban?
[+] [-] pgrote|14 years ago|reply
"Debby assures us on February 12 that “your AdSense account remains in good standing and any actions taken on this domain do not affect the performance of your other AdSense ads.” This is the only issue that has ever been raised by Google in regard to our account."
Are you implying that the Google rep was incorrect and that this issue ultimately manifested itself two years later?
[+] [-] yeldarb|14 years ago|reply
I honestly don't think that site had anything to do with the ban though as there was over 2 years in between those two incidents.
[+] [-] draggnar|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scott_s|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angryasian|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jayp|14 years ago|reply
As the cliché goes: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."
[+] [-] user24|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Foy|14 years ago|reply
If this issue gets resolved in light of the publicity it's now getting, it just further shows that the Google system is deeply flawed for it's users.
[+] [-] newman314|14 years ago|reply
They operate off the notion that pretty much everything is self-service and there are no requirements for human support. When Google Enterprise first started, their only offerings were M-F, don't call us, we'll call you support. It certainly clashed quite a bit with the traditional expectation of enterprise customers.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] alan_cx|14 years ago|reply
I do not know what to do about it, except for an internet arbitration organisation to exist that can negotiated between a user and a web site. Problem is, it would need to be voluntary and as we all know, these sites have so many users they couldn't care less about the odd user.