Holy Hannah! – AdSense Disabled My Account!!
You read the headline right. Google just disabled my AdSense account. I’m trying not to panic, but I’m absolutely baffled why this has happened.
Here’s a snippet from the email I just received from Google:
It has come to our attention that invalid clicks and/or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account. Please understand that this was a necessary step to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.
***
Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment. The earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected advertisers.
Account disabling is verified
For a minute, I thought that maybe this was some kind of hoax. Just to check, I tried logging into my AdSense account. Here is all that came up:
An AdSense account does not exist for this login, as it is associated with an unapproved application. For more information about your application, please review the message we sent to the email address you provided with your application.
Why?!
I swear to you (and to Google) that I’ve never clicked my own ads, and I don’t encourage anyone else to do that either. I don’t have any automated clicking programs. I don’t falsely generate page views. What could I be doing wrong?
Perhaps Google saw the post I wrote about learning where your AdSense clicks came from. For a couple hours, that post disclosed my eCPM for one ad that displayed on a page. A friend advised that disclosing that info is against the Terms of Service, so I promptly edited the post.
Other than that, I don’t know what’s going on.
No more payments?!
I was thinking about ditching AdSense when I updated my blog design. Maybe this is an opportunity to do that. But I apparently can’t get the accrued money from my account.
From the second paragraph of Google’s email, it looks like I won’t be getting the ~$75 that I built up in my account. True, it doesn’t meet the $100 minimum for payments, but they’re saying I can’t earn enough to ever get paid that amount.
But ads still display
The weirdest thing is that ads were still displaying on the site. Isn’t that great?! “You can’t earn another dime from us, and we’re not paying you what you’ve already earned. But we’re still going to make money off your visitors.”
Since Google’s jerking me around, I’ve disabled all AdSense units for now.
I’m appealing
You don’t think a future lawyer would just give up, do you? Of course not!
I’m appealing this crazy decision, via Google’s appellate mechanism. I don’t get to give oral arguments in front of a distinguished panel of judges. But I filled out a form, explaining that I’m a good little ad publisher.
In 24-48 hours, I should have a decision. Perhaps this ranting post is premature. But even if they re-enable my account, it’s good for other publishers to know what’s happened to me. I’ll definitely keep you guys updated.
[tags]adsense, google, publisher, disabled[/tags]
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21 Responses to “Holy Hannah! – AdSense Disabled My Account!!”
April 13th, 2007
Hmm .. I think Amazon was planning on starting a contectual ad scheme. Might be worth looking into if Adsense comes back with a negative answer
April 13th, 2007
Hi Owen,
Thanks for the pointer about the Amazon ads. I might give that a look if AdSense does not come through on appeal. We will just have to see.
Thanks,
Andrew
PS: Please let me know if you get this. My new comment plugin should automatically email you with my reply. 🙂
April 14th, 2007
Sorry to hear the bad news. You may want to try out Yahoo’s ads: http://publisher.yahoo.com/sel.....=USYPN0005. I haven’t used Yahoo’s ads, but I’ve read on blogs that 1) they are less relevant to the text than Adsense, but 2) they pay more.
Please let us know what happens with Adsense.
April 14th, 2007
Thanks for the Yahoo suggestion. That’s definitely something I’m thinking about. I might give Yahoo a spin, if Google doesn’t re-enable my account.
I’ll definitely update the blog as the AdSense drama unfolds. Google said it might take 48 hours to reply to my appeal. But I doubt that considers weekends. Hopefully I’ll know something by Monday or Tuesday.
Take care!
April 14th, 2007
Good luck with your appeal … hopefully Google is more honest than Paypal. Several years back, I set up a client with Paypal to accept payments for their business, and was entitled to a $100 referral bonus. When it didn’t come through, I contacted them. Their response was, your referral person didn’t use the right code to sign up, so you are not entitled. But I know for a fact they did – they signed up with the link I provided, which has an embedded referral code. They know that for most people, $100 isn’t worth exerting much effort over, so they stonewall and screw you. Meanwhile, they’ve made thousands in fees from the client I referred. Jerks.
Nick Kasoff
The Thug Report
April 14th, 2007
Nick,
Your PayPal problem sounds pretty sticky. The really bad part of these situations is that the customer doesn’t have solid proof that the client used the referral. I don’t doubt you, but you couldn’t really PROVE it to PayPal. That stinks.
Thanks for commenting!
April 14th, 2007
That’s the second time in a few days, I’ve heard of a well known blog having adsense disabled. It’s true that you should appeal, I had a notification from them a while back to which I responded that I had removed the offending ads. Since then I keep them uptodate about issues on clicks.
Try reading kumiko suzuki’s blog on blogspot. She suffered the same fate, just this week, too. I’m guessing that Google is facing click fraud on an even bigger scale than they care to admit, but they’re punishing the WRONG people. Eventually, if they punish too many innocent people, confidence in the system will just fade away.
April 14th, 2007
Hi Kenneth,
I’m glad to hear that some appeals actually result in a positive outcome. At least you were allowed to continue publishing ads.
Ironically, I saw Kumiko’s post the day before I got banned. At the time, I thought that she must’ve knowingly done something wrong. Now I definitely know people can get unjustly banned by Google.
Thanks for commenting,
Andrew
April 15th, 2007