

Site banned from AdSense restored after appeal to regulator - prawn
http://www.theage.com.au/business/google-restores-banned-travel-website-20120205-1qzpx.html

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nekojima
The site owner is rather lucky he has the option to go to a council like this
and that it only took four months. Many site owners are without that
protection, option or the social network to make enough fuss to have Google
overturn the decision.

Until Google faces a proper market disrupter that challenges their ad lead,
and they are need to reform their AdSense appeals process, there is unlikely
to be any changes, unless government regulation and/or oversight councils
force a change.

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BiosElement
Why? There's no reason Google can't run their services as they see fit. If I
don't want you to use my service, that's my choice. There's nothing illegal
about it.

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dangrossman
For one thing, it's theft. Google not only terminates you but keeps the
balance of your advertising payments, potentially going back for months (when
Google must have considered all the advertising you were running for them
valid, or they'd have terminated you then).

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ftwinnovations
It is not theft. After review Google refunds the earnings to the advertisers
who, from Google's standpoint, the publisher is stealing from via click fraud.

And I speak from experience. I know this because a very large ad based site of
mine was banned for being in violation of a vague line in their TOS. It was
automated and I really didn't know what I was doing wrong. After a month of
writing every contact form and google email I could find, I got an actual
response and was reinstated after being told what I was doing wrong.
Afterwards they withheld a large amount of the prior month's earnings which
they refunded to the advertisers.

Sadly, though I was _technically_ in violation, they simply showed me another
way to do the exact same thing. There was no fraud, and I was out about two
months revenue, but at least I now have a few direct contacts at Adsense for
the cost. Very, very expensive contacts...

My main point however is that Google does not keep a penny of the withheld
funds. It goes back in full to the advertisers who paid for those clicks.

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dangrossman
That's besides the point. It wasn't Google's money to give to the advertiser,
it was the publisher's. If there's fraud going on, it's reasonable to withhold
that money and return it to the advertiser. But if you have unpaid funds from
months back when Google did NOT suspect any fraud, Google takes that and gives
it back to the advertisers too -- that's plain theft.

~~~
ftwinnovations
The publisher will always claim it is not fraud no matter what level of
investigation Google performs. And Google only refunds the portion of the
earnings that they find to be in violation. This to me, as a business owner,
seems logical when looking at it from Google's point of view. If I owned
Adsense, I can't imagine doing it any differently or more fairly when having
to consider both the paying advertiser and the warning publisher. Those two
parties will never agree if they were in direct contact so Google has to be
the middle man and play the bad guy to at least one of them.

Hacker News patrons would be equally up in arms if the article was about
AdWORDS paid ads that a small website owner found to be fake clicks, paid
money for, asked for a refund, was refused, and wrote a blog about. Google
really can't win.

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dangrossman
> Google only refunds the portion of the earnings that they find to be in
> violation

This is the issue. I've never seen that happen. Every account I've read of a
closed AdSense account, accounts that were in good standing for years, has the
entire balance of the account taken.

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fungi
as a resident of NSW this actually makes me much more confident about using
adsense... which is good for google!

now if someone could do this to paypal i may actually stop warning every
client to stay away from them as well.

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BiosElement
Quite frankly I don't buy it. Sounds to me like he wanted to play the legal
games and during that time Google just happened to review it.

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Vivtek
You've never been cancelled, I take it? I was -- with the same "we've reviewed
it and the answer is still no", until my friend Howard Tayler happened to note
it in the comments under his Web comic, and marvelously it was re-reviewed and
found to be Just Fine.

Google's "review" process is automated. Everything possible at Google is
automated. If you don't get the attention of a human, you've got no recourse,
and that effectively means if you don't have popular friends, you've got no
recourse.

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robryan
I think the review process is manual, it is just that it is still very much a
black box. Someone determines the outcome (that someone is probably pretty far
removed from the product) and tells you that you have either been successful
with appeal or not, no more details.

We had an adwords account recently auto banned with a generated email with no
reasoning for the ban. To play it as safe as possible we spent the best part
of a day submitting a comprehensive document going into far more detail than
needed on why the ban was a mistake. We got unbanned last week but as of yet
haven't received a single correspondance from Google past the initial
automated email from Google.

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Vivtek
You know, this is the first time I've actually ever heard of anyone getting
unbanned through the ostensible review process.

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prawn
I've had a couple of warnings, fixed things, and carried on, but no bans.

I'd be interested to see the average earnings of those banned with limited
recourse. e.g., is it under $200/mo or are a lot with $1k/mo+ getting done.

I suspect that low level sites are more or less ignored and put in the too-
hard basket. Imagine how many smallfry sites they'd be reviewing out of less-
developed countries where the cost to investigate deeper would just outweigh
the early advantages of having them in the program. Easier and cheaper to just
ban, piss off that kid abroad with his brand new motor bike forum, and keep
raking it in from more established sites.

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Vivtek
That's actually pretty plausible - my site never earned more than $30 a month,
for example. Also it's unbelievably cynical.

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prawn
Only way of finding out (and it'd be flawed anyway) is to set up a site
letting people log their dispute and amount at risk, maybe anonymous to the
public but with moderators checking info a bit. And collate the responses to
compare.

~~~
Vivtek
You'd be biased towards people ticked off about the experience, but it's an
intriguing idea.

