

Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense - beambot
http://www.hizook.com/page/hizookcom-frontpage-slashdot-reddit-digg-engadget-hacker-news-result-google-disables-adsense-ac

======
olefoo
Two points:

1\. This is not a problem with Google's Customer Service, it is a problem with
their vendor relations. When Google publishes ads on your site, you are
selling that space to them. Google is your customer and isn't obligated to
tell you a damn thing except that they don't want to buy from you anymore.

2\. There is a market opportunity here for an ad network that is willing to
find good sites dropped from Google Adsense by erroneous algorithms. And that
can appeal to the news herd (all the traffic driven by reddit, hn, slashot,
digg, etc.) with either brand advertising or targeted ads designed to appeal
to surfers from those sources.

The thing is, from a strictly mathematical point of view Google may be
perfectly correct, the 100 visitors a day coming to the site while looking for
robotics news may have been more valuable to their advertisers than 10,000
stimulus hungry nerds that don't buy shit. And while it's hard on the site in
question Google is playing for the percentages, not sheer volume.

~~~
jasonkester
Well said. Further to the above, Google had a very good reason to drop this
particular site: Over the span of a week, their impression count shot through
the roof with the sort of traffic that never clicks ads.

So all Google sees is a whole ton of 0.0000001% clickthru impressions coming
from a former backwater site. If my ads were serving there, I'd certainly want
them pulled.

Granted, Google is terrible when it comes to situations like this. But
technically they did the correct thing here.

~~~
jemka
So "technically" allowing a number of days to go by without response, not
providing a method to escalate an issue, or not providing a method for users
to get any straight forward answers about a particular situation that Google
initiated is, as you said, correct?

~~~
jasonkester
Hmm... You seem to have ignored the first half of the sentence your responded
to. The part that says "Google is really bad at customer service".

So no, to repeat: It was poorly communicated, but it's good for business, both
for them and for their advertisers.

------
MattCutts
I'm happy to ask the right team at Google about this and point them to the
post on hizook.com.

~~~
patio11
As happy as I am that you're Google's unofficial ombudsman, Matt, you're a big
billion dollar company who many of us are intensely reliant on for our
businesses. There needs to be a support channel other than "make a PR issue
for Google and Matt Cutts will swoop by to save the day".

I had a big issue with AdWords earlier this month. Google made it all but
impossible for me to reach anyone about it. Earlier this year, I had an issue
with my bank denying an AdWords bill (to protect me against possible fraud).
It took one minute on the phone to resolve.

You make a hundred times what my bank does off me. Why is human contact only
possible if we speak the secret password into the telephone disguised as a
shoe which is stored in the unused broom closet marked Beware of Leopard.

~~~
MattCutts
There is a support channel for appeals, and it sounds like hizook.com
submitted an appeal via that channel earlier this week. My guess is that the
Google team is already looking into it; I just wanted to let people know that
I'd ask the relevant team from my side as well.

Given the hundreds of millions of users, tens of millions of webmasters, and
many advertisers and publishers that Google interacts with, it would be
difficult to have one-on-one conversations with all of them even if everyone
at Google did nothing but try to provide that support. Historically, we try to
tackle that challenge by reducing the need to talk to a person at all (e.g.
our webmaster tools let people diagnose lots of issues without talking to a
webmaster expert at Google). We try to pursue scalable communication methods
such as forums and keeping an eye on the blogosphere too. I wouldn't claim
that we're perfect--I'd be curious to hear more about the AdWords issue that
you had--but our first instinct is to look for ways so that people don't need
to telephone Google in the first place. I think a lot of companies do that; I
can't remember the last time I needed to talk to Amazon or Facebook or Netflix
on the phone, for example.

But I take your point, and while we do have support channels, I think it's
good to keep an eye out for blog posts because that feedback can help us
improve so that future people interacting with Google don't get as frustrated.

~~~
calambrac
A part of that frustration has to be from that email that gets sent out. I
haven't been on the receiving end, but I've read it in a couple of blog posts
about this sort of thing, and honestly: that letter is awful.

It contains exactly one piece of "useful" information, the link to the
disabled account FAQ. The rest is just simply terrible. It starts with a very
serious accusation, intoning "significant risk" and "financial damage", but
Google wasn't "compelled" or "forced" to act, it "decided" to, implying not
that some mandatory threshold was reached but that someone sat down and worked
it out and reluctantly agreed that this was the way to go, or worse, that
sometimes similar situations might go the other way.

Immediately after accusing the person of being an evil bastard, it turns on
the smarmy fake politeness. "Please understand" that we think you're an evil
bastard. "Thank you" for understanding that we think you're an evil bastard.
And thanks for "cooperating", even though you actually have no choice in the
matter at all. If you have any questions, kindly fuck off and don't use the
same method of communication we just used to reach you, here's a link to more
standardized dehumanizing copy.

It reads like Google is breaking up with you while checking its phone, acting
like you've done something horrible enough to merit no discussion on the
matter, trying to act nice enough so you don't think it's a bitch, but making
it clear it doesn't give a shit and really never did.

~~~
MattCutts
calambrac, I personally agree with you about the wording/tone of the current
letter. I would like them to take a look at changing that, although no one
will ever be delighted to get that letter.

~~~
calambrac
That's true, it's always going to be a hard letter to get, and I'm sure that
most of the time it's being sent to people who deserve to get it. I think a
rewrite should simply dispense with the dire accusations, the fake politeness,
and the implication that there's a significant human presence behind the
individual decision. Don't waste people's time or patronize them, be direct
about what's happening and acknowledge that there may be some kind of recourse
if you want to work through the process. 'We're disabling your account because
our algorithm told us to. We regret if this is an error, please see this page
for more information if you feel this is the case.'

~~~
peoplerock
Yes, it's a nasty, no-easy-solution dilemma: Shugging off the spammers yet not
mistreating the "false positive" decent customers that your algorithm bans.

What I find distressing (and would find even more so had _I_ been the victim)
is that Google refuses to to identify _which_ part of TOS have been violated.
Police and courts have to specify which parts of criminal code a defendant is
accused of violating. Can we not get similar fairness from corporate America?

Are you afraid that such clarifications would give too much useful info to
actual spammers?

Well, maybe a _slight_ edge. But I might compare this to the dilemma that
clarifying legal defendants their constitutional rights ("Miranda" in the
U.S.) deprives law enforcement of some opportunities to tap some useful self-
incrimination: It's part of the cost of valuing Constitutional rights. Would
Google dare to offer its customers some Consumer Bill of Rights?

~~~
zach
Google is in a contractual business relationship with its partners, not an
hiring or governing relationship. The contract may suck, but does anyone sign
up for AdSense because the contract is great?

------
ujjwalg
On a side note, google should definitely get its act together related to
customer service. I have heard so many horror stories about google's
indifferent/insignificant customer service lately.

~~~
patio11
_On a side note, google should definitely get its act together related to
customer service._

This implies that they're incompetent at providing customer service. My
biggest fear is that this behavior is by design, that they are achieving all
their customer service objectives, and that they have the metrics to prove it.

~~~
DTrejo
(Meaning that they have low customer service objectives?)

~~~
onreact-com
Yeah. Don't pay people to do customer service is still more profitable than
losing a few customers a they are not many search and Adsense/Adwords
alternatives that can really compete when it comes to reach.

~~~
Ardit20
That's walking a very tight rope as the way you put it sounds very much like
monopolistic behavior. I would suggest that it does not make business sense to
have the government looking over you as being an evil monster, which, is most
probably what will occur if the horror stories continue.

~~~
kijiki
Governments move slowly, and execs (and shareholders) rarely look past the
next quarter.

------
sachinag
What's crap is that AdSense's TOS say that you can't run someone else's
context- or content-sensitive ads. So you can't run both AdSense and whatever
Yahoo/Bing/whoever has. If you could, stuff like this would be a great boon,
not an automatic circuit breaker that cut you off.

~~~
jacquesm
My favorite term from the TOS is the one where they forbid you to talk about
your accounts statistics:

" Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information
without Google's prior written consent. "Google Confidential Information"
includes without limitation: (a) all Google software, technology, programming,
specifications, materials, guidelines and documentation relating to the
Program; (b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Property
performance in the Program provided to You by Google; and (c) any other
information designated in writing by Google as "Confidential" or an equivalent
designation. However, You may accurately disclose the amount of Google’s gross
payments to You pursuant to the Program. Google Confidential Information does
not include information that has become publicly known through no breach by
You or Google, or information that has been (i) independently developed
without access to Google Confidential Information, as evidenced in writing;
(ii) rightfully received by You from a third party; or (iii) required to be
disclosed by law or by a governmental authority. "

For the whole thing see here:

<https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
You can bet they wanted to write _"The first rule of adsense is ..."_

~~~
jacquesm
That's definitely what it feels like. My main issue with this part of the TOS
is this: Google is extremely lacking in transparency, the only way to puncture
that is to team up with other publishers/advertisers and compare notes.

Right now the feeling is simply that you're being screwed and you can't even
talk about that feeling or verify it.

At the risk of getting my adsense account blocked, and because I'm not going
to let the big G muzzle me I'm going to post my adsense stats for July.

edit: they're up: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=791158>

------
jemka
Hizook could have prevented losing advertising revenue (or at least reduced
losses) by having a backup or parallel ad network on their site. So if not
Google adsense, what's the next best game in town?

~~~
lsc
I have used 'project wonderful' as an advertiser to great success. It's
extremely transparent. <http://www.projectwonderful.com/>

It's really big with the webcomics people

------
redcap
Has anyone ever fronted up to Google and ask to see some customer service
there?

Over the past few months there have been a number of stories about Google's
bad customer service particularly in relation to the AdSense/etc programs, so
I'm curious if anyone has been brave/silly enough to try.

~~~
jacquesm
I know one of those cases personally and no, they're not 'brave/silly' enough
to try because there appears to be some chance you get shut down completely if
you become too vocal about support issues.

------
zach
Unfortunately, the real problem here is that Google is a company that tries to
be nice and pleasant to their users, but has to deal with unreasonable
customers on a massive scale. In fact, not just unreasonable customers, but
many who are actively attempting to systematically defraud them and their
other customers.

So I think we can all agree that this was a pretty bad example. What are the
best ways that others have found to handle things in similar situations
without causing these kinds of scenarios?

------
netsp
I remember a comment at some point by pg that customer service might be
Google's Achilles heel. The evidence is accumulating. Any service that cannot
be provided without it cannot be provided by Google and there is an
opportunity to compete.

Judging by how keen people are to share google customer service frustrations
at any opportunity, I think this is evidence.

------
jeremymcanally
I made Reddit, Digg, and Lifehacker in one day and Google didn't disable mine.
Apparently YMMV.

------
Dove
Power corrupts.

~~~
param
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incorrect
(business) feature prioritization

~~~
jacquesm
I'm with the GP on this one, certainly after my personal experiences with
Google on issues like this.

------
traskjd
I'm surprised to see the default thinking is that there is something dodgy at
play here.

Jumping from 100 impressions per day to 10,000+ probably just triggered some
automatic fraud prevention system.

~~~
invisible
Yeah, except for the fact that the person had been with AdSense for a year and
there was no recourse after the trigger was hit.

------
coliveira
One has to understand that Adsense publishers are not clients for Google.
There are millions of websites trying to get Adsense working for them, so
Google here is the client.

Real clients of Google are Adwords advertisers, so these are the ones that
they try to please. Anything that makes your site suspect will take you out of
the network, and Google makes it very clear that they will do it first and ask
questions later. I don't see this changing, because it is a really good
assurance for advertisers.

~~~
invisible
Google doesn't have a phone support for Adwords either. That's another story,
though. Google wouldn't have Adwords customers were it not for AdSense, so I
think your point fails in that sense. Google "traps" your money, whether make
legally or not, and you never see it again unless you manage to appeal
"correctly." Furthermore, there is no proof whatsoever that Google returns all
of that money to advertisers. I've never seen a trace of evidence they don't
just mark that as profit.

------
s800
This comes up all the time. Happened to me too, I gave up on AdSense as a
result.

How all the crappy parking and spam sites keep their adsense going I'll never
understand.

------
fnid
It's because visitors from those sites are worthless. They may click on the
ads, but they aren't going to buy anything and even if they do, the conversion
rate is so low that the advertisers get mad at Google.

~~~
Rantenki
I fail to see how Google mispricing impressions is the fault of the Hizook
admin.

Google already modifies the payout on clickthrough using a completely opaque
system. If that system cannot handle traffic spikes, they shouldn't be
defaulting to banning the Adsense account, they should just throttle
inventory.

~~~
fnid
Google shoots first and doesn't ask questions later. I'm not defending google.
I've been anti-google for years. I'm just saying why they disable the account.
It's the easiest, automated solution to combat lots of problems like click-
fraud, advertiser complaints, etc. If they don't disable the account, they
have to constantly handle _this_ type of account, the high traffic,
potentially high click-thru, but low conversion attracting account.

The other solution requires making a lot of changes to a lot of accounts. The
advertisers' ad positioning, the rates for the ads, which affect other adsense
sites, etc. In that case, Google runs the risk of angering a lot of customers,
both advertisers, and real estate providers.

The other solution: ban the account -- angers only one real estate provider.

------
sfphotoarts
Although I am sympathetic to everyone's disgruntlement with Google over the
adsense and adwords programs, it makes for very boring news for the rest of us
unconcerned with revenue streams derived that way.

------
jcsalterego
I'm curious to know why, on that page, there are three vertical AdSense
banners.

------
onreact-com
This is a well known issue with the so called Digg effect. I warned people
years ago not to aim for Digg traffic because Adsense tracks page impressions
and click throughs and Digg users behave like robots, flooding a site with
requests and bouncing off right away.

[edit:] Reddit is even worse, higher bouncer rate (95%+), and even lower
engagement than Digg.

~~~
ars
When you find an article on a site via digg you are supposed to check out the
rest of the site?

That literally did not occur to me till I read your sentence.

I've certainly never done so, I've never even thought to do so. I've sometimes
clicked a link inside the story text, but not often.

~~~
onreact-com
Digg is only for posting ugly comments and offending others so that's why you
actually don't have to click or even read something on Digg. ;-)

------
shiranaihito
Didn't anyone else notice that Google's "explanation" for disabling the
account was the same as in another recent story:

 _While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account
has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers._

This was on HN a while ago: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=781751>

~~~
Tangurena
That is one of those empty, formulaic phrases that mean the exact opposite of
what they say. Like when a company says _for your convenience_ which really
means _for this company's convenience_ or more commonly _we're about to make
things harder for you_.

These formulaic phrases are spit out by the form letter generator and have no
meaning.

~~~
shiranaihito
I realize it's meaningless bullshit - I was just surprised that they're using
the same excuse all the time.

------
c00p3r
It seems like some lame automatic anti-fraud (too successful SEO) trigger at
google, based entirely on statistics (like high-speed stock trading, etc.)

Those people had their top moment, but google spoiled their bonuses.

------
numbchuckskills
I'm very happy with the support I get from the Google AdSense team...but it
sounds like i'm outside the norm....

~~~
numbchuckskills
and by outside the norm I mean someone interacts with me once every quarter or
more.

------
jrockway
Wow, I'm so sad that blogspam-ing is becoming unprofitable. So very sad...

------
riffic
waaah.

just be grateful that messrs. brin and page allowed you the privilege, for as
such a brief period as it were, to make a meager pittance from these text
and/or image based advertisements.

find no pity from me.

------
stuntgoat
If only Get Satisfaction could get the Google account. . .. Perhaps Google
should acquire them; that would likely solve the customer service issues
people seem to be so upset about.

