
Sacked by a Google algorithm - seanalltogether
http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/11/columns/guest/winter/index.htm
======
arn
...long story...

 _Oh yes, I was also running little blocks of adverts provided by Adsense and,
yes, I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites
of those advertisers – all of whom were interested in selling stuff to
sailors._

...long story...

In the end it was click-fraud-ish.

There's a huge fear for those dependent on google adsense that they will get
terminated out of the blue like this. The problem is, there's no great
alternative. But instructing your visitors in some way to click on your ads
does cross the line.

~~~
jdietrich
Also:

 _If a sailor buys a sailing book by entering Amazon via my website, I get a 5
per cent referral fee. If some-one spends $200 on a Kindle or a camera, [they]
get their next three month s subscription for free._

That's definitely abuse of Amazon's affiliate program and crosses the line
from click-fraud-ish to full blown criminal fraud. Aside from being against
the terms of their scheme, his clear intention is to induce site visitors to
make planned purchases through his affiliate links, something that is
obviously completely contrary to the spirit of his agreement with Amazon.

The author abused his relationship with Google. He treated his most important
customer as a cash cow. He ignores the fact that many of the advertisers
footing the bill will be just like him - sole traders and small businesses
barely scraping by. By cutting him off, Google is losing revenue to protect
the integrity of their advertising marketplace. They're doing the decent thing
by their advertisers in taking a cheat out of the system. I wholeheartedly
support Google in their actions.

~~~
Confusion

      The author abused his relationship with Google. He treated
      his most important customer as a cash cow. He ignores the
      fact that many of the advertisers footing the bill will be
      just like him - sole traders and small businesses barely
      scraping by. 
    

That's unnecessarily harsh. The author of the article had a win-win situation
in mind: by endorsing the ads that were being displayed, he would get more
money, but _they_ would get more, _serious_ , traffic. Suppose he had a
private contract with an advertiser. Then that advertiser would applaud him
saying 'please visit companyX: they sell stuff you may very well want to buy
from them and they support this site'. There is no reason to suppose the
intention was different in this case.

It seems you can display Google's ads, but should never comment on them in any
way, not even to say 'Gosh, I really like how they so accurately list
companyA, companyB and companyC as relevant for my site.' The first rule of
using AdSense is, you don't talk about AdSense?

~~~
kjksf
It might seem that way to you but it's not true. You can talk about AdSense
all you want, as you and many others did commenting on this story.

What you cannot do, for obvious reasons, is to entice people to click on ads.
It doesn't matter how subtle the encouragement is, how good are your
intentions, how many kids you still have to support, how many kittens you
saved from certain death. It is against the rules that are both obvious if you
think about them and spelled clearly in AdSense agreement and violating that
agreement gets you banned from AdSense.

I'm also making money from AdSense and the simple reality is that if Google
doesn't take steps to limit the kind of click fraud that this guy openly, if
very verbosely, admits to, it'll hurt everyone else who's not matching it and
in the long term will hurt everyone, period, because there will be less money
in the ecosystem if ad publishers feel ripped off.

~~~
Confusion

      It is against the rules that are both obvious if you think
      about them and spelled clearly in AdSense agreement
    

Laws are also both obvious and spelled clearly. Nevertheless we need judges to
interpret them according to each situation. Even with those judges in place,
we still accept that some people will be punished for moral behavior, while
others will walk free for immoral behavior, because a law cannot possibly
cover every situation under which it will apply.

In this case, it seems to be the regrettable situation where someone is being
punished for moral behavior. Regrettable, but perhaps unavoidable. However,
that's as far as you should be willing to go. Trying to justify Google's
actions by accusing the one that was punished of immoral behavior is not
necessary and not warranted.

~~~
shpxnvz
_it seems to be the regrettable situation where someone is being punished for
moral behavior_

Someone is being held accountable for a contract they willingly entered. The
morality of the behavior is not at issue - moral or not _they legally agreed
not to do it_. The rest, IMO, is hand waving.

------
patio11
So, as an AdWords advertiser, here is my experience when someone gets
"creative" with ways to encourage their audience to click on my ads:

1) I see a sudden spike in my daily spend and think "Yay, I'm going to get
more customers!"

2) I go to Analytics and see a wave of people who spent seconds on the website
and did not convert to the trial.

3) Google bills my credit card for hundreds of dollars.

This has actually happened, although the specific incentive to click fraud was
different. I was sixteen flavors of pissed.

Google keeping me unpissed is worth $10,000 a year. I'm a wee little customer.
The whackamole sites are worth a few tens of dollars a year when behaving
normally. What do you expect Google to do?

~~~
qjz
_3) Google bills my credit card for hundreds of dollars._

Did you complain? Were you issued a refund? I'm trying to understand how
Google justifies withholding past earnings from the site owner and continuing
to profit from the YouTube content. If they incur real costs from refunding
advertisers, it makes some sense. But if they keep everyone's money, they have
an incentive to abuse the system.

~~~
moultano
>and continuing to profit from the YouTube content.

I believe ads are only shown on youtube content with the permission of the
copyright owner. There don't appear to be any ads on his videos at the moment.

Here's an example video of his:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ma_hZ00Nqk&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ma_hZ00Nqk&feature=player_embedded)

~~~
brisance
No ads doesn't mean Youtube may not generate goodwill or promote other videos
from what is legally his content. i.e. someone may click on "Recommended
videos" or "Similar videos" and those would have advertising.

~~~
Vlasta
As a video author, you have the option to remove the video. Youtube is
primarily a video sharing site, not a money machine.

------
mcyger
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 to
allow Google to get away with it?

I'm not saying this author is right or deserving of the revenue (I don't have
all the details or facts), but what is clear is that he has: 1\. Earned Google
a good bit of revenue 2\. Appears earnest 3\. Deserves to interact with a real
human in a real way (not by automated emails without the ability to reply)

Why aren't more people appalled by Google's actions and the way they treat
their partners?!

~~~
kjksf
For reasons of economics.

As an analogy, if you're a one-person developer, your problem is usually that
you don't have enough users. You can participate in forum discussions with
users of your software, fix bugs within days, send a personalized thank you
e-mail for every purchase, all to provide exceptional level of service to grow
word of mouth and get more customers. When you get to the size of Microsoft,
that won't work anymore. Your expensive devs have to separated from users by
layer of product management, your support calls cost you serious money and one
troublesome buyer can cost you much more than he paid for in software etc.

Google finds itself in the same boat with AdSense. I don't know the exact
scale of AdSense but it must be in millions of publishers and thousands of
advertisers. Even a small number of people insisting you give them special
consideration or explain in detail what exactly did they do wrong will burn
incredible amount of support time and money.

It's clear why he was banned from AdSense and yet he wrote an epic post
detailing his experience and inventing multiple reasons for why it wasn't so
bad. Do you think that if someone at Google sent him a personal note
explaining why he was banned, he would just say "oh, I get it now, you were so
totally justified in terminating my account". No, he would keep badgering
Google until they finally gave up responding and he would end up writing the
same epic post, this time quoting extensively his correspondence with
heartless Google employee who was not swayed by his obviously correct
arguments.

Someone arguing with Google to not suspend their account has all the incentive
to keep badgering Google until Google says "this is a final decision".

Google can't win this battle and they do the best anyone can do at that scale.

~~~
dasil003
> _Google can't win this battle and they do the best anyone can do at that
> scale._

I agree right up to this point.

The economics of online advertising are extremely harsh when you add up the
attention span of online users, the ease of fraud, and the feedback available
to advertisers. It's a sea change that people need to come to terms with one
way or another.

However the level to which Google dehumanizes publishers is quite likely to
bite them in the ass. Enough of these articles and their publisher base will
eventually shrink and open the door the competition. Now obviously the
competition will not be able to change the economics, but PR is not Google's
forté, and it's possible to do a _much_ better job handling these incidents
without any change in the economics.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
AdWords versus Click Farmers has a striking resemblance to the prisoner's
dilemma, where the only winning strategy is punishment followed by
forgiveness.

------
alex_c
Seems like part of the problem is that YouTube revenue is tied together to
revenue from AdSense for websites, even though the two services are affected
by click fraud differently. Now Google is still making money from the author's
popular YouTube videos, and he won't see a penny.

The "correct" response would be to pull all his videos from YouTube, move them
to a competing service, and write Google to let them know why. Of course, this
would unfortunately mean traffic would drop close to zero... (what's the
closest competitor to YouTube right now?)

~~~
gthank
<http://www.vimeo.com/> ?

~~~
twistedanimator
He should put 30 second clips on YouTube and then have links to the full video
on vimeo.

~~~
phillian
Is it possible to remove your content from YouTube once it's uploaded?

Were I the author, I would certainly not want Google continuing to profit from
my labors if they ceased paying me.

------
joshklein
Relying on Google, or any other single source, for your income is the same as
having an employer. This is just as true whether you run a Youtube channel or
have a multimillion dollar B2B business with only one client (aka "boss").

Being in the content game is the easy part of the equation; ad sales is the
hard part. You can take the easy road and join a network, making pennies on
the dollar and potentially getting "sacked" by an algorithm, or you can pound
the pavement and sell some ads to people. They're more profitable, you
diversify your income, but it's not easy.

~~~
davidw
Anyone got advice on how to go out and do this? How to calculate fair prices?

~~~
joshklein
Re: how to do this - watch this video of Gary Vaynerchuk picking up the phone
and selling an ad: [http://garyvaynerchuk.com/post/78967452/want-to-get-
advertis...](http://garyvaynerchuk.com/post/78967452/want-to-get-advertisers-
on-your-blogvlog-go-and-get-it) (it isn't rocket surgery!)

Re: fair prices - Totally depends on your content, your market, and how
targeted you are to the advertiser's audience. There are plenty of sub-$1 CPM
display ads, and I've been a part of buying $170 CPM ads. But you should only
worry about this only after you have sold out your ad inventory. Anything is
better than nothing.

~~~
shiftpgdn
$170 CPM?! Care to disclose what service that was for?

------
dusklight
Ok this is obviously only one side of the story and the guy who is writing it
is obviously a good writer? He knows how to manipulate the emotions of the
reader with stuff like losing money right before christmas, which he keeps
talking about over and over again even though that is entirely irrelevant to
the facts of the case.

What we have here is,

Google says he is click frauding.

He says he is not click frauding.

The real problem is, maybe Google is right and this guy is a click frauder. We
don't really know because Google shows no proof, holds no trial, allows no
mediated appeal. As a company, not a government, they can get away with that.
But as companies get larger and larger what is the difference between a
company and a government?

~~~
kjksf
Is that a serious question?

Government has many special powers. Government can issue new laws. Government
can put you in jail. Government can legally spy on you as long as they have a
warrant.

The accountability should be proportional to acts.

If you want to execute someone, you better hold a fair trial and provide ample
proof of wrongdoing.

If you create a straightforward agreement where only use of your non-essential
service is at stake, you don't need accountability at all. It says right there
that the agreement can be voided at any time by any party for any reason.

The size of Google has nothing to do with it. They are using the same legal
framework as everyone else, big or small. If you were running a 2-person
startup offering a service over internet you would be a fool to not include
similar clause in your agreement with the exact same amount of accountability.

If you don't like that such agreements allow Google to act that way, that's
fine, but accept that if you eliminate this possibility for Google, you
eliminate it for every other business, small or big, internet-based or not and
that would not be a good.

We don't want laws that treat big or small companies differently in cases like
this (regardless of which one would be favored).

~~~
anigbrowl
I think you ought to look into modern antitrust policy (as influenced by the U
of Chicago). Google has something close to a monopsony for online video;
between this and their perma-ban approach, many would argue their contract
terms create an unfair restraint of trade.

------
ecaroth
Damn.. that's a disheartening story. Hope this article gets enough publicity
to get Google's hound dogs on the trail, maybe get him some of his earnings
back.. AT LEAST re-instate his youtube adsenes account.

Bad PR for google.. too bad you hear stories like this all the time.

------
byteclub
The Google giveth and The Google taketh away... Moral of the story: diversify
your income stream as much as you can. I don't know much about advertising
world, but it seems that AdSense is a bit of monopoly, and that sucks.

Random idea for a biz opportunity here: A service that insures content
providers against AdSense account termination by routing all of the clicks
through a filter to prevent "overeager" clicking by your fans, in exchange for
a small fee. If your AdSense account is terminated, you'll be paid for it
(just like if your car is totaled, your insurance company pays for it)

~~~
pornel
Who will insure the insurer against Google blocking this business model?

Also, given that clickfraud is a danger to Google's core business, Google
likely spent enormous amount of money and engineering to have best detection
possible. Beating Google at their own game will be difficult (i.e. insurer
will lose money whenever fraudsters are better than insurer's detection, but
Google catches them).

~~~
chc
Why would Google block a business model of helping site owners to avoid click
fraud? That's doing Google a favor and not even charging them for it.

------
lynx44
This sucks, but telling your visitors to click on ads indirectly is a clear
violation of the ToS.

I too got fired by Google's algorithm and didn't do anything whatsoever wrong.
They are heartless.

Worse of all, this article does not mention the monopoly they have. They own
the online ad market. No one else exists that is anywhere as good.

It's straight-up monopoly, and if you get on their black list, you're out.

~~~
drawkbox
Does anyone actually get paid by Google Adsense? Almost everyone I know has
been kicked from it, not early on but usually when a big payment is coming.

And this bit about returning the funds to advertisers? Any advertisers ever
gotten money returned due to click fraud?

I love Google and pay for lots of their products (docs/storage, appengine,
etc) but the adsense stuff seems very shady on Google's side as well. Maybe it
is my misunderstanding but I know noone making good money on Google Adsense.

Granted this dude was violating the ToS but I know plenty of people kicked
just before payment and with no reason for it. It seems like smaller sites or
medium content sites they are glad to use for free ad space until it comes
time to pay dues. I imagine there is lots of free advertising space and
metrics gained from these situations.

~~~
arn
I make good money on Google Adsense.

so do these people:
[http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&b...](http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&biw=1214&bih=658&q=markus+frind+google+check&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)
[http://www.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=...](http://www.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=shoemoney+google+check&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1214&bih=658)

~~~
epoxyhockey
Look at the dates on those checks: 2005 and 2006!

Now, go to pof.com and try to find yourself an AdSense ad today. They have
their own ad network now: <https://ads.pof.com>

Shoemoney still has AdSense ads, but has diversified his income stream quite a
bit. I'd be willing to bet that he doesn't see anything near what he had been
making from AdSense in 2005.

~~~
arn
_Look at the dates on those checks: 2005 and 2006!_

Note that Google started offering Direct Deposit in 2005. :)

------
epoxyhockey
Selling Android apps in the Market? It's linked to AdSense too. So, if Google
kills your website for AdSense abuse, you also won't get paid for your apps
which are selling for $0.99.

If you get banned from web AdSense, you also get banned from Youtube and from
selling apps in the Android Market.

That's an ugly monopoly.

(edit) source:
[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=590...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=59011926099d3468)

~~~
megablast
Can you setup separate accounts? This might be the way to go.

~~~
epoxyhockey
Nope. If you setup a separate account with any of the same personal
information, Google will disable your account just before you are supposed to
be paid out for your app sales. They detect that your new account is related
to your banned account. That's the exact case for the individual referenced in
the parent post's help forum link.

~~~
BonesLF
I hate to incriminate myself, actually not really, but anyway create account
in mom's name at mom's address. Create account in dog's name at PO Box. You
get the idea.

Fuck tha G-ride I want the machines that are makin em

------
alanh
I'm realt glad this story is getting told. Bumping up against Google's
machine-enforced, unfair rules is easier to do honestly than you may think —
and it's a terribly cold, hopeless, impersonal, recourseless, unfair
experience. Imagine 1950s automatons running a bureaucracy. It's like that.
«I'm-sorry-sir-my-programming-indicates-you-are-a-fraudulent-user.»

From TFA:

I also spent a lot of time on line finding out why people get thrown out of
the Adsense scheme and discovered that Google has three sets of rules you can
break:

1\. The ones in the very long contract that I confess I did not read very
carefully

2\. The rules that they try to explain in their many pages of Questions and
Answers and FAQs

3\. The rules they do not tell you about because they are secret and deal with
their algorithms

~~~
kjksf
You claim that rules are "unfair" but don't provide a standard of fairness
you're using or any evidence to support your claim.

You claim it's easy to violate the rules honestly. You do not provide any
evidence for that claim.

In this particular case the guy admits to violating the rules by encouraging
his visitors to click on ads. I think he was treated very fairly: his account
was suspended, just like accounts of other people who do click fraud.

~~~
alanh
I could share anecdotes but don't want to get into it, and you're busy blaming
the victim anyway.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
I for one would be interested in hearing more, if you want to share.

~~~
dfabulich
OK, here's an anecdote. [http://www.choiceofgames.com/blog/2010/08/were-
banned-from-g...](http://www.choiceofgames.com/blog/2010/08/were-banned-from-
google-adsense/)

We're a game website -- auto-banned, appeal denied. We've done nothing wrong
that we know of. Never encouraged clicking, never clicked ourselves. Since we
have no access to the data, we'll never know what might have happened.

One strike -- you're banned for life.

I'll be at Google IO this year; my top priority is to find someone to talk to
about this.

I know people say it's impossible to get unbanned, but I can't believe that's
true. I'm going to keep trying, for years if I have to.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
As far as I can tell, you're ranking fine in Google's search results. You show
up for your company's name and other queries, and I don't see any manual spam
actions regarding choiceofgames.com.

From the blog post you mention, it sounds like your issue is with AdSense. I'm
not on that side of the company, so I'm not sure how much assistance I can
help with. I can drop an email to some folks in AdSense, but that doesn't
guarantee anything of course, and I suspect they're on vacation this weekend.
I'll still try to send an email though.

------
futuremint
He should start stopping at all of the little ports, marinas & marine supply
stores on his way and tell them about his website.

He should then offer them direct advertisements on his website. Sounds like
the ads were actually effective.

An ad buyer would of course want to do pay per sale instead of pay per click
given the site's history :)

------
iwwr
The disease of PayPalism is spreading.

~~~
archgoon
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?

~~~
ceejayoz
The inability to reach and speak to a person, as well.

~~~
patio11
FYI, you actually can reach Paypal support, and it is not a Markov machine.

~~~
tallanvor
True, although in my experience, Paypal support is worthless at actually
resolving issues.

------
jeromec
Before everyone jumps all over Google remember there are two sides to every
story, and this is told completely from the perspective of the account holder,
which should show him in the best light, but still appears he both encouraged
ad clicks and had knowledge people were following through on this.

~~~
chocolateboy
The algorithm was asked for its side of the story, but was unavailable for
comment.

------
blinkingled
He does mention this though - "I did get the odd subscriber sending me an
email saying that he had clicked loads of adverts. This is called demon
clicking. I would reply that I would prefer them to only click on adverts they
were interested in."

And then there is reference in the article to another commenter mentioning the
same in the comments which he then edited to remove.

Sounds like there was at least a reason to suspect - sad if the users did that
on their own and he had to suffer due to their actions but I find it hard to
believe strangers will do this for making another stranger money.

~~~
nitrogen
_I find it hard to believe strangers will do this for making another stranger
money._

To an extent, HN readers click on "rate my startup" links out of the goodness
of their hearts. In any small, tight-knit community (like sailing,
apparently), members of that community will try to help each other out, even
if they don't actually know one another.

~~~
blinkingled
Difference is the effort - one click on rate my startup once is different from
watching the videos again and again and clicking several links. It requires
more motivation than just helping each other out without too much pain to
yourself.

------
irinotecan
Moral of the story: Don't make too much ad revenue with AdSense or you will be
accused of click fraud, and have no recourse.

~~~
dsmithn
What I got out of it was to open up independent Adsense accounts for different
websites. If Google decides to shut one down, at least the others won't be
affected.

~~~
futuremint
This. My first thought was "why didn't he use separate accounts?" Of course
the mailing address for the checks would be the same. So then get multiple
P.O. Boxes. Then I think they require a phone number too? I'm sure Google has
some employee who has thought of this.

Also wouldn't surprise me if one person having multiple AdSense accounts is a
violation of their terms.

~~~
dsmithn
I'm sure there are restrictions for this, but at that kind of income it
doesn't make sense not to spend a few hundred dollars and open up an LLC or
something for at least the YouTube account.

I probably wouldn't have bothered with it until reading this, but I always
hear every investment should be done with a separate entity and this seems to
be no different.

------
kellysutton
Based on personal experiences, it appears that any two parties doing business
under an "American" contract are at any time probably in violation of several
clauses of said contract. When the waters get a little rough, you can expect
the party with the most leverage to bail.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but other countries don't interpret contracts so
strictly. I remember someone telling me that German business contracts are
often written with intentions and principles, rather than rules.

That way, people are encouraged to do "good business" and not resort to the
algorithm. Legalese is just a way to cover your ass in a bad scenario; it's
not designed to build better businesses.

Full disclosure: I work for blip.tv. I am biased.

~~~
dedward
You have a good point- the point of a contract, and all that legalese, isn't
suposed to create a playground where both parties can fight it out, it's
supposed to spell out the intentions of both parties as verbosely as possible
so everyone is on the same page. The contract is there to be a written account
of what both parties agreed to - all terms should be clear and understood
before it's signed.

------
Gidion
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...

~~~
mpk
> 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.

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

------
ryanto
I don't get why everyone is so upset at Google here? The guy admits to
committing click fraud and then gets shut down. As someone who spends a bit of
money on adwords I am pretty happy to see Google is active in enforcing these
policies.

~~~
cincinnatus
Where exactly does he admit to click fraud?

~~~
ryanto
> As part of the deal, and as a way of involving the sailors, I tell them
> about the revenue for the project which all comes from the website. The more
> the website earns the more sailing I can do, the more films they see.

> Oh yes, I was also running little blocks of adverts provided by Adsense and,
> yes, I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the
> websites of those advertisers – all of whom were interested in selling stuff
> to sailors.

So basically, I am paying for his boat project. People are clicking the ads in
order to see his project continue, not because they are interested in the
product. Sure, the correlation between users clicking the ads and users
interested in the product is going to be a lot closer to 1 than -1. However,
that does not justify what is going on... at the end of the day users are
clicking the ads so he gets more money, not because they are _absolutely_
interested in the product.

I really don't know what else to say about this. Google makes it pretty clear
that you cannot do this. Just because he didn't read the T&Cs and just because
he is doing videos isn't going to give him a free pass.

I think google handled the situation poorly. They should pay him some amount,
like the expected CTR for the ads that were displayed on his site. As far as
Google never doing business with him, I think thats fine and correct... think
of the big picture here.

~~~
rossjudson
It's not _entirely_ clear that asking users to click on ads is prohibited.
That phrase is in section 11 a) ii, in the _Payment_ area, not in section 5,
which lists Prohibited Uses. Perhaps it should be.

Of interest is section 11's withholding clause, which states that the
withholding is "pending Google's reasonable investigation". I don't know why
it's there, if Google can terminate at its sole discretion at any time (which
is can, according to Section 6). I think it's there to throw some legal chaff
in the air and make it _seem_ like there's some protection, so the agreement
isn't entirely one-sided. Section 11 (which provides a vague promise of
investigation) does NOT survive termination of the agreement, according to
section 6. So termination means the investigation is over, and means it never
actually has to take place.

A fair agreement might require Google to return, to advertisers, confiscated
funds. A fair agreement might also create a "suspended" state for an account,
preventing termination until the results of a "reasonable investigation" are
available.

Of course, IANAL. I am just reading what is there, which is what most of us
have to do. Looks to me that Google can confiscate any funds it wishes, then
terminate.

~~~
ryanto
> In order to ensure a good experience for users and advertisers, publishers
> participating in the AdSense program may not:

> Encourage users to click the Google ads using phrases such as "click the
> ads", "support us", "visit these links" or other similar language.

from: [https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#...</a><p>I
agree with you though, not everything is entirely clear. There is no way
Google can make a statement for every case that can possibly happen. They come
up with these general rules followed by a 'we can do whatever we want' catch
all.<p>I feel like I am defending Google way too much. I think the could have
handled it a lot better, that said - I do think the end result was correct and
I am not ready to scream google is evil like most people here seem to be
doing.

~~~
rossjudson
I don't think Google is evil. I do think they exhibit (or have exhibited in
the past) a pretty callous disregard for the devastating effects their
careless customer service can have on small businesses. If "don't be evil"
means anything, it means they have a <i>duty</i> to exhibit proper diligence
when applying their policies. It all boils down to automation and cost
savings. Google has to operate at an incredible scale. To drive the big bus
they've decided they just need to run over people (businesses) some of the
time. Back then I would have paid $10 or $20 just to be able to talk for 5
minutes to a human being. They could at least provide that option (and maybe
they do, now).

------
locopati
So basically, Google has written the rules so they can call you on it at any
time and if they deem they're paying you too much money, they kill your
account? Seems to weigh the playing field pretty heavily in their favor -
they're getting the benefits of your direction of traffic to their
advertisers, while reserving the right to arbitrarily kill your revenue. Given
their more-or-less monopoly status on search (80% or more - too lazy to check
the stats), this should probably be investigated by the FTC or DOJ.

~~~
arn
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.

~~~
stanleydrew
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.

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

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
yes, but they are not google's videos.

~~~
rbanffy
Still, Google is not billing him for serving his videos.

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
Well of course they aren't. They are his videos. He is the one who should be
billing google for serving his videos.

~~~
rbanffy
Why exactly would Google have to pay him? For the privilege of paying for the
storage and bandwidth the videos he uploaded consume?

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
The situation to me seems comparable to a book writer and a publisher. The
writer is the one who is writing the book, he has the copyrights, and earns
from selling it. The publisher spends on marketing, printing, etc, and gets a
cut, but, the publisher is reliant on the writer. If the publisher want to
sell the book without giving any revenue to the writer, then they would have
to pay for a license. Otherwise, they are in breach of copyrights law.

So, if google wants to host other people's videos, they need to pay for them,
unless people give the videos to google for free, as the video's are the
creator's and thus copyrighted.

------
wildmXranat
Tough luck. Yes, that might come across as crass, but did they bother reading
Google's terms of service? So they will bitch and moan about it, try the
appeal process and not a dent will be made in their case.

What it boils down to is: if you rely on those earnings to sustain your
business, guard against anything that tosses you into a suspicious category.
And that is a moving target as well.

I do empathize with him, as I had to toil through AdSense appeal process, but
that means diddly-squat.

~~~
locopati
Doesn't seem like you have a ton of control over the situation, seeing as the
rules as written are almost impossible to break in some manner, the rules are
only partially declared, and you cannot police your users who may think
they're doing you a favor (note: he did actually discourage his users from
clicking).

~~~
kefs
There is a big difference between discouraging users from clicking, and
telling users to click and then discouraging them from clicking.

------
fossuser
It's too bad what happened to him and it doesn't seem fair in this context,
but shouldn't there be a reasonable expectation that people who are relying on
advertising revenue from google at least read the terms of service? I know
it's something that I would make sure I was aware of.

~~~
meterplech
I understand your point, but have you ever actually tried to read the terms is
service of any multi-thousand line legal document written in legalese. You are
obviously in a way right, but for Google (and other companies) to purposely
obfuscate the process does more harm.

~~~
Symmetry
Not for every piece of software I install on my computer, but if I'm doing it
for work or if its important like an OS or a cellphone plan I do try to read
the entire document. Its really not that bad if you're willing to take a few
minutes and they aren't written purposefully to be hard to understand - just
to be legally precise.

------
Shorel
Cut the middle man. I mean cut Google Adsense. What he was doing was paying a
big cost of opportunity there.

If he has that vertical market of subscribers he should deal with the boat
insurance providers or other suitable advertisers himself.

Let the 1c become 500c or a lot more.

------
phr
If you own several different media properties like this guy, is it a good
strategy to incorporate each one separately, to keep an unintentional Adsense
TOS violation from affecting all the others?

------
rebooter
I've had my run-in with Google AdSense in the past. My prediction: If they
don't change their ways this is headed to a huge class-action lawsuit and
nothing but bad press.

My experience was interesting and revealing. I had a bunch of domains (about
200) parked with GoDaddy in something called "cash parking". Not a money
maker, but, what the heck. Once I realized that this was actually a service
provided by Google I decided to look into cutting-out the middle man.

I looked into AdSense and found AdSense for Domains. Exactly the same service
being offered by GoDaddy. I took all 200-some domains off GoDaddy, created an
AdSense account and parked all of them with Google. They approved every single
domain name and put ads on them. Great.

Two days later I get this email about fraudulent activity and the termination
of my AdSense account. I appealed. No love. So, the termination was,
effectively, forever.

Here's the irony of this story. The same 200 domains had been parked with
GoDaddy for months without any issues. Serviced by Google. They even made a
few bucks for all involved. The domains were not advertised in any way
anywhere. I just parked them and went on with my business. This means that
Google was responsible for sending traffic to these sites, every bit of it.
About 50 of the domains were political in nature. Being that this was around
election time my guess is that they got more traffic than usual, and, I guess,
hits. I'll never know because the account was killed within two days of being
formed with no data provided whatsoever.

So: Google sends traffic to the sites. The sites get clicks. They close my
AdSense account. No appeal, no recourse, no human being to speak to. Bullshit!

Google needs to get sued in a major way to "reset" some of their behaviors.
Why? Because they are a de-facto monopoly. Search is dominated by them. Video
(YouTube) is dominated by them. Advertising (AdWords and AdSense) is dominated
by them.

They do not provide for any intelligent way to deal with problems. They will
tell you that you've done something wrong but will NOT provide proof, details
nor an opportunity to rectify the problem. A likely scenario is that of
someone just getting started who makes a few mistakes and needs to learn.
Google does not provide for any of the above. They are judge, jury and
executioner and a pretty mean one at that.

This fellow with the boat site probably deserved a slap on the hand for his
site. He did no deserve to loose ALL OF HIS INCOME. They could have easily
said something like:

"Your site-based per-click revenue is now 10% of normal during a probation
period. These are the things you did wrong: link. Here's where you can see the
activity and what happened: link. Here are the rules you need to pay attention
to: link. The account will be monitored and your earnings percentage slowly
increased as we see that these violations are rectified. We look forward to a
continued relationship with <company name>".

...A far better approach.

If you are going to shut down someones entire revenue stream you need to have
a humane and reasonable process to review the situation and seek resolution
rather than hitting someone over the head with a sledge-hammer.

I don't know what will trigger this lawsuit. I do think that it is almost
inevitable. They might even need to be broken into different verticals in
order to make it all fair. I think they are playing a dangerous game. I think
they are playing with fire.

The Google "do no evil" thing may have been a nice idea. However, as it
pertains to AdWords/AdSense they are headed straight for evil-land if they
keep on this path.

There's another topic: Google censorship. I think that, because they are a
monopoly, they don't have the right to censor. They can't be in charge of what
is and isn't appropriate on the web. Different issue.

~~~
rossjudson
Interactions with Google go something like this:

GOOG: Dear $Client: our automated algorithm says you are engaged in click
fraud. We are reversing payments made to you and confiscating what is in
"your" account. Thanks.

$Client: Whaaa? (Furious form filling).

GOOG: Dear $Client: Based on the same information, our automated algorithm
$still says you are engaged in click fraud. We are $still reversing payments
made to you and confiscating what is in "your" account. All your comments will
be lost in time, like tears in rain. Thanks.

I haven't experienced anything with ad sense (never used it), but I have
experienced the sorry excuse for customer service their automated systems
produce.

A few years ago I did the web site for a small retail store, and set up the
Google advertising for it. The average bill, per month, was around $500. After
about a year, the credit card on the account expired, and a new one was
needed. Something went wrong during the update process and the account stayed
locked out, even though new credit card information had been entered. This was
a situation that needed a human to look at it, for about 60 seconds, to fix
the problem. Eventually that happened.

It took over six weeks, and dozens of pointless, automated message exchanges.
That $500 a month we had been paying to Google wasn't worth even a _minute_ of
a human being's time. For a small retail business that absolutely relies on
Google advertising to bring in business (it's a highly researched, rare
purchase), being cut off Google is a kiss of death. The phone will go from
ringing 20 times a day, to ringing once a day.

For certain types of businesses, there's simply no alternative to Google.
You're either there or you're dead. In terms of revenue/ad$, it was by far the
best. The day the ads reactivated, the phones started ringing again. Looking
back, I can't believe that I thought that the messages I was receiving from
customer service actually meant they were looking at the problem. Knowing what
I know now, I'd have a completely separate backup account ready to go at all
times, with the same sets of keywords and bids, on the off chance that the
main account was deactivated.

If this is how they treat people who are trying to _give_ them money, I can't
begin to imagine how frustrating it must be to get money _out_ of them!

If I were participating in the AdSense program, Google could terminate me for
writing this message, according to 5.(xi) of the US terms and conditions,
which classifies as prohibited use "any action or practice that reflects
poorly on Google or otherwise disparages or devalues Google’s reputation or
goodwill".

~~~
Daniel_Newby
> I were participating in the AdSense program, Google could terminate me for
> writing this message, ...

Based on what you have written, you'd only be in AdSense by means of a shell
corporation that didn't have your name on any public documents.

------
zacharyz
So if users clicking on ads without the intention of buying is click fraud -
what about when a user accidentally opens one of those lame ads on a youtube
video when they were actually trying to close the ad? I certainly had no
intention of giving the advertiser any money and yet it probably registers on
their end as a click.

------
nestlequ1k
Just one of the many reasons I've always hated adsense. Being told that you
aren't allowed to tell your readers to click on links is bullshit.

Seems so much more appropriate to pick a few books off amazon, or find
something offers from commission junction. Encouraging your readers to buy
from sponsors should not be off limits.

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

~~~
stanleydrew
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 themselves at the mercy of Google, which has a
responsibility first and foremost to its paying customers, i.e. the
advertisers.

~~~
JoeBracken
I agree there is little understanding by some of how Adsense "works" and how $
from an advertiser ends up in a check to you from Google. Most people don't
care however anyone running a business off of Adsense should know in detail
how they work or you risk getting your business cut off like this. As others
have said diversification of revenue is important especially if you don't have
confidence in how the system works - example the stock market.

If you are releasing one or a few videos, revenue from Adsense is just about
the only game in town. However if you have enough content that can survive
outside of YouTube you create an opportunity to work directly with
advertisers. Many video podcasters have moved this way, not hosting videos on
Youtube and owning the ad relationships and revenue.

------
dools
I didn't see any way to comment on the story but someone should let this guy
know he should certainly be able to delete his truck vids to stop Google
profiting from his work since discontinuing his AdSense account.

------
giberson
This is what kills me about advertising--I literally can't believe it works.
Yet, heres an article about a guy using an ad company to show ads to generate
revenue, and in the comments here at HN, a viewpoint from some one using an ad
company to have their company advertised. In both cases they actually state
that: a) there is actually a conversion rate between ads on a site and
purchases for a product, and b) imply that the conversion rate is substantial
enough to facilitate ad companies and the whole ad process.

This flabbergasts me, because I have never ever once clicked on an
advertisement [on purpose] with the intention of finding out more or
purchasing an advertised product (nor the purpose to "support" a site). I
literally liken it to falling for Nigerian scams. That's not to say I've never
been influenced by advertising--but in general I do tend to buy store brands
[cheaper] over name brands. I certainly have never been so influenced to feel
the immediate actionable need to buy a product after having seen an ad.

But this isn't a rant about how I hate ads, actually I'm hoping one of you
amazing HN people can explain, with logic, why and how ads work? Whats the
mentality of people (sheep?) that see and ad after watching a truck video and
think, gee I really must visit this car wax website and buy some car wax now.
There gotta be some kind of psychology or game theory that explains the
successfulness of the [online] ad industry.

------
larrik
This is why a lot of subscription websites (which this was, apparently), don't
display ads to logged in users. A small dedicated audience looks like click-
fraud. Adsense and the like is best for drive-by visitors.

I did that even with my own websites, even though there is no subscription
fee. Logged-in users get no ads, because I don't want them to click on them.

There was a similar issue on HN a long time ago (years?), but I can never find
past articles that I'm looking for.

------
injekt
A very mixed bag of responses in the comments. It appears to me that the
writer may have inadvertently asked his users to click on adverts, because it
helps him generate profit. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but
Google does, and it explicitly says that in its Adsense contract.

With that being said, Mr Winter deserved a human voice at the very least. A
discussion, not a computer generated decision. Perhaps the adsense account for
the personal website should have been ceased, but doing so for the youtube one
too, is petty. Of course (assuming) a computer can't tell the difference
between these outlets a human voice would have helped in this matter.

After reading some of the comments, I really think pulling down the youtube
videos and throwing up 30 second 'previews', with a link to the full version
on Vimeo, is a great idea. There's no doubt it will generate less income, but
you'll get your cut.

------
QuantumGood
Google had no choice: · He encouraged people to click on ads to bring him
income; · He had a high level of fraudulent clicks detected. His
"encouragement" was mildly phrased, but he mentions that people responded to
it by generating fraudulent clicks. This is EXACTLY the kind of person Google
MUST ban.

------
jrockway
Seems like the solution to this problem is to create a legal entity for each
company you do business with. Then when they suspend FooBar LLC's Adsense
account, you create BarBaz LLC and try again. If you use your real name or
real SSN, you're stuck if anything bad happens.

------
SteveJS
While this looks like click fraud to the advertisers, is that failure due to
the people clicking? Or Google?

This seems to be to be a failure on Google's part to properly leverage a real
audience, rather than a legitimate detection of click fraud.

Google's Ad system is assuming a transient audience with little invested in
the content, so that sending the same (content targeted) ad repeatedly to the
site is the right thing. This is a small audience with much invested in the
site. Sending ads from the same advertiser to the same small audience has
diminishing returns. This is a failure to capture value, based on the
investment of the audience rather than the type of the content.

Sending a wide variety of ads is necessary to properly leverage a small
invested audience.

------
dennisgorelik
My guess is that Google calculated how efficient was Dylan's traffic was for
AdWords customers. AdWords customers can setup goals for their ads (reach
certain page e.g. "ThankYouForYourPurchase.html". So if almost all traffic
Dylan sent did not reach any goals, then it's disappointing for AdWords users
and for Google. So when Google determined that -- they were only looking for
an excuse to drop him, and Dylan gave such excuse by indirectly incentivizing
users to click on AdSense ads. \--- I told my subscribers that I got some
money if they visited the websites of those advertisers \---

Still Google should be more transparent about reasons why they are dropping
AdSense partners.

------
kbutler
This is a product recall by Google.

Google has customers (ad buyers) and suppliers (publishers). The product
Google sells is ad clicks.

Google determined that the supplier delivered a contaminated product. Google
issued a recall that also affected (presumably) non-contaminated product
(clicks) delivered by the same supplier. Google also has a zero-tolerance
policy to prevent any further contamination.

It's harsh. It probably is overly broad in this particular case.

But Google makes a lot more by protecting its customers (ad buyers) from
tainted products (clicks) than by protecting its suppliers (publishers) from
overly broad recalls.

The only way this will change is if suppliers (publishers) become
significantly more rare.

kb

~~~
rossjudson
"Zero-tolerance" is often code-speak for "too lazy to bother to check". Your
recall analogy fails because, after the recall, the supplier is never
permitted to transact again. A conventional recall is an opportunity for a
company to fix a mistake, then move on.

~~~
kbutler
An analogy doesn't have to be exact to be useful. The interesting case here is
that it's the "retailer" initiating the recall, rather than the "supplier".

And you're completely right - Google is too lazy to bother to check, because
the cost-benefit ratio is just too high. Why bother, when there are lots of
other suppliers?

If you're a retailer, and a supplier for a tiny fraction of your business does
something that makes you process a recall for a bunch of your customers, would
you bother working with that supplier again?

kb

------
doyoulikeworms
I don't have much AdSense experience, but what is there to protect folks from
click fraud fraud?

Example: A blog/app/whatever is targeted by anonymous/botnet/whatever and
intentionally drives the CTR to an insane amount for a sustained period.

------
dasht
One implication of this story is that simple "click spam" can kill off some
Google products, censor a small business, etc. The product Google is offering
is inherently vulnerable to low-cost, high-price attack.

------
chanux
Why I still see posts like this and Google does nothing to make things right?

------
Stormbringer
Seems like Google's taking a leaf out of Paypal's book.

I think that a system where the only game in town has a financial incentive
(they get to steal your money) to ban you is bound to be open to abuse.

====

But even apart from that I think the internet advertising model is all kinds
of broken. It seems your choices are:

(a) try to get real money for content

(b) try to get tiny money (micropayments) for content

(c) give it away free, and hope that the ads you slather it with don't drive
away too many people (axiom: ads always suck, and are a drain on the goodwill
of the people whose time you are wasting with them)

(d) abandon all hope of making a living

------
danenania
Google could show much better judgment in their response. Perhaps he did
technically break the rules, but not wantonly and not with malevolent
intentions. He deserves a warning, and perhaps to have some percentage of his
income returned to advertisers, but taking ALL the money in his account and
completely shutting off a significant portion of this man's income stream for
what amounts to a relatively innocent mistake is a huge overreaction and a
lousy thing to do to someone. You're better than this Google.

------
jeffreyrusso
I honestly sympathize. It's a horrible thing to be blindsided by something
like this when it's a main source of income. The approach Google took was cold
and heartless, that goes without saying. All that being said, I can understand
why things like this happen, and I don't necessarily fault Google. When a
particular placement generates a lot of traffic that doesn't convert, Google
has an obligation to take action on behalf of their paying advertisers.

------
scotty79
So basically you can kill source of income of any website (and probably the
site itself) by clicking its ads and not buying anything.

Don't tell 4chan. Or anyone with access to botnet.

------
rradu
I've had to deal with AdSense's auto-bans before. The appeal process is slow
and very rarely do you get a response from an actual person.

When you do get in touch with a real person, they offer very little additional
information besides copy/pasting whatever's on their help site--even if it's
not relevant to your situation.

I guess this is akin to Apple's seemingly arbitrary bans of apps, but at least
Apple doesn't have the gall to tout that "don't be evil" philosophy.

------
scotty79
Why Google just doesn't lower value of his clicks accordingly instead of
closing his account?

This all or nothing, good or bad approach doesn't seem to fit grayness of
reality.

------
Joshim5
I had the same issue a few years ago on my site. It was really annoying.
Google got me for "click fraud". I had some friends who were looking at my
site in school. Some people clicked on adverts. Since these views were from
the same school, Google probably thought they were the same computer/person.
It really sucks.

------
JoeBracken
So what does this say then for all the free ad-supported mobile apps? I keep
reading more and more of the success of ad-supported apps that would also face
the same risks.

I do think however the flaw here is the writer informed users that clicking
supports him - simple click fraud.

------
varjag
So the conclusion is, don't build your business model around someone else's
business model.

~~~
Luyt
That's too broad. The lesson is: don't build your business model on AdSense.

------
earino
People click on ads?!?

------
ddkrone
I think this is fascinating. So if there is some site that I don't like that
mostly generates revenue with the help of google ads a really roundabout way
of taking them down would be to devise a scheme and raise their click-through
rate through the roof and wait for whatever algorithm google uses to catch on
and raise red flags.

------
gnosis
Welcome to capitalism.

------
kunley
That guy is pretty immature with his complaints. He choose such risky way of
getting the income by himself. He's had expectations bar too high and made few
strategic mistakes.

He's also got quite luxurious problems like not being able to get decent money
for his sailing hobby. Mr Dylan, looks like your 55 years didn't give you much
insights on life, otherwise you wouldn't be complaining on the way you've
chosen for yourself.

