
Goodbye AdSense - zippo
http://acme.com/updates/archive/173.html
======
NelsonMinar
It's worth noting that the guy linked here whose AdSense was turned off is Jef
Poskanzer, one of the grand old Unix hackers. You may know him from such
things as pbmplus, thttpd, and two USENIX Lifetime Achievement Awards.

------
asto
Ha! This is nothing. I actually know why my adsense account doesn't work.
Google thinks I'm trying to scam them by creating multiple accounts because
they have another account on their database with the EXACT same address and
phone number.

That's not a duplicate account Google, it's called a brother!

~~~
robk
Why would you and your brother have the same phone number? Surely you each
have a different mobile number.

~~~
ajuc
There are this things called stationary phones. Some people still use them.

Also - some people don't have mobile phone because they don't want to be
available all the time. As popular as moblie phones are, there is no law that
says everyone should have them.

------
citricsquid
Google adsense support and appeals has always had problems, it seems if you're
disabled your chances of getting any sort of support are non-existent and I
assume this post is an attempt to get the issue seen by people at google (I
hope it works).

On the topic of their "secret" detection, it doesn't work well. In 2007 when I
was in high school an acquaintance had a web page with google adverts on,
there was no content beyond what came with a free template he downloaded.
Every day he would arrive at school, login to the computer system and click an
advert on his website, he would then go home and do the same, he would also
contact other people from school via instant messengers and have them do the
same, it became some what of a ritual for him. He was making $100 per month
from what I recall and this went on for a while. This is the sort of abuse
that should be detected very easily; abuse from the same IPs with a set
pattern and yet it never was... I have no confidence in a system that can't
detect this sort of abuse.

~~~
mcarrano
I have had s similar experience...

A friend of mine had an Adsense account and would click on his own
advertisements while in school. He would do this every day in the same class.
He would also ask other students in the class to do the same thing. Each
month, he would show me the check he received from Google.

I too had an Adsense account but I ended up losing my account about a month
later. Only problem is, I was running a legitimate forum in which there were
300+ people that were active. This forum was created because we all played the
same online game and created clans. We used the forum to keep in touch with
other clans and to strategize. Never did I click on my own advertisements.

Once I lost my Adsense account, I reported my friends account but nothing ever
happened except he kept receiving his check each month.

~~~
redthrowaway
>Once I lost my Adsense account, I reported my friends account but nothing
ever happened except he kept receiving his check each month.

If that's all there is to the story, you come across as a bit of a dick. If
you didn't have any problem with his behaviour when you were getting paid, why
did you report him when you were banned? I'm not saying reporting him, out of
context, was the wrong thing to do, but the context you provided makes you
seem petty.

------
gata
I once used their very strict account disabling policy to get a competitor
kicked from Google AdSense. It was not even that difficult. I just spent a
couple of minutes every day visiting his website, clicking all the adsense
links, closing all the openend tabs, reloading the page and so on. It took a
few weeks, but then the ads just stopped showing up (despite the Javascript
code still being loaded) and a few days later the webmaster removed the code,
which I assume meant that he god kicked.

~~~
white_devil
Interesting how you posted something that amounts to "I'm an asshole", just
because it was relevant to the discussion.

~~~
AJ007
Something that also could be construed as fraud, if not criminal then civil.

------
stevencorona
I used to work for a "big adnetwork" and this is how it worked there.. AdSense
is probably similar.

We tracked conversions, where possible, on our advertisers end and used that
data to calculate conversions per click for our publishers. We'd use this
metric, mixed with a few others (ctr, # of impressions, # of fraudulent
clicks, etc, but mainly weighted towards cvr) to generate a quality score for
the publisher. The quality score was between 0 and 1, 1 being "awesome" and 0
being "awful".

We'd use this quality score to discount the price per click publisher was
paid. AdSense is likely doing something similar because their CPC/CPM
rate/split is undisclosed and very private- likely because publishers will get
paid drastically different amounts per click depending on their traffic
history.

Anyways, when a publisher falls bellow a certain quality threshold, we'd drop
their account because they are, in the end, not making the advertiser any
money and likely hurting our future relationship with the people that pay the
bills.

Social traffic usually falls into this poor quality area into this area
because it doesn't convert well, has a low click through rate, and includes
lots of accidental clicks.

~~~
richdougherty
Why not just pay the publisher the (possibly low) value of their traffic,
while also providing the publisher with the tools they need to improve their
traffic quality? If the site never improves then it simply never makes any
money.

~~~
stevencorona
The networks see low quality publishers as diluting the overall quality of
their network. Since advertisers only care about traffic that converts, low-
quality traffic hurts stats because it makes CTRs and CVRs drop even if the
overall CPC/CPA is the same.

There are absolutely ways to educate publishers and advertisers, but the
easiest solution for the network is to just nip it at the bud and drop low-
quality traffic.

------
robomartin
This is all bad karma for Google. At some point they'll do this to the wrong
person and, when that happens, I do hope that they pay the price in mega-
bucks. This is no way to treat decent and honest partners. It is, without a
doubt, being evil.

I experienced another surreal variant of this a few years ago. We had some 200
domains in GoDaddy's "Cash Parking" program. They were there for probably a
year when someone made the observation that the ads on these parked domains
were all served by Google. Google, at the time, offered something called
"AdSense for Domains". We decided to switch all domains to Google's domain
parking program and cut out GoDaddy. No delusions here, neither service was
going to make any money but it seemed a better idea to let parked domains host
relevant ads without unpaid GoDaddy ads.

Now, to be clear, when you make this switch Google controls the content on the
domains and, of course, they own search.

All went well. The domains started to show ads as expected. Then, out of
nowhere, Goggle kills our account. No recourse. No intelligent conversations.
A totalitarian and decidedly-evil "we are done" of sorts.

Not one person from the office clicked on any ads. Far too busy making real
money to do crap like that.

Several of the domains we parked belonged to clients for whom legitimate sites
were being created. Google's actions were brutally violent. There's almost no
other way to describe it.

Being that they are a de-facto monopoly I would imagine that a time might come
when they migh lock horns with exactly the wrong person or entity and end-up
on the receiving end of congressional action or some such thing. I really do
hope this happens and that they suffer serious damage because of it.

It is so ironic and frustrating to come across site after site with crap
content full of Google ads and, on the other hand, to see honest site
operators being punished by having an important source of revenue cut-off like
that.

I love many of Google's products but AdSense and AdWords' management, policies
and their brutal handling of honest users who add nothing but value is nothing
less than evil.

~~~
muro
I never seen any value from parked domains. People only get there by mistake.

~~~
robomartin
Absolutely agreed. That said, Google offered this "AdSense for Domains" and we
used it. As a reward for doing so they killed our account. Unbelievable!

~~~
ericd
I wonder if that's a honeypot of sorts...

------
Shank
+Matt Cutts commented on this particular issue on Google+:
[https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/RpNNBRr6...](https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/RpNNBRr61Hp)

"I can't easily imagine Jef Poskanzer was click-spamming AdSense, while at the
same time I trust the judgment and abilities of the AdSense team. +Jef
Poskanzer , I hope someone digs into the case to investigate deeply and
reaches out if there's any more info we can share."

I have to agree, though the robotic reply with non-specific answers doesn't
help one bit. Edit: In reference to the article, not this post.

~~~
NameNickHN
But what hope is there for people les famous?

~~~
narad
It is too sad to notice that Google only serves famous people. All those
people who raised their voice on blogs and HN are given priority. What about
the people who post on the Google Adsense forums and GAN Forums? Nobody from
Google even replies to those legitimate queries.

~~~
GFischer
Even when they do, their answers are not informative.

I asked about whether one website offering a free AdSense coupon was sponsored
by Google or not, and I received contradicting answers.

Edit: The website was www.googleadwordspromos.com/ and an example of
conflicting answers is here:
[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/adwords/thread?tid=62a...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/adwords/thread?tid=62a5755e805fa79e&hl=es)

------
yaix
G has done this for the past 8 years, if you have AdSense, it is not a
question if you get banned, but when you will get banned.

What surprises me much more is that there is still no valid alternative. After
8 years! MS has tried to build something and failed. Y! of course failed. Then
there's Entrieweb's SpeedyAds which are so bad I think they are not even
working on them any more. Nobody seems to be able to build a system that is as
efficient as G's in matching content with ads, even thou it would be highly
profitable.

~~~
AmazingMe
Maybe Facebook should launch their ad-sense now.

~~~
yaix
Have they already figured out how to run ads on their own site efficiently? I
think CTR and RPM are still unsolved issues for Fb. I may be wrong, never
bought Fb ads myself.

------
tluyben2
We had multiple sites banned and my accounts and some business partner
accounts banned as well. Almost all without reason. I mean ofcourse they
'have' some reason, they just don't tell it and no-one can tell me why either.
Like acme.com; I have known the acme.com site for many years; how is acme.com
a threat to their advertisers? It's a nice site.

Anyway; you cannot argue with them and it makes me upset that they would do
this like this. I like their products, but their adsense and adwords
'policies' are insane; you are making them money both ways and with adwords
you are a paying client, yet there is no-one you can call or mail. If you do
you just get 'our decision is final, don't contact us anymore'. Is that an
acceptable way to threat a client who did 100s of 1000s of $ in adsense (which
means Google did how much % of that running over my sites?) or more than that
amount via adwords?

And Matt Cutts is also showing the real Google in that regard; he is always
helping famous / connected people out, while the rest of us goes out of
business because some vague Google automated fraud blah. This goes for SEO too
(the HN incident for instance).

------
jws
Someone needs to create a market place to serve victims of google's death
sentences.

1) Tap a pool of willing people that would never be involved in AdSense.
Perhaps non-technical, older people who have no inclination toward that sort
of thing.

2) Buy their "google birth right" from them, that is, for a fixed fee up front
and an annual bonus buy the right to spin up an LLC using their identity to do
business with google.

3) Rent these LLCs to victims of google and their negligent bots. The money
will come through the LLC, and there will need to be a percentage commission
to cover the tax liability of the identity donor plus pay. Maybe minimal if
you make the payments to the victim be an expense.

4) The renter/victim will need to make a deposit that is forfeit if they burn
the LLC identity, to keep them from being reckless.

The cost involved won't help the casual user, but for people forced to make a
life style change because their primary income was just destroyed, I'm sure
this would work.

------
zippo
I posted the article because I think Google can do better and thought it would
stir up some discussion. Google has had this issue for a long long time. The
process appears to be highly automated and potentially impacting innocent
people buying into the platform and investing time building up a base. I also
may be a bit hypersensitive given the many articles I keep encountering
regarding the United States govt and detention of citizens based on their
Facebook and Twitter comments along with my own dislike for the ways the
multinational corporations operate these days. I wouldn't say it is fear
mongering as you will find no shortage of sites and blogs with stories of
disgruntled customers. Just hope Google addresses the issues and remembers
part of what makes them a great company.

------
Tpsoc
I had my account disabled last July and went through a similar experience in
my appeal attempt. The interesting fact I pointed out to Google was that they
sent me about 80 percent of my visitors via organic search. I didn't try to
game the system or blend the ads to increase ctr or mislead consumers.

I offered to help diagnose the issue by going through server logs and anything
else to no avail.

I guess when Google is making so much money from advertisers they rather just
error on their side rather than spend time reviewing appeals.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Diagnosing an individual case probably costs them more than they make from it
in years. But not investigating individual cases could carry a cumulative cost
in terms of perception that could bring down the entire advertising ponzi
scheme.

------
tocomment
One thing that has me perplexed about Adsense. I have a site that used to get
around 400 unique visitors per day and I was making $100/month from adsense. I
haven't touched the site in years, now it gets around 1000 visitors per day
but I'm still making $100/month from adsense.

Is there some kind of cap built into Adsense, or is it just a coincidence that
the amount stayed the same.

BTW with this traffic level, is there a better ad network I could use?

------
arien
I'm still amazed at the high level of tolerance (up to the point of worship)
people give to certain hyped/trendy companies (Google, Apple, etc) versus
others that get bashed or even attacked en masse (a recent example would be
GoDaddy, Microsoft in the good ol' days).

They've been doing this for years, yet there has never been a blunt response
from their users against this policy. Same with Paypal. So they keep doing it.

I'm not asking for a boicot, simply stand on your ground and demand a decent
customer service experience, be convincing. Large corporations such as these
ones, with so large benefit at the end of each year, need to understand that
we're not sheep nor wallets with legs. We're people and we should be dealing
with people, not with some heartless bot with cookie-cutter answers.

What kind of response would you get if you treated your users the same way on
your startup? Think about it.

------
NickEubanks
I have had a similar experience of AdSense from Hell, thank GOD it is not my
source of income or it would be very bad. But essentially AdSense was unable
to access my website early on and decided to set the account to 'INACTIVE'
after repeated attempts (upwards of 10) to reach out to AdSense support and
having groups of people tweet at them (no response. ever.) They are still
completely quiet and the 'return to AdSense home' link only persists to reload
EXACTLY the same 'INACTIVE' message - perhaps the worst user experience on the
internet. It has even gone so far as I have had a Google API Billing
specialist whom I was coordinating with for some API stuff reach out to
AdSense on my behalf after learning the details of my case, and even he said
there is no hope...

------
codexon
I had the same experience with Google Adsense.

Once I started making money from it after 8 years of being under the $100
minimum payout, they disabled my account on the second payment. I received the
same reply as the person in this story.

If you are an entrepreneur, think about disrupting this field. The
competition, Adbrite and Chitika are far behind in relevance and payment.

Thankfully my site is now big enough to get into one of the more exclusive
advertising networks that don't pay a pathetically small amount. But it
disturbs me that I am banned from Adsense for life over $100 especially when I
did nothing wrong.

~~~
boofar
If you don't mind: which are those more exclusive advertising networks, and
what are the hurdles you have to take to get in? What's an average ecpm there?

~~~
codexon
The exclusive networks you can find simply by googling.

They all require a large amount of unique visitors (1 million+ per month) and
not controversial content like adult material or guns.

------
danbmil99
At what level of scale does Google modify their treatment? Obviously major
websites serve Google ads, and couldn't risk this kind of impersonal,
imperious ability to just cut you off and steal your money.

------
abhaga
Well, others seems to have been kicked out, we were simply not let in.

We applied for an account couple of years back and were declined. We went back
and forth 3-4 times and they wouldn't tell us why we can't get in or what we
need to fix. I have never used AdSense in my life, so it can't be the past
history. We rank in top 1-5 results for all relevant keywords for our
business. Was it the 302 redirect? Was it the old history of the domain name?
Was it the IP address we were hosted at? Who knows!

Thank God, our business model was not based on advertising.

------
radimm
This is so annoying. Same happened to us with AdWords account for our business
(physical goods). Only answer from Google after appeal

\- "Please do not contact us again". \- "Do not open any new accounts".

At the same time at least one of the competitors who is using dodgy practices
(not disclosing full prices, listing VAT, etc) is happily advertising for last
couple of years.

------
ralph
More discussion on Jef's G+ post.
[https://plus.google.com/114501281018969491281/posts/YM2YZfmz...](https://plus.google.com/114501281018969491281/posts/YM2YZfmzaiQ)

------
johnx123-up
Suing is the only option to get your money back...

~~~
rplnt
I'm sure that reading the license agreement would tell you otherwise. I.e.
there is no way they would make themselves liable somehow.

~~~
johnx123-up
I don't think so. My friend once told me a case where someone can sue even for
broken agreement.

------
shingen
Google is psychotic about AdSense and very hard to deal with. They make
billions from their platform, but refuse to provide even a basic level of
support. They could charge for tiered support and that would be perfectly
acceptable; take a few points off the margin for example in exchange.

It's obnoxious to make Google six figures in profit in advertising, and have
to go through message board proxies (that don't even work for Google) to get
any attention to an issue.

I used AdSense for around five years total. I found you couldn't match it up
with almost any form of social media content because a single slip of a single
word (in any language) was enough to get you in trouble with their heavy
handed censors.

------
unreal37
The appeal seemed half-hearted to me. His answers were basically "no", "no",
"no idea", "i don't know"... Maybe he doesn't really care to be reinstated.
Although he cared enough to write an article and post it to Hacker News...

~~~
zobzu
err and did you read the questions? not like if he could invent replies.

pretty obviously if he had replied _yes_ to any of those it would mean he had
been able to find out _what_ caused adsense to disable his account.

~~~
unreal37
If I were in that position, I would have done research and posted details in
the answers. "I checked my log files, and received an average of X visitors
over December, which compares to Y visitors over November. I also noticed IP
Address K was crawling my site daily and I can't determine who they are, so I
blocked their access. Perhaps that was the source of the abuse."

A little effort might have gone farther. Or who knows, maybe it would have had
no effect.

------
parfe
>Google closing AdSense accounts with no explanation

Well, the original headline here seems to be a fear-mongering fabrication
unrelated to the article.

One account was closed and the guy can't figure out why. In fact, this isn't
even new information. Google closes suspicious AdSense accounts. Is there some
conspiracy out there Google has a number generator choosing to ruin someone's
revenue source at random?

~~~
jonursenbach
How is saying that his AdSense account was closed without an explanation?
That's _exactly_ what happened.

~~~
parfe
The title explicitly says "accounts".

~~~
jonknee
Well it does say that by policy they don't tell you why you're being disabled,
so it really is "accounts".

------
yogrish
Now a days these cases have become more and more. Accounts from Pakistan and
India top the list...even genuine guys account gets disabled. Google says:
your account is "posing a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers"...as if
we are running behind his customer with a gun or knife.

