Closing The Door On Google Adsense

Back on July 27th, 2004, when I first applied to join Google Adsense, my application was denied.

Hello Michael,

Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. After reviewing your application, our program specialists have found that the website currently associated with your account does not comply with our policies. Therefore, we're unable to accept you into Google AdSense at this time.

We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below. If you are able to resolve these issues, please feel free to reply to this email for reconsideration when you have made the changes.

Issues:

– Sensitive content

———————

Further detail:

Sensitive content: Google believes strongly in freedom of expression and offers broad access to content across the web without censoring search results. At the same time, we reserve the right to exercise discretion when reviewing sites for AdSense. We've found that your website contains content that we don't allow at this time. AdSense policy doesn't currently accept sites that advocate against any individual, group, or organization. Please review our policies
(https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) for a complete list of site content not allowed on web pages.

They denied my application because they said I "advocated against individuals, groups, or organizations".

As most of you know, I love to point out people I think are morons, and companies that I feel should be boycotted. I wasn't about to change that for a few pennies a day.

In November of 2004, without changing a thing on my site. I applied again. This time I was accepted.

I get a fair amount of traffic on my site, but that traffic has never turned into clicks on my adsense ads. Never. It took from November 2004 through December 2005 just to make the first $100 with adsense. This year, I have many more hits per day, but the adsense clicks are far less than just a year ago. So imagine my surprise when I get this email yesterday:

Hello Michael,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s) through users of third-party programs paid or provided with other incentives to visit your site. Such programs may include, but are not limited to auto-surf, pay-to-surf, pay-to-read, or pay-to-click sites.

As a reminder, any method of generating invalid clicks or impressions is strictly prohibited by our Terms & Conditions and program policies:

https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_US
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US

If we continue to detect invalid clicks or impressions from these services on your ads, we may disable your account to protect our advertisers.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

My first thought was, who in the hell would be doing this, and how can I stop them? This obviously had to be a mistake, but if it wasn't I wanted to know who was doing it, so I could block them at the server level and eliminate the problem entirely.

So I responded to Google Adsense:

Is there anyway you can be more specific, so I know who to watch for, so I can block them at the server level?

I have no idea who would be doing this, and it's clear by my adsense account balance that anyone trying it is not succeeding too well.

I have heard many stories of people not getting a reply from the Adsense people, so I was even more shocked when I got the following reply this morning:

Hello,

As you know, Google treats instances of invalid click and impression activity very seriously. As a reminder, we cannot disclose any details about how our monitoring technology works or what specifics we found on your account. However, we can assure you that we have thoroughly re-reviewed your account, and have confirmed that ,strong>your account violated our program's Terms and Conditions.

For your reference, we are including some guidelines to help prevent future invalid clicks and impressions:

It is against our program policies for website publishers to click on the ads on their own web pages, or to encourage others to do so. Note that some programs including, but not limited to, auto-surf, pay-to-surf, pay-to-read, or pay-to-click services may provide incentives for generating traffic resulting in invalid clicks or impressions.

You can also find tips and guidelines for keeping your account in good standing by visiting our Help Center at https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23921.

In addition, please be sure to review and remain in compliance with our Terms and Conditions and program policies:

https://www.google.com/adsense/terms
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

Please bear in mind that we have these policies in place to help ensure the effectiveness of Google ads for our publishers as well as our advertisers. As mentioned, if we continue to detect traffic to the Google Ads that violate the Terms and Conditions and program policies, we may disable your account to protect our advertisers.

We appreciate your understanding.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

So, the bottom line is, they say there is some sort of auto-surf, pay-to-surf, pay-to-read, or pay-to-click service generating traffic to my site, and they say I am violating their terms and conditions.

At first I thought, how can I be violating their terms and conditions if someone else is using those things to hit my site? How can I stop these people from doing this? I don't want to be in constant violation of their terms and conditions. Then it hit me. It has to be Blog Explosion. As a member of Blog Explosion, I surf member sites, and in turn, other members surf my site. That has to be what's got their panties in a bind. That's the only type of service that falls into that description on my site.

After the tears of laughter stopped flowing, all I could think was, "Are they serious?" So, I decided to check my stats. Since November 1st, I have had almost 20,000 visits to my site. 64 of those have been from Blog Explosion. Three-tenths of one percent of the total visits to my site this month have been from Blog Explosion. So far this month, I have had a total of 37 clicks on my Adsense ads, bringing me to a whopping total of $2.15.

I have been a member of Blog Explosion longer than I have been running Google Adsense. Why the sudden crackdown? Has anyone else received a nastygram from them on this topic as well?

If they think my membership with Blog Explosion somehow "influenced people to click on my ads" they are crazy. Everyone knows Blog Explosion surfers stay 30 seconds and split. They are trying to generate traffic to their sites by visiting others, not clicking ads.

In the interests of disclosure, I have always used multiple ad sources on my site. For instance, at the top of the page, you will see a Yahoo! ad. On the right side, you find Text Link Ads, and in specific posts throughout the site you will find Q-Ads. And until today I have always given Google Adsense the premiere spots (and multiple ones at that) on my site. They have always appeared above and below posts on the single entry pages, and after the first post on all of the index pages.

Not anymore. I have had enough of them. My site might not garner the traffic of the "big guys", and I may not make much on ad revenue, but the one thing I do have is strong principles. If Blog Explosion was an issue, they should have just said so, but instead I got this cryptic "we cannot disclose any details about how our monitoring technology works or what specifics we found on your account" message that tells me they are just full of shit.