I applied to and was accepted by Google to place their ads on this website the middle of December, 2005. I only put one ad on one page to see how it worked. After two weeks I put a couple more and about the third week of January I put several more. I hadn't even had time to see how they were doing yet when I received a letter from Google telling me my account had been terminated. This is a copy of the letter I and others received. I have kept the letter in case anyone wants to see it.
From: "Google AdSense"
Hello Bill Switzer,
It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.
A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including
- a publisher on his own web pages
Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms
https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_US
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
_______________________________________________________________________
When we received this letter we had no idea what they were talking about. We follow the rules, we have never
tried to get anyone to click on the ads - as anyone well knows who has visited this site we do not have an email
list to spam people and ask for clicks etc. The last time we checked our account, two days previous to this letter
we had made a whopping $.18. Not $1,800.00. EIGHTEEN CENTS. We do not click on our own links. We do not have
software to click on it for us. Nor did we change their code in any way, it was copied and pasted as they created it.
Blogs and forums are out there with people confused and wondering why
their account was disabled. I found out we are not the only ones mystified by them. And the really bad thing
is that most of the people whose accounts were stopped never
got them reinstated, many of them never even received an answer from GOOGLE.
I wonder if the people whose advertisements were shown on my website would like to know that they no longer have the
chance to advertise here any longer due to a situation that was not of our making. The website owners aren't
the only ones who will get hurt by this practice. We are going to avoid any Google Ads from here on out. Why would
we want to click on an ad that will not give credit to anyone? If we really want to go to a website we will mouseover and get the URL from the task bar
and write it in ourselves.
AN UPDATE: another person I know who had gotten this same letter was graciously granted Google's permission
to appeal this decision as were we. We both told them to take a flying leap, so to speak. Since then I have
found that they aren't doing so well, their stock is falling and is it any wonder? Some people dig their own hole.
Here's a funny thing. Another person I know who got this letter has a little but informative website and had put a few Google ads on it. She works in a
huge building that has a lot of computers all networked together. This, of course, would mean they all have the same
IP address. A lot of them visited her website and clicked on the ads and Google said that is why they terminated
her account, because all the clicks were coming from the same IP address, making it look like she was clicking on
her own links. When she told her coworkers what they did they returned to the places they had visited and canceled
any orders they had made. But the best thing is, they wrote the companies and told them WHY they were canceling. Google
was contacted by several of the companies who were mad because those orders had totalled to over $800. Google
had lost those sales for their own clients.
To: Bill Switzer
Cc: "Google AdSense"
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 1:25 PM
Subject: *Google AdSense Account Disabled
but not limited to clicks generated by:
- a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads
- automated clicking programs or any other deceptive software
- a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the
layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason
and Conditions and program polices, which can be viewed at:
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US
Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further
participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment. The
earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected
advertisers.