Not banned, but had money deducted

[weeman212]

Just got this email from google:

Hello Ryan,

Thank you for your email.

As you know, we recently completed an investigation into invalid click
activity that we detected on your account. Based on the findings of our
investigation, we've deducted $1,233.46 from your account earnings. This
amount represents the earnings previously credited to your account from
invalid clicks, and the deduction of these earnings will be reflected in
your next scheduled payment.

In addition, because the amount of this deduction may exceed your April
earnings, we've placed your account on payment hold for this pay period.
Any outstanding earnings will roll over to the following month, so you'll
be paid out in accordance with our normal payment cycle.

Lastly, I understand that you may want more information about the invalid
activity we found on your account. However, because we have a need to
protect our detection systems, we're unable to provide our publishers with
any details about their account activity. We appreciate your
understanding.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

I think I've read that right. Looks like they are taking all my March earnings back.

So maybe I am lucky I am not banned, but are they saying all that money was from invalid clicks.

It was from proxies BTW. I hate these people who try and sabotage my efforts.

$1200 is a rather large sum of money for me.

I doubt anybody has an idea how I can make this situation any better for myself?

Honestly, just be greatful they took the money instead of banning the account. Seems no many other people were are lucky as you.

[8everything]

You are lucky not to have been banned.. but that is a large sum of money. Are you going to continue adsense w/ proxies? I'm hearing bad things about it now (with the use of adsense)

[weeman212]

Originally Posted by Fka200

Honestly, just be greatful they took the money instead of banning the account. Seems no many other people were are lucky as you.

Google shouldn't be this powerful and feared so much. That's like getting beaten up on the street and the police saying, "Be greatful he didn't kill you" and then doing nothing about it.

I am going to respond to them, I'm not just going to take this, but I want some ideas from your guys of what I could say.

Did you have any suspicious activity? I'd assume that not ALL of them were invalid clicks. If not, send them your logs.

[Volvospeed]

Originally Posted by weeman212

I am going to respond to them, I'm not just going to take this, but I want some ideas from your guys of what I could say.

[csite]

are you sure its not a fake email? it seems strange for google to goto such length instead of a simple ban and ask questions later which is what they usually do!

I would have though if anyone had that much fake clicks would have been banned, i know people who got about $50 fake clicks which isn't even their fault banned!

[trafficfacts]

Well i hope my case is not as bad as yours but come on, the full earning cannot be fraudulent clicks, but if i were to sail in you boat I would be glad that I at least got the opportunity to retain my adsense account...

I for one am still waiting to hear from them, have sent them a few mails, its sad that I had even reported some invalid activity to them a few days before my account payments were put on hold.

Were you running a proxy... well if you were i had done some research to the possible problems in my case and in case of a few other which you can checkout and take precautionary methods.

I have a post in the following link:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showp...9&postcount=44

check it out... and dont fret over last month, i'm sure its a good opportunity to close the loops and make sure this does not happen again... and if its of any condolence I will most probably be in the same boat as you or even worse get banned.

Cheers!!!

[weeman212]

Originally Posted by csite

are you sure its not a fake email? it seems strange for google to goto such length instead of a simple ban and ask questions later which is what they usually do!

I would have though if anyone had that much fake clicks would have been banned, i know people who got about $50 fake clicks which isn't even their fault banned!

No it's not a fake email. It's a response to an email I sent. I don't know why they decided not to ban me however.

[rcj662]

I am surprised they did not ban the site. Think of it as being very lucky they did not bann you all together.

The money lost hurts but you still have chance to make more.

[Zerosleep]

* Cough *
Thats a huge money they have deducted, but anyways they dint ban your account , you should be grateful about that

[pozer]

Looks like poeple are sometimes having problems with porxy sites.

I love Google because lately we are seeing more and more examples where they are not banning people

[bigrollerdave]

Invalid clicks just means an advertiser got mad and told google they are going to stop advertising with them and google was like hmm lets go get their money back. I don't see how you can have that many invalid clicks. Depending on your site that would require like 30,000+ invalid clicks? Something seems fishy here and I would fight it. Worst thing that happens is they ban you. You worked for that money though and it should be yours. Unless you clicked your own ads I think it's wrong of google to take it.

[jdR!pper]

I'm surprised that you're taking this pretty easy. $1200 is a huge amount of money. Are you aware of these invalid clicks?

--Joe

[weeman212]

Originally Posted by bigrollerdave

Invalid clicks just means an advertiser got mad and told google they are going to stop advertising with them and google was like hmm lets go get their money back. I don't see how you can have that many invalid clicks. Depending on your site that would require like 30,000+ invalid clicks? Something seems fishy here and I would fight it. Worst thing that happens is they ban you. You worked for that money though and it should be yours. Unless you clicked your own ads I think it's wrong of google to take it.

They didn't decide I had that many invalid clicks. They just cancelled the whole month, which is a joke, because I am sure my whole month wasn't made up of invalid clicks.

Originally Posted by jdR!pper

I'm surprised that you're taking this pretty easy. $1200 is a huge amount of money. Are you aware of these invalid clicks?

--Joe

I'm not taking this easy, everybody else is telling me to. I'm sure they would have a different opinion if it was their money.

I posted this thread to try and get some help on how to improve this situation with Google. I may be 'lucky' in some people's eyes, but I still want to respond with something that may help my situation.

[weeman212]

Actually looking at my revenue and the email again, I only earned $1,189.11 in March. This means they have fined me over $1200 for invalid clicks, which is around about 5500 of about 5500 clicks.

How the hell were all those clicks invalid??

This is nuts...

[paulocon]

Have to say, AdSense is something I put onto a couple of sites I had as something of an afterthought - it was simple and free to implement and it makes me a few extra bob each month.

However, the more stories I hear of people being banned (effectively a complete ban) or getting money deducted, in both cases without explaination - the more sceptical I get of the whole process.

I think it's fair to say that quite a lot of people put in a lot of work to improve their earnings from the program and there is something addictive in watching and compqring figures week on week.

I have more and more reservations on the way the company do business. I appreciate that click-fraud is a big problem but I find the company's approach to it's publishers (who are making it a lot of money) quite heavy-handed to say the least.

To have your complete monthly earnings wiped out with barely an explaination is unbelievable and I find it says a lot about the company that some people come out and say 'Be thankful you weren't banned'.

Personally, I'm not inclined to put a whole lot of work into AdSense in the knowledge that I could be banned if:
- one of my mates thought it would be fun to click on my ads
- one of my competitors thought it would be fun to click on my ads
etc...

I think that long-term, this is something that the company needs to address and I think given the tools and analysis they have (perhaps the best out there), they should be more pro-active in proving and filtering click-fraud.

Now, I could be getting the complete wrong end of the stick here and those people getting banned may indeed by the creators of their own downfall but the way things are, I see it as something of a case of guilty without proof...

[bacanze]

Originally Posted by weeman212

Google shouldn't be this powerful and feared so much. That's like getting beaten up on the street and the police saying, "Be greatful he didn't kill you" and then doing nothing about it.

I am going to respond to them, I'm not just going to take this, but I want some ideas from your guys of what I could say.

Ask for prove, I would, and sorry you lost so much

[stugs]

Will you continue to run proxies? As you know from another forum I received the same email only for a slightly lower $750 =/

Google's email seemed to leave it open to continue to operate the sites and that it was simply an invalid click issue.

I've cut my sites way back. I only had a ~2% click rate which I'm amazed resulted in so many invalid clicks.

[weeman212]

Originally Posted by stugs

Will you continue to run proxies? As you know from another forum I received the same email only for a slightly lower $750 =/

Google's email seemed to leave it open to continue to operate the sites and that it was simply an invalid click issue.

I've cut my sites way back. I only had a ~2% click rate which I'm amazed resulted in so many invalid clicks.

I am not quiting proxies. Some jealous idiot with click happy bots isn't going to push me out of this business. They want us to give up, but I'm not going to give them what they want, they already have enough power.