Picking up with (c) where you left off: (c) Ads benefiting charitable organizations and other placeholder or transparent Ads that Google may deliver; (d) Google advertisements for its own products and/or services (excluding payments based on completed Referral Events); or (e) clicks co-mingled with a significant number of invalid clicks described in (a) above, or as a result of any breach of this Agreement by You for any applicable pay period. Google reserves the right to withhold payment or charge back Your account due to any of the foregoing or any breach of this Agreement by You, pending Google's reasonable investigation of any of the foregoing or any breach of this Agreement by You, or in the event that an advertiser whose Ads are displayed in connection with Your Site(s) defaults on payment for such Ads to Google. This sentence in your quote is also significant: Notwithstanding the foregoing, Google shall not be liable for any payment based on: ......
Again, I am not disputing that part of the TOS. You do not seem to get it. I DONT GIVE A RATS ASS GOOGLE WONT LET ME PARTICIPATE IN THEIR PROGRAM. However, I do give a crap that they wont pay me what I earned. So basically they are saying all the thousands of clicks my website got , they are all invalid because they say it is.
Please note that I said "by all apearances". I'm not going to subscribe to find out what's inside and neither is Google. Stage 1 (probably automated): Google sees a large number of clicks on a new account and suspends you. Stage 2 (probably human intervention): You appeal. Google checks the site and sees what I saw. Google tells you to forget it.
Clicks in violation of the ToS for ANY publishing program is NOT earned income. It's income obtained by fraud or other ToS violation. If you are found to be in possession of illegal drugs or stolen property, or if you are found guilty of other crimes in most countries, including Canada and the US, any and all proceeds from those activities or even the car and house you used to "earn" that money can and often will be conifscated by the government.
1) it is illegal (i dont care if its in the TOS) to do that without any proof 2) they would ban my site, not my account you dont have to subscribe... you can click on 'guest'
No. Read the ToS. The burden of "proof" is on you. No. That's not how it works. If you are a fraud artist, they ban you and ALL sites you may own.
That kind of analogy is a very weak one. So basically Google is saying every one of my click is invalid right? lets say for arguments sake I did go around different cybercafe 10 hours a day clicking on my 5c ad because i have nothing better to do but I still earned money 'legally'. they will not pay me for those legal clicks? back to the drug analogy. if im found with drugs and they confiscate it, they cant confiscate money i earned LEGALLY nor can my boss not pay me for the work I have done. Even, if my contract said that I can not do drugs/sell drugs while employed by the company, they still would have to pay me for the work I have done.
burden of "proof" would be fine if they could tell me exactly what I did wrong. "invalid clicks and/or invalid impression" is not sufficient information for me to do anything. thats like saying "you stole money" and i would have to prove i did not steal money. how do you prove something you did not do. they would have to prove i stole money. so if i were to go to the police or whatever and say you stole money, you would have to prove to the court you did not steal money? do you see how stupid that sounds?
If they can identify an invalid click/s, why can't they just remove them from your payment? If the clicks are invalid because you have a huge banner saying "Click my ads" then it's a well deserved ban. If not, I feel sorry for you. I think we all know Google needs a better system perhaps one day it is something they will address. James. EDIT>> I notice that Minstrel says they were right to ban you. I believe him, he is a good judge. Not feeling so sorry for you now.
They should expect that they are on the damn internet where traffic can spike at any time for any reason. I am not contacting ANYONE ever because I send varying amounts of traffic. There are a million ways to increase / decrease traffic and your idea of how things should work is ludacris.
You accepted their TOS, right? Unless you can have a court rule that TOS illegal, you are legally bound by it. And they say they can deactivate your account for whatever reason they deem fit, so it's your problem. And they can't just ban one of your sites, what if you were indeed committing click fraud and then just went on with it on another site? Use some logic. They have a duty to their advertisers and they would neglect that duty if they anything else. And as per your "if they could tell me exactly what I did wrong", they won't and they CAN'T. If they give a guy details about how they detect click fraud, that guy can just refine his methods for generating clicks so Google can't detect it. As I said previously in a post you so conveniently ignored: Keep appealing and give them as much proof as you can. So spend your time working on that instead of crying about it here.
This is an ignorant statement. Most programs will fight tooth and nail to get peoples traffic. If Google thinks something looks funny a simple email or phonecall can clear that up easy enough. It is not the responsibility of the site owner to know what pisses google off and contact them every time the billion dollar monster might cry about whatever. Use common sense. If you pay for traffic and notice someone jump 7 million impressions what do you do? a) Ask them what's up or look into it yourself. b) Ban them and accuse them of fraud. Choosing a would be smart, b would make you an idiot. COMMON SENSE End of story.
Ok I got sick of reading this crap on page 2. All of you who think Google makes any sense in their bend over and deal with it approach is being stupid. People that make them money deserve respect and not accusations of fraud. To the OP, I would never put Adsense on my site again. Even if you forgive them for their b/s actions why would you stick up ads that make $1000 on that many views? You need to monetize better period.
You are NOT in an employee/employer relationship when you sign up for AdSense. This is a business contract that has nothing to do with being an employee. What do you think in the TOS is a violation of the law? And if you think that, why did you sign up for it?
That doesn't explain the invalid clicks e-mail, it would be a content e-mail, right? Whatever it is, 15 days and then a ban... something really popped out to Google to do that.
What about the people who pay for the advertisements AdSense publishers display on their pages (and who frequently commit click fraud taking money out of the advertisers' pockets)? Don't they also deserve some respect. The point that you and many other people seem to miss is that Google is not taking this money back and pocketing it. They are crediting the advertisers' accounts with the amount that was debited fraudulently. An excellent point. If you are an AdSense publisher, you should have read the ToS before agreeing to it. If you didn't read it, that's your fault. If you did read and agreed to it but felt it was unfair, that's also your fault.
Google screwed me over too.. I went from making $0.20 or $0.30 cents per day to making $12 - $20 a day.. to making $20 - $30 a day.. within 2 weeks. On the 14th day, I made $80, and they promptly banned me. I emailed IP and stats data from the past 4 months of my site.. and it didnt do a damn thing. Google ethical? Yeah.. right. "Do no evil" is the biggest joke I've heard google tell. Then... to add insult to injury, they snapped up two of my domains (one with google related info, one non google related)
Yeah, right. Look, Google has no interest and gains nothing from banning legitimate webmasters. If they DO detect an unnatural click pattern and you provide PROOF that there is/was a rational explanation, you will be reinstated. So bring out the PROOF. Oh, yeah. I forgot. You did that and Google didn't believe it. I wonder why not?