Allright, guys. I am not entirely innocent here. However, I have never clickfrauded google or intended to do so. You've heard about adwords ads and adsense arbitrage. Basically you buy traffic at adwords and advertise your site. And then you make profit from the difference. Well, I did something similar. However, rather than using adwords, I am using sites that I paid on per month or per week basis. I figured that the more unsaturated the market the more likely I get profitable deals. Most of the time, I lost money. Once in a while, I paid way less than what I earn from Google. So I earned $3000/month, $4000--- and so on up to the peak of $9300 on December 2006. On June 2006, I thought. Wow, this is cool stuff. I shouldn't eat the cake my self. What about if I am banned? All this knowledge will go to waste. I'll use this knowledge to make business relationships. So I thought a bunch of friends. One of them is a very well known head of some big Asian associations that has generously helped me broke some deals (a multimillionaire). Now, let's all agree that none of us click on our own link. I mean. C'mon? Then that famous guy got banned. I was confused. Well, maybe that's because his blogs, which I created, was opened for so many visitors. Maybe one of the visitors click too many times. He was banned at the same day I installed feedblitz on his blog. How in the earth installing feedblitz can get your account banned? Then, my other friends got banned. I was confused as hell. One by one they're all banned. One of them put adsense ads only on one page that is not accessible to any one from the front page. She got banned too about 1 week before receiving checks. By this time, I did what's obvious. I told the remaining to tell google how they got their traffic, what their pages are, etc. Many got approval. When they asked whether they should install Adlogger, Google gave a standard reply that they do not encourage third party software or something. Still one by one of them is banned. One got banned when he changed where he advertised his site, etc. I wanted to tell Google about the problem. However, Google also likes to ban people that's related to a banned account. So I refrain from telling google that those are my friends that uses the exact same method than I am. I told them that Google pays and they should keep appealing. Can you imagine a multimilionaire being told something like that? Of course, he moves on. Many others don't give up. At that time I wanted to tell google that those are all my friends. However, I am affraid that will cause my accounts banned too. I still got my checks. I noticed that my CTR is unusually high (60%). But that's because it's the best deals after a lot of research. I tried out many pages on many different topics and many source of traffics with various different ads location. I only used the best of the best of the best. So of course, CTR is high. I notified Google about that and they reassured me that I will be paid for valid clicks and thanked me for mentioning the situation. Finally, on December 26th, there was this Taiwan Earth that cut of traffics from Asia to US. On 29th I got banned. Fortunately I got my November checks of $8300. So it's not like Google is being malicious wanting to ban me all along and wait for the right time. If it were true, they can inflict maximum damage by banning me on 25th. Unfortunately, my appeals are rejected. While my friends quickly got a reply that their appeals are rejected once they reply to the email, I didn't. My email reply to google is never replied. I already gave them my whole cpanel logs. I thought, I'll just work as consultant. I taught some friends again about Google. Some are interested. This time they install that adlogger. It turns out on the first few days some people click 10 times within less than 1 hours. That happens after adlogger is set to prohibits people from clicking more than 5 times within an hour. I don't even know how in the earth anyone can do that. Still it's insignificant compared to the 2500 clicks he's been getting for the 2 weeks. My friend quickly notified Google about this. Guess what? He's banned too. I wanted to ask your help. However, that would mean disclosing my traffic sources and I don't want competitors (perhaps if some highly reputable adsense publishers want to help). What should I have done? What should I do?
It seems to me your "traffic source" is the problem. It may be of poor quality (ex: myspace) or downright forbidden by the TOS, such as "pay to surf programs, etc".
No. It's not prohibited by TOS. We asked Google several time to ensure it and give problems. Yes the traffic source is problematic quite obviously. However, it's legitimate and it's the sort of problem that can happen to anyone. The only problem I can think of about my source of traffics are: 1. They're just too good. However, nothing strange though. Out of 3 millions visitors, 1.5% click and visit my site. That 1.5% people happen to have 60% CTR on my site. Is this strange? 2. Yea, some people clicks too many times. C'mon. This can happen to anyone. Also my accounts at google has been in good standing for months with that traffic. You can't advertise adsense in myspace?
Let me guess: It's a Myspace resource site and you "advertise" using Myspace bulletins that you send out to millions of people a day. Something like that? P.S. After teaching your "techniques" to your friends and then watching them get ban one by one, I can't believe you still kept "teaching" more people just to watch them get ban some more. I mean, dude -- seriously?
teguh123, Google usually tell the problem when they ban someone. I'm pretty sure that you've got hand on the reason they gave you, but you just don't tell us. Ok, here's what I think. 60% CTR is way too much. Because it is not natural. Anyone of you click an ad for every two pages? No one. Real human will never do that, but wait, unless your sites are MFA (made-for-adsense). Google are currently in war with MFA sites. Apart from unusually high CTR, the traffic you sent to advertisers' site don't convert. In other words, the visitors who clicked the ads acted like click bots, because most if not all of the visitors don't buy, signup, download, or visit a key page that score a conversion goal (in Adwords/Analytics). All of above point to a case of click-fraud; therefore, you and your friends were banned. Google did it in favor of advertisers who are the ones who paid you but got nothing from you.
They have banned you and you don't know why? Didn't give you a reason? I'm sure they should mention at least something like: "fraudulent clicks" or "bad traffic". You have admitted yourself you're not entirely innocent. So what Google was supposed to do? "Not entirely" ban you?
Why you get banned? As said before 60% CTR. That's why. It is IMPOSSIBLE to have this high CTR and be a "honest" publisher.
"Taiwan Earth that cut of traffics from Asia to US. On 29th I got banned" i think the reason is you bought the bad traffic from asia "rather than using adwords, I am using sites that I paid on per month or per week basis" ,and there were many invalid clicks. when you traffic was down suddenly,googler checked out you account.
The problem with this kind of traafic is that it is non-convertable traffic, at least thats how Google sees it. So, in some ways, Google will deem it to be shortachnaging the advertisers.
Interesting to read. It is strange to see that earning from google is still possible in these ways. Anyway, if you want steady income you should select the more difficult way instead of buying traffic. The equation is that simple. If you want to take risk, then you should be ready for the bad news. Good luck anyway, since you still seem to build your own content sites. If they are MFA sites, i dont want to say anythig more...
a 60% CTR means one and only one thing : MFA website .. maybe your pages were that kind of top5websites with no content but adsense on them .. and maybe people visiting your websites get pissed off and massivly attack your ads to get rid of you .... if google bans ,it bans for a good reason
Allright folks. I am not sure about what is MFA content sites. However, I always ask Google whether my sites are okay. Most of my friend ask Google first whether their sites were okay. I encouraged them to tell Google the source of their traffic, their website, etc. All Oked by Google, explicitly. As for problematic traffic. Well, the traffic is indeed problematic. Most of my friends installed adlogger now. They often reported various people clickbombing the site. We never knew it before the adlogger. The CTR is very high. I have reported this to google. I also asked Google whether they really know they're paying high for Asian's traffic. Google says that advertisers know before hand on which countries they put ads. Look, it's a pretty normal conservative ways to promote. The sites where I advertised are big sites. Some has 3 millions visitors a day. Their CTR is only 1.5%. Perhaps those 1.5% are those who like to "explore" explaining my high CTR? Also, adbrite sites also convert well on those sites though not as well as with Google. What is MFA sites? The pages have real content. Some try to sell a product. Some contains quotations. Some teach science. Good contents encourage people to visit many pages and create clicks.
I am a bit confused about your CTR numbers. Here you say that you have 3 million hits and 1.5% CTR while earlier you talked about 60% CTR. So, it is 1.5% or 60%? BTW, if you have a site that gets 3 million hits a day then you can probably monetize it in more ways than just AdSense. Getting your account banned is not the end of the world. I wish I had a site that gets that many hits!
No. 3 millions is the amount of visitors that visits my traffic source. My traffics get 10000 per day. I think I was wrong with the 60% CTR. Maybe it's 20%. I had 200 channels used. I only pay attention to the unusual ones. So yea, sometimes one of those channels track 100% more CTR in a day. I notified Google immediately. Also, I've heard you guys get paid $8 per click, etc. My sites only generated on average $.15 per click. I don't optimize on keywords. I also don't use fancy techniques like putting pictures near ads. Never worked. Basically, I just created a bunch of different websites and promote them all. Most of the time the sites don't work well. I stop promoting the bad ones and continue promoting the good ones. If you try 1000 things, chance is 1 out of 1000 things are too good to be true. That's called "normal" distribution for a reason. Look, I keep teaching others my techniques. However, I told them all that happened and the risk. They are confused why would they got banned if they don't click on their own links. So they give it a try.
You're making $9,300 a month, getting a 60%CTR, advising 6-7 friends on how to do the same and you don't know what an MFA site is? Something doesn't seem to add up. Obviously there was something that you were advising your friends to do that got them banned. My guess is bad traffic. Maybe the site that you bought traffic from was using click bot to make it look like they were actually sending you traffic?
Fact 1: Keep in mind that at that time I wasn't banned. I got a check from google. $6300, then $8000. Fact 2: I also told Google some BEST samples of my traffic source. They explicitly okayed. I told Google that traffic from those sources have high CTR. Fact 3: I am not the only adsense publishers that advertise there. There are plenty of others. Fact 4: I got explicit approval of my sites and my source. I told Google exactly how I did it. Fact 5: Google terms prohibits generating invalid clicks. I think that terms should be changed to "aggresively pursue, report, and eliminate invalid clicks". Also there is nothing in the term prohibiting people to be "related" to banned publishers. Google just ban people from being related however, it's not in the term. The word "related" is not in the term. I am not an angel. I should have told Google that those people used the same method that I did. However, I wanted to be careful when communicating with the adsense team. Also I didn't know what was the problem. At that time I still thought that it's just a misunderstanding. Maybe some of my friend click on his own link, but all 5 of them? Even one is unlikely. Maybe that's because we check one of their account from a public computer. So there are many other remote reasons why they are banned. We don't know. What I thought most likely is that the CTR is too high and Google think incorrectly. I didn't know that some assholes are clickbombing like mad. I didn't use adlogger. No body knows how to use adlogger at that time.