Google sent me a Threatening Email regarding Adsense

Hi,

I started using Adsense on my sites in April. It has slowly been increasing in revenue, and I'm making a couple hundred a month at this point. Now I'm not sure what to do about continuing to spend time improving the placement, etc.

I received the following email from Google:

"It has come to our attention that invalid clicks or impressions have
> been generated on your Google ads, posing a financial risk to our
> AdWords advertisers. We've found that users of third-party programs
> have been paid or provided with other incentives to visit your site.
> Such programs include, but are not limited to, auto-surf, pay-to-surf,
> pay-to-read, or pay-to-click sites. Please note that any method that
> artificially generates click or impressions on Google ads is strictly
> prohibited by our program policies, as such activity may artificially
> inflate an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings.
>
> We understand that you may want more information about the activity we
> detected. However, because we have a need to protect our proprietary
> detection systems, we're unable to provide our publishers with any
> details about their account activity, including any web pages, users,
> or third-party services that may have been involved. Thank you for your
> understanding.
>
> We recommend reviewing these references to learn more about invalid
> click activity and other activities that could endanger your account
> standing:
>
> https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US
> https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?rc=US&ce=1&hl=en_US
> http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=8426&hl=en_US
>
> If you need help logging the traffic on your site to determine the
> source of your visitors, we recommend trying these Google search terms:
>
> Webmaster resources
> Website tracking and logging
> Site traffic analysis
>
> In addition, because we credit advertisers for any invalid activity we
> detect, we may adjust your account earnings for any days during which
> such activity occurred.
>
> Lastly, please note that if we continue to detect invalid activity from
> these services on your Google ads, we may take further action on your
> account in order to protect our advertisers' interests, and payment may
> be withheld. Thank you for your understanding.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> The Google AdSense Team
"
Here's the thing. I have not had anything to do with any improper clicks whatsoever. It looks to me that we are totally at the mercy of google and anyone who wants to mess with this. If someone on the net decided to screw over an Adsense publisher, it wopuld be very simple to do so.

Any comments, ideas?

Best Regards,
Rusty Campbell

 

Is your site in any auto-surf scheme? PTC? Traffic exchange? That's what it sounds like they have detected, and they are usually right about these things.

 

I think it is better you use the words warn instead of threaten. how do you think ?

 

Agreed. You can be lucky you only received a "warning", many get banned right away.

Check your traffic sources. I'm pretty sure you have some "weird traffic" on your website or this wouldn't have happened. It may be bulk traffic, like it can be purchased here on DP, bot traffic, even traffic exchange programs such as entre card...

 

I never believed Google gives warnings. You are the luckiest adsense publisher i have ever seen. Many accounts are terminated instantly.

 

Google is very strict.......... So beaware about every thing..........

 

Beware of google guys,thy r very strict n tracks every disturbing thing..They have enough powers.

 

This email reminds of me the one I got for the exact same thing. I was making upwards of $500/month, then one day Google decided to ban my account and accuse me of clicking my own ads when they were genuine clicks from visitors.

 

Thank you all for your input. I did have a Trafficswarm link, so I deleted that.

 

I got same email 2 years ago. Replied them and ask the cause but the answer was the usual yadda yadda yadda. I checked all my server data, analytics data etc and send them all the infos i could gather. Till this day, no answer.

 

Trafficswarm was definitely your problem I've heard a lot about them.

 

OK so this is a warning, (google does send warnings )
but if you realized what the problem is and eliminate it
you will be OK

 

You're lucky you only got a warning.. all i see about google adsense now a days in these forums is "I've been banned".

 

to traffic you might have purchased by a third party who rewards their customers by clicking on ads.

If its from traffic check with the company to make sure they don't participate in this behavior.