I am talking about AdSense accounts being banned... Remember the www.clicksettlement.com ? And you know... Google is going to have to come up with the money to give back to AdWords people so they chill and continue using the service. I believe they have to do that sometime soon, AND they have to find "black sheep" responsible for it... so... with a simple calculation - if they hit all the small fish including the ones that might not even get paid anyways... they can pony up that money from actual AdSense accounts. Now some will complain but for the most part... they will get the money to cover their asses... Now I know they have lots of money and could easily settle, but in the thing it says money will be returned to AdWords accounts from AdSense accounts. Just my conspiracy theory....
First, the settlement payment is nothing to google which is so full of cash they have been warned they have too much cash (something like 4 billion) compared to total assets. They earn this settlement amount in less than 10 days, every 10 days, 365 days a year - and they have already accounted for it on financials so it won't affect their future earnings - there is no further loss recorded when they pay it. Google would actually lose money by doing what you are suggesting. They refund the money in cancelled accounts to the advertisers (I get credits all the time) and this means google gives back their cut of the revenue, which cuts their profits. They cannot use cancelled funds to pay the settlement - which has already been paid from as far as their financials are concerned. Google has no incentive to boot advertisers other than trying to keep trust with its advertisers. Google doesn't terminate innocent accounts. It's like prison - everyone claims they didn't do it - there are no guilty people in prison.
It's like prison - everyone claims they didn't do it. <-- I like that... I hope it's true... I am about to get paid for the first time and it sounds scary.
"Google has no incentive to boot advertisers other than trying to keep trust with its advertisers. Google doesn't terminate innocent accounts. It's like prison - everyone claims they didn't do it - there are no guilty people in prison." If you have an AdSense account, I will like to hear you comments if you are banded someday. I never clicked my ads and was banded. I make plenty of money with my other projects so it is not a big loss to me. All the same it sucks to be convicted of a crime I did not commit.
When they ban accounts they return the money that has yet to be paid to publisher back effected to advertisers.
While they say that is what they do I'm sure that they consider a majority of the clicks valid and would not pay those back to the Adwords advertiser. As an adwords advertiser, even after a complaint, of over 100 invalid clickthroughs to my website(all came from the same ip over 2 week period- 7 clicks a day). I never received a refund for those clicks. If they don't even return the funds to someone who complains then why are we to believe that they would return the funds to those who don't? oh and conciseusa - I agree it does suck to be accused of something you didn't commit that is why these Innocent Bannings just don't make any sense. Just because you have a bunch of wankers visiting your site that decide to go click happy it does not mean that you were responsible. This is the internet not everyone is going to be GOOD.
I would really be curious in performing an experiment because it seems that when there are say 4 clicks from one IP I get 1 click reported. BUT they may report 4 clicks to the AdWords owners and keep the change... And just to clarify I'm basing this information off of www.asrep.com which I use... it is possible that asRep stats are off.
Hey Asen. I think we can trust Google when it comes to adsense. If adsense ever was catched cheating Google will loose all goodwill. And they cant afford that.
"While they say that is what they do I'm sure that they consider a majority of the clicks valid and would not pay those back to the Adwords advertiser." If they do not pay the money to the publisher, the money gets refunded to the advertiser. "As an adwords advertiser, even after a complaint, of over 100 invalid clickthroughs to my website(all came from the same ip over 2 week period- 7 clicks a day). I never received a refund for those clicks. If they don't even return the funds to someone who complains then why are we to believe that they would return the funds to those who don't?" Correct, google isn't going to refund money just because someone complains. Do you really expect them too? I don't know the specifics of your case, and there is always two sides to a story. Same IP does not mean the same user. - take AOL, for example. There is no doubt that some advertisers have been charged for fradulent traffic - it's also why most experienced advertisers stay away from advertising on the content network. It doesn't produce nearly the same results as Google Search or the Search Network. "oh and conciseusa - I agree it does suck to be accused of something you didn't commit that is why these Innocent Bannings just don't make any sense. Just because you have a bunch of wankers visiting your site that decide to go click happy it does not mean that you were responsible. This is the internet not everyone is going to be GOOD." Google doesn't ban an account because someone goes click happy on their site. They only do it when they believe it is connected to the owner of the site and they use various methods to do this (which I'm not going to post). This is a urban legend that was started by someone who tried to cheat the system and got caught. You can also get your account banned for the content of the site and various other TOS violations. I know quite a few people who are adsense publishers and not one has ever had a problem. I've been running it on over 50 sites for a couple of years and never had any issue with them. If someone was banned, there is a good reason behind it.
Ok I guess I'm paranoid.... BUT If we can trust them do you really think it's hard for them to develop algorithms so that the conventional 95% of the times where things are accidental get dropped? For example I'm sure every AdSense person logs in once in awhile, and Google keeps a cookie locally... They can EASILY make it so that it doesn't COUNT your clicks... it's soooooo easy to do that! Why don't they do it? Because they can use it as a reason to shut down your accounts... Accidental clicks can easily occur, why should I be paranoid when I'm just developing my site and constantly debugging it? Seriously! Why don't they have a "debug" version for it?
You make it sound like all Google want to do is to shut down your account. Dont think so... "Accidental clicks can easily occur" Not so easily man.
Lawsuit or no lawsuit each and every single adsense publisher is treading on thin ice no matter how much of an angel we all are when it comes to following the rules. I'm sure we can recite the program policies like the back of our hand but have we taken the time to read through all the lawyer jargon in Googles terms and conditions? Probably not. The main thing I get out of all this is that Google has the right to terminate you for any reason at all! What reasons? Well...besides the typical ones people violate in their policies, the rest is entirely at their discretion which they don't have to disclose. In other words its their call! Termination; Cancellation. Subject to any third party agreements You may have with other Google customers (e.g., Your Web hosting company), You may stop displaying Ads, Links, Search Boxes, or Referral Buttons on any Site in the Program with or without cause at any time by removing the Google JavaScript or similar programming from Your Sites. You may terminate this Agreement with or without cause at any time by sending written notice of your desire to cancel Your participation in the Program to . This Agreement will be deemed terminated within ten (10) business days of Google's receipt of Your notice. Google may investigate any activity that may violate this Agreement. Google may at any time, in its sole discretion, terminate all or part of the Program, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate the participation of any Site in all or part of the Program for any reason. In addition, Google reserves the right to terminate without notice any account that has not generated a sufficient number of valid clicks on Ads or Referral Buttons or valid impressions of Ads (in each case as measured by Google) for a period of two (2) months or more. Upon termination of participation of any Site in the Program or termination of this Agreement for any reason, Sections 3, 6 through 10, and 14 through 17 shall survive termination. In summary, the only thing you can do is hope they let you back in based on your follow-up emails. Why? We all agreed to the Policies and conditions when we joined (valid contract). In essense, we are all agreeing that Google can terminate us at any time. We can get mad and say f#@k Google all we want but at the end of the day, we agreed to the contract. This is exactly why diversification is key in this game.
I have developed and debugged over a hundred websites and have accidently clicked an ad once in the last 2 years (I immediately sent google an email) - mistakes happen, but it isn't something that happens easily. Google doesn't ban your account for one click, and yes they know when you do it - but what possible reason do you think google would "want" to terminate an account? They make a lot of money from publishers and 90% of adsense publishers don't even make $100 a month. If you are designing a site, take a screen shot and use the image of an adsense ad for layout. Read the adsense TOS. Don't violate the TOS or try to get away with clicking your own ads and I guarantee you will never have any problems. If you try to "steal" from advertisers by clicking your own ads or having your buddies do it, then you will eventually be caught and banned - and you won't get paid.
This is actually even more interesting: In addition, Google reserves the right to terminate without notice any account that has not generated a sufficient number of valid clicks on Ads or Referral Buttons or valid impressions of Ads (in each case as measured by Google) for a period of two (2) months or more. I guess if you are a "small fish" and don't generate enough clicks you are just wasting their servers... that now makes sense, but they could at least tell you this is the real reason.
That is pretty much a standard legal disclaimer and list of terms. Termination without cause can be found in the vast majority of ALL contracts - it limits frivolous lawsuits by taking away "cause" from a suit. If you read the TOS before you signed up, you should already know that. They aren't trying to hide anything, and in practice, google doesn't terminate active accounts, even if the revenue is very small. If you are only consistently making $1 a month, then you are wasting your time and googles - and googles pay you any outstanding money owed in that situation. If you don't like google's terms, then you can always go with another program. Google doesn't force anyone to use adsense. Other than Yahoo, the other programs are far worse.