Just been reading the other thread about getting "The Google Warning email", so I decided to check my emails, and funnily enough, I also had one from Adsense. Mine though, was not a warning about invalid clicks, etc, but one suggesting that I monitor pages of my sites where I use adsense, which have user-generated content. Weirldy enough, non of my sites has anything at all like that. The only one that I could say has some sort of user generated content is a video site I have which embeds a selection of videos from Youtube, etc. The email carries on and says ... Below are a couple of tips that may help you monitor your networkfor policy violations: 1. Perform a human evaluation of each site before placing ad codeon the site's pages. 2. Proactively review pages with high page views at least once aweek. 3. Install keywords filters (e.g. adult content, pay-to services,hacking content, gambling content, etc.), especially on pagescontaining user-generated content. Although we're unable toprovide information on "keyword filtering" or "content filtering",you may wish to search for this information on Google. 4. Add a 'Report a violation' link to all pages withuser-generated content. Just wondering if this was an email that was sent out to everyone, or I am just one of the "lucky" ones who has received it ? Thanks Alex
Hi mate, I got that one too, I dont have user generated content either. I notice it suggests searching google for certain search terms.. hmm I personally cant remember the last time I received an email from adsense, does anyone know how adsense generaly address you in these emails i.e hello or hello Craig or Dear Craig BlaBlaBla Regardless of the genuineness of the email I'm reviewing my sites anyway
Thanks for the reply Caricky - at least it wasnt just me who received it. Still got no idea what they mean when they say I have lots of sites with user generated content. 99.99% of all the content on my websites is my own !! Alex
Could this be that someone used your publisher id on a spam website for the purpose of destroying your adsense account? If I were you, I would have enabled the option to show adsense only on my websites in adsense account. cheers.
Baumann93 - thanks very much for that suggestion. I didn't realise that this feature was actually available. Thanks Alex
the funny part is that I used this feature for some time and then got it disabled.. why? well, I added a new site to my adsense account and did some promotion and was very shocked/pissed to see 0 earnings after around 20,000 page impressions registered by google adsense. So, I emailed Google asking if the new domain I put the site on was previously blocked by Google. Guess what.. Google did not answer, instead they pointed out that there were some invalid click activity on my sites LOL. Fortunately, I remembered about this feature and disabled it since I am adding quite a few sites and do not want to face the same problem I faced with the above site. Good luck.
That sucks; what a waste of 20,000 impressions and god knows how many clicks. I use that feature, too. Just gives me piece of mind knowing I won't be banned by someone using my pub ID.
I've read a number of threads regarding this. One way to verify it it is legit is to check the E-mail headers for the originating IP. You can check the originating IP at arin.net and that will tell you who owns that IP address. My gut tells me the E-mail was sent through a proxy, but I could be wrong. Chances are someone holds one the top three positions in Google for "keyword filtering" or "content filtering." Nice little scam to avoid getting their host shutdown. Anyway, how many webmasters would really report this as spam for fear it was legitimate?