I run a business and teach half-time at a local university. I am very busy -- like many others. I also have a content web site that I have run for years but have paid less and less attention to over time. Several years ago, I decided to have it generate residual income, which it's been doing nicely. It has gotten to the point that I've long stopped updating the site but continue to receive checks routinely from product sales from affiliate sites and from adsense. The content is good; the layout simple and clean; good site traffic comes with no effort; lots of inbound links point to the site; it has number one and two index listing for several keywords. Last night, I received an email from google saying that my adsense account had been closed because of one of three reasons: clicks by me on ads, my encouraging others to click, or use of a script to click. I thought it was a joke and looked at the raw headers. That's when I realized that jiminy crickets, it's real. Stunned me. I then googled and discovered tons of people to whom the same thing had happened. I feel like there's a party been going on and I'm the last to know about it. I don't understand why somebody else would click on my AdSense ads. What is the payoff to them? What's the motivator? I retrieved my raw access logs. What am I looking for? I am also more than just a bit bothered. I have been a legitimate provider of eyeballs for Google advertisers. Those advertisers received prospects, leads and hopefully sales from click-thrus from my real property. Quite frankly, I think it is quite inappropriate for Google's advertisers to not pay for the benefits that have accrued to them. I think it's reprehensible that anyone would click on links for the sheer pleasure of it although it's clear to me now that that is happening. I think it's appropriate for Google to want to protect advertisers from paying for fraudulent clicks done solely to generate revenue. But I believe that in this day-and-age Google should certainly have the means to determine which clicks are faulty and to pay legitimate, ethical sites for the service they have provided. I feel rather used by Google, at this juncture. I feel my business should have received a warning from Google so we would have been alerted to something occurring and we should have been compensated for the many legitimate prospects that we have sent the way of advertisers. How in heaven's name do we protect ourselves from the actions of others that we cannot control? How, in fact, do I know that Google is acting on the level? It appears here that all assume that Google is acting ethically. Has anyone considered that Google has simply found the means to avoid paying publishers? I, for one, would love to know the number of persons who believe that they have followed the TOS to the letter and have nevertheless had their accounts closed and payment for legitimate eyeballs cancelled.
If you have done nothing you need to write Google and substantuate your claim with your logs that show you have had nothing to do with fraudulent clicks. See yfs1's blog on subject. As a teacher you are in the position of having dissatisfied student click bomb your site or one try to help you. Hopefully you did not alert your students to fact you had a web site. That would be setting yourself up for trouble. Furthermore hopefully you never logged onto Adsense from school.
I've heard of people getting banned because their site was primarily accessed from certain school computer labs, so the same IP addresses kept showing up over and over. But it doesn't sound like that's your situation. It's weird that a problem would come up after all this time, if you haven't even been updating or promoting it.
I would look to see 1. If same IP kept hitting site over and over. 2. I would look at Adsense info and see if their was a spike in clicks on a particular day and scrutinize your logs on that day in particular. Things like that.
I cannot get into AdSense account. I am not seeing IP repeats. However, what I do see in logs are IP accesses from different addresses coming so very closely together that it gave me pause when I saw them. Here are examples of relevant info 192.251.66.254 - - [01/Mar/2006:17:11:41 -0500] 205.188.116.131 - - [01/Mar/2006:17:12:34 -0500] 205.188.117.72 - - [01/Mar/2006:17:15:50 -0500] 205.188.116.65 - - [01/Mar/2006:17:15:53 -0500] 24.136.36.44 - - [01/Mar/2006:17:17:36 -0500] 65.2.60.83 - - [01/Mar/2006:17:19:01 -0500] 139.18.2.214 - - [01/Mar/2006:17:23:31 -0500] 65.2.60.83 - - [01/Mar/2006:17:25:16 -0500] That time pattern continues. What is this?
The ip's beginning with 205 appear to belong to AOL, those of 65 Bell. I truly do not know what to think of this. Is it possible those could be legitimate? How many unique visitiors came to site on March 1? I would love to have 8 legitimate visitors to my site in less than 13 mins but there are sites where this would be normal. Anyone have advice for Sunni? I would look for hits from your school and your personal ISP. Also suggest you reread the Adsense TOS once again to be sure you were not violating them in any way.
Thanks so very much for your ideas. We use Clearwire for IP with dynamic address. Clearwire is wireless but runs on its own licensed frequency. I used WhatsmyIP.org to get my IP and ran check in access logs. Nothing unusual. One access -- which is correct -- from my IP. Nothing from UI. I am -- fortunately or unfortunately -- rather revered by students. I am one of the few with excellent evals so a student vent seems rather uncharacteristic. Yes, I'm fortunate in that we get many site visitors. In Jan 2006, site had 9340 unique visits with 10509 visits. In Feb, 10157 unique with 11389 and in March 7649 with 8642 visits. That doesn't seem terribly odd. On March 1, in answer to your question, the site had 315 visitors; the daily average is 298. Sooooo? But I continue to be troubled by how closely timed some of these visits are. I just "smell" something odd. I revisited the TOS. No, nothing violated. Heck, I haven't even been to this particular site of mine in ages. One visit by my IP address was present during last 8 weeks. Gosh, I am baffled. Google refuses to give me any information saying it is proprietary and yet they can refuse to pay you dollars you've earned. It's impossible to defend against what is not known. This is a little like sayng, "you are charged with the crime of xx and we're throwing you in jail but we won't give you any more information." I have already contacted our corporate attorney to discuss. Meanwhile, if anybody else here can offer any light on what else I can research, please do advise. Thank you kindly for the help.
i, too, could not make out anything unusual about that part of the log you posted. does the time pattern (tiny gap between two visits) happen only for a short period or been like that for a long time (several months, etc)? long time period would suggest natural traffic. since you were banned, have you emailed google? if you haven't you should tell them politely and request a reconsideration. read yfs1's blog entries. i'm sorry i can't be of more help. you seem a genuine victim, i hope you get your account back.
Is Google willing to divulge the dates of the alleged fraudulent activity? Offer them your server logs for the days they question and perhaps they can solve the puzzle. Google is very protective of their intellectual property so they will not give you any information relating to your account closure that they don't have to, but they just might offer the dates they are concerned with so you can resolve the problem through the logs.
The minute you mention 'legal' to Google you can forget your account being reinstated. It gets passed to their legal department and there it remains. I can only echo what's already been stated; send a polite request to Google for reinstatement of your account and be patient.
It's always possible a competitor (or someone with a grudge) decided to launch click bomb through a small botnet... so visits would show up from several different IPs. Just look for any abnormal patterns in visits by comparing old data to the days where the incident probably occurred. Find a good logfile parser if you don't have one already. It will help a lot. Pay close attention to mcfox's wise words. Something has gone and while it might not be your fault don't look at google as the enemy. It won't help in getting an account re-instated.
My biggest question would be why are you trying to investigate this in a public forum? And why the jump to legal action? What you should be doing is making your case with Google directly. As McFoz mentioned, if you already threatened legal action (with no intention to follow through) you might as well give up because you will not be reinstated even if you did nothing wrong. You are trying to guess why you were banned rather then just make your case to them directly.
@Sunni, Did you ever mention your site in class? You bragged that all your students loved you. If you mentioned your site in class, either in a syllabus or out loud, one of your enchanted students might think he/she is "helping you out" by clicking on your ads more than once. Perhaps as a "thank you" at the end of the semester. And if more than one student did it, and they all did it from the school computer lab, it'll show up as the same IP clicking multiple times. I believe, without knowing a thing about you except your job, that your banishment can be traced back to your school's IP. BTW, since Google didn't tell you on which day those fraudulent clicks occurred on, it's kinda pointless to pour over the logs. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I am either going blind, or I see no link to this site. Being one of the people who questions the motives of people, it could be that the site has (or had at time of google checking it) something that caused them to ban it for violation of tos...like, click my damn adsense ads because I am a teacher and I need more money so I can quit teaching. Or something to those words....lol