Ripped $10,000 from Adsense account

Without a judgement in a court of law, it is irrelevant why a "company" may have decided to "close an account."

Google's assumption of the role of judge and jury seem legally questionable.

 

In a jury trial, with sympathetic plantiff, they'd lose.

That being said, why debate the legality of it - we aren't attorneys. Better to debate the morality of it.

 

I would agree - they would have to offer some level of "proof" of fraud. I honestly think (nothing more than my opinion) that Google knows this all to well is pretty dilligent about collecting sufficient evidence before they cancel an account. If they weren't, they would just be setting themselves up for a big fall at some point in the future and I can't see the corporate attorneys sitting on the sidelines waiting for that to happen.

Yea, time flies when you're having fun Nice to see you stopping by DP.

 

Okay, so Google is dilligent about collecting evidence. Let's take that for granted. But is the evidence that the person who signed up for the account is clicking the ads?

I recall way too many credible people being booted. Sure there are thousands more who are clicking their own ads. But I know people who've been booted and I know for a fact that they didn't click their own ads.

 

It's more than just clicking ads that gets people kicked. What site(s) were the ads running on? Were they "made for adsense"? Did they encourage people to click ads directly or indirectly? Were they using e-mail or other methods of communication outside of the website itself to encourage clicks? Did the site(s) have "excessive advertising"? (not asking you specifically - just tossing out some alternate reasons)

Heck, they can kick you for violating their webmaster guidlines - the most vauge set of guidlines ever created.

 

No funny stuff, GFC, and the websites were not made for Adsense. It was in the beginning, when they were booting almost everybody, about the same time they booted that famous blogger guy. She got an email saying there were fraudulent clicks on her account and they closed it with a couple grand in it.

 

....... Google knows this all to well is pretty dilligent about collecting sufficient evidence before they cancel an account......

The Google robots collect that "evidence". Now they have to prove that the software was doing a perfect job canceling people's accounts. Let's say a human canceled it....... Who is perfect?
With so many honest webmasters booted, don't you think a class action is coming in the next years if Google continues that way?
For me booting a fair player off the game is unfair busness practice. America is not a jungle...... yet.
Big and small busnesses should play by the law.

 

I'm sure they use a combination of technology and human intervention to evaluate potential fraudulent activity or other TOS violations.

 

I am pretty certain that, in most cases, a business can decide who it does and doesn't wish to do business with.

That's an important part of American freedom and has only been infringed by the legislatures and the courts in a few thousand cases.

On the other hand, the courts have also been fairly protective of people who are owed money. Google's decision to withhold funds that may be owed to Publishers whom it has decided are "bad people" is very suspect.

Without a verdict in a court of law, it seems to me that Google is walking a legally dangerous path in refusing to pay for services rendered.

Of course, they may be thinking "Hey, we have more lawyers than anyone who might sue us for this. Screw 'em!" That sort of thinking tends to work in the short term and fail fabulously in the long term.

 

I agree with that statement. Cases are usually won because you got the best lawyers. Case in point, OJ Simpson.

Anyway, adsense has added more $$ for me and many others. I do hope adsense will last.

 

I hope that PPC will last.

I hope that YPN and other competitors in the PPC field improve their services to the level where it is irrelevant whether AdSense exists or not.

 

We need more PPC companies. The same way we have different grocery stores, same should be with any kind of business.
I am not saying google is bad. Google is good, (though they may have made some mistkes, I hope they'll fix most of them). It'll be better for the society to have more competitors in the PPC field.

 

Unfortunately revenues are not only consumer but advertiser driven. More companies in the field may not help, but dilute the market and contextual levels for publishers.

 

...Or, maybe competition will drive CPC down low enough to attract advertisers who would not have signed up otherwise. I think the added competition will be a good thing.

 

competition is always good, both for publishers and for advertisers.

Google IS the leader in the PPC market, but if we're lucky there will be a few more seriously strong players soon... with better business ethics.

 

Gabriel, did they reopen your Adsense account?

 

I have heard of these cases also. I think that Google needs to do a better job at getting to the bottom of these cases instead of just banning and not speaking with its partners. What will eventually happen is that they will do this to enough people that their business will suffer. Now some of you say that this can never happen, but as someone who has been through similar situations with a fortune 500 let me tell you that it can and does. No company should get so big that it allows its employees to become so caught up in its own success that it forgets what made them successful in the first place.

As I have seen on this thread many times now there are those that support both sides. The real trick is finding the balance between both and learning what the real truth is. Even if one of Googles partners do something wrong they do at least deserve an explanation and not just silence. This borders on a company being to caught up in its own self importance. The same goes for the partners in that they have a responsibility to ask questions and read the TOS carefully so that they understand what they are getting into.

Hopefully Google comes to its senses before its to late. Also maybe new ad partners will do a better job of reading the TOS so that we do not get these threads as often.

Kevin

 

From what you guys are saying, I would just like to point out to readers, as part of the ongoing learning, that Google's theory might be that websites with traffic from adwords and adsense content in them might be the websites that are scamming the program the most.

In this sense, those websites might be leading off Google by making the fraudulent clicks on you guys, creating some sort of pyramid schemes were their sites don't get banned because they're the last ones you would think are in this. Google might just be trying to get rid of the scammers by closing accounts. Pretty scary.

 

Or maybe using AdWords to funnel users into AdSense ads is just a stupid idea to begin with.

 

That is the key right there. This seems to be a common factor with many that get banned. Allthough there are some that have legitimate claims and thus should have a reasonable explanation and even those that are terminated for other reasons should have a resonable explanation as well.

Kevin