Eric has a helpful post on ensuring you don’t get banned from AdSense and advises publishers to take the initiative with AdSense if anything abnormal is happening on their blog that might impact their account:
‘It’s your job as an AdSense publisher to keep your nose clean. Keeping your nose clean means:
* If you notice suspicious clicks, report it.
* If you accidentally click your own ads (it happens), report it.
* If your site is suddenly featured on Slashdot, Digg, or some other high-traffic site, report it.
* If you know something (press release, review, etc.) is going to send a lot of traffic your way, report it.
* If you’re in doubt about anything, report it.’
I would definitely agree with the first two and the last one but am not so sure about sudden increases in traffic. From my experience with AdSense they are pretty good at working out where your traffic comes from and if it’s a valid or invalid source. I guess to be safe you could shoot them an email but I know that I never have when I’ve been Dugg or Slashdotted and haven’t been questioned by AdSense.
Ultimately the way not to get banned from AdSense is to following the following tips from Google (the bold is their words, the rest is my comments):
- Don’t click on your own Google ads – I suspect this is the most common reason people are banned. You can’t click your own ads for any reason. If you want to see where an ad leads to type in the URL from the ad or use the AdSense Preview tool (if you’re an IE user)
- Don’t ask others to click on Google ads – I regularly see people doing this – especially when they first put ads on their blogs. Be very careful about what you do say about your ads. Sometimes even an indirect comment or a ‘hint’ can be construed as encouraging people to click ads – it’s just not worth it.
- Don’t employ pop-up prompts or automatic software installations – I’ve been interested to see a number of publishers doing this lately by putting pop ups with ads in them on their pages or putting popups directly next to ads to draw the eye to them. Neither method is within the AdSense TOS.
- Be aware of how your site is promoted – Another reason I’ve seen publishers banned for is sending traffic to their site that is not ‘good’ traffic. Paid to surf programs are one example of bad traffic which you can get in trouble for. These days Google has impression based ads as well as CPC ones and if you’re driving thousands of visitors to a site that is not legitimate traffic you’ll get in trouble. When in doubt about whether to go with a traffic generating system you should check with AdSense first.
- Don’t place Google ads on sites that contain prohibited content – Family friendly content is the way AdSense likes to go. This means you can’t put ads on gambling sites, sites with adult content or with profanity (to name just a few things they prohibit). Get a full list of what you should avoid in their policies.
- Respect Google trademarks – Google writes – ‘Framing or mimicking Google pages is strictly prohibited by our Guidelines for Use of Google Brand Features.’
- Don’t tamper with the AdSense code – Unless you have permission you shouldn’t change the core AdSense code. Some publishers have agreements with Google to do this but if you’re a normal publisher you are not allowed to make such changes. Again – if in doubt contact the AdSense team.
- Provide a positive user experience – Again Google puts it best – ‘Sites that contain excessive pop-ups, use sneaky redirects to obtain traffic, or otherwise attempt to interfere with normal web navigation aren’t permitted in the AdSense network.’
- Provide a good environment for advertisers – AdSense juggles the expectations and value it offers to three groups – ‘publishers’, ‘viewers of ads’ and ‘advertisers’. As publishers we tend to lose site of the rest of the equation, especially the advertisers – but ultimately unless they are getting value for money they won’t advertise and the whole system falls down. In short Google will ban you if they feel you’re doing anything to trick your readers into clicking ads (ie ripping off advertisers).
- Be responsive – If AdSense tells you to jump – you say ‘how high?’ If you get an email from AdSense it’s important to reply (if they ask for a response) and to comply with what they ask you to do (or to politely explain your situation. I find that in most of my interactions with the AdSense team that they genuinely want you to do well as a publisher as it means that they do well also. While you might sometimes feel like you’re talking to a machine (their stock standard emails can be annoying) if you persist in emailing them you generally end up talking to a human and find that they are willing to listen and help you find a solution to any issues you’re having.
As Eric writes – when in doubt – ask. This is worth keeping in mind whether you’re wondering whether a traffic source is going to get you in trouble through to if you wonder if an ad position could be considered bad. I find that when you ask they will generally come back within a day or two with an answer and never respond with ‘you’re banned’. If you take the initiative to ask and they come back with a ‘no you can’t do that’ that they give you a chance to fix things before banning you.
Of course this is just my experience with AdSense. I’m certain that this post will attract stories of people being banned who disagree with me and don’t know why they’ve been kicked out – but in most cases the above works.
I still see lots of people with
“please visit our sponsor”
“support out site by visiting our sponsors”
Right above their adsense ads.
A lot seem to be new sites with small traffic, but have also recently seen some PR 5+ ones
yes – this is a common mistake and it should be noted that the only two labels that you’re allowed to use (according to AdSense) are:
“sponsored links” or “advertisements”
Otherwise leave them blank and don’t put any heading above, below or beside them.
I just recently had an odd experience with them. I recieved an email from them stating I had a post that was telling people to click on their ads. I went to the post and saw that what I had done was to provide directions for getting to a New Balance (shoe company) and clicking on an ad that I objected to. It wasn’t a google ad at all. It was a commercial.
I responded with the explanation but then realized I could edit the post to get rid of that language while, at the same time, providing those instructions.
The adsense team noticed the change (i hear God knows everything) and thanked me while at the same time recognizing their over-zelousness.
But it made me wonder if their first hit on sites is a bot that looks for language – while the second interaction is more human?
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work as simple as the article states, I had quite a different experience. If you are small publisher (i.e. get brought down. Which has happened in my case, when someone went wild and started clicking on my site. AdSense just emailed me to mention that my account is disabled (while they have continued to serve ads on my site!), when I’ve tried to figure out what’s wrong and explained that I didn’t do anything, they just re-iterated that my account was gone. After spending hours online, I’ve learned from a few sites, that you need to plead guilty and then they may reconsider, I did and they have restored my account. But why should I plead guilty, when I’m not?
Moreover how do you deal with situtations where you have more than one person sitting on the same IP? How can you prevent those people from clicking on links on your site – you can’t! I’ve suggested to google a very simple solution – just discount those clicks coming from account owner IPs (they know what they are since you log from them to check how much did you make). That case nobody gets hurt and no accounts need to get closed, no time needs to be wasted on both sides of the bridge, and you should be able to click on your own ads – and why not? If I see something that I like, why do I have to remember that I’m prohibited to click? I’ve had no reply from the AdSense team about my suggestion.
Further, while we shouldn’t encourage our visitors to click, the visitors should know better and reward the content providers, so they won’t need to push ads into your face. As I explain in the my article visitors must do a responsible clicking. The difference in my proposal is that they need to look for ads, and click on those that they think are interesting to them and not just any. you can find the rest of the details in that article.
When I start earning bucks out of adsense, everybody will get jealous and they will start clicking my ads repeatedly and Adsense will disable my account.
Now is there a solution for this problem ?
“The adsense team noticed the change (i hear God knows everything)” Quoted from Mark.. This scenario is true and proven (they do visit publishers’ sites from time to time), they’re just doing it to protect their interests and adsense code from being tempered with. And that’s my humble opinion…
Thilak..
Dont worry, as Google will check out where their from (the corresponding IP associated) and match it with your IP from the time you’ve signed up with adsense, and they also will make necessary “adjustment” in your account should any invalid click detected.
[…] Today I read an interesting post at Problogger with the title “How not to get banned from AdSense“. I agree to all of the information, but the big problem with AdSense is that if you get banned, they will not explain to you why you were banned. And you will not get any warnings like, if you do this again, you will get banned. […]
Thilak – as Jim says – I’ve never heard of anyone being banned for that – AdSense track what goes on and in most cases seem to get it right.
I am just starting with adsense, nad I heard a lot of people get banned, I hope I will avoid that.
It’s really strange that you got to plaid guilty.
I just wanted to share my experience,
I learned the hard way, Google does get it right, they know what they are doing and you can’t fool them. I started 2 websites as a hobby and simply to educate myself on bulding sites. When I finished them I wanted to get traffic to the sites and joined a couple traffic exchanges, and after awhile i forgot about these exchange sites I joined. Then I discovered googles adsense and starting using them on my sites, I wasn’t making much money from them but it was still a nice earning every couple of months I got a small check of just over $100.
I then got the email from google about invalid clicks, I had no idea where they were coming from and replied to them stating so and they replied with a simple warning again. Not even thinking about those exchanges that I had joined months earlier I carried on ussual, heres where I screwed up, those darn exchanges I joined well I had built a downline, so i had users under my generating credits for my site and as a result my sites were still being viewed from those traffic exchanges.
Then came the bye bye so long email from Google, I was permantly disabled by google.
My appeal didn’t help my case, google was right and I couldn’t do a thing about it. My advice is simple:
Google is the best way to earn from your site
Google protects their advertiserers, AS THEY SHOULD
Google does get it right 99.9% of the time, nothing in this world is perfect.
Follow the rules and you have nothing to worry about.
Googles guidelines and rules are fair and justified
In my case, google gave me 2 warnings about invalid clicks, so, yes they were more than fair, I was just too stupid to figure out sooner rather than later where these invalid clicks came from.
I know have a few blogs and those same 2 websites that are finally finished and page ranked between 3 and 5 from google that recieve decent traffic and the sad thing is, this should have been when I started using google not when I did.
Just wanted to point that I have helped a couple of my readers in the past recover from being suspended or terminated from AdSense. I don’t mean I went and pleaded their case with Google, I just gave them advice on how to help Google understand the situation. Yes, you CAN get your account “unterminated” if you can prove to Google that you weren’t the cause (directly or indirectly) of the click fraud.
[…] อ่านเจอจาก Problogger เห็นว่าน่าสนใจ เลยเอามาแปลให้คร่าว ๆ ครับ ถ้าใครติด Google Adsense ในเว็บหรือบล็อกของคุณอยู่ ลองพิจารณาหัวข้อเหล่านี้ครับ ทำตามนี้จะปลอดภัยจากการถูกแบนโดยทีมงาน Google ได้ครับ […]
There is a lot of “mythology” out there about Google and AdSense. Thanks for helping clear up some of that.
Again, this points to why AdSense is an unreliable revenue source for bloggers: it’s simply too easy to end up banned.
After having AdSense on my site since September 2004, a few weeks ago I got my first slap on the wrist for a post from May 2005 where Google thought I was trolling for clicks in my RSS feeds. Catch is, I don’t have Adsense in my RSS feed. I was only talking about the fact that Google added the technology.
But I instinctively took the “thank you sir, may I have another?” approach and 1. immediately took the page down (so not worth it for a 1+ year old entry) and 2. wrote a polite and apologetic reply explaining that it was never my intention to go against Google TOS and even though I do not have Adsense on my RSS feed, I removed the entry. They replied with a nice thank-you. And that was that.
Quoted from Brian “Again, this points to why AdSense is an unreliable revenue source for bloggers: it’s simply too easy to end up banned.”
Adsense is 100% reliable when:
i. Adsense’s Publisher(s) followed all TOS setforth by Google, accordingly. *Read Terms of Services.
ii. Not to be involves nor initiates “heavy” website(s) promotions in some traffic exchanges services, newsgroup etc (to minimize “adsense bans” risks or any other web promotional activities that might or could led to such risks – Again, read the Terms of Services powered by Google). A “low profiles” a site(s) remains, the less risks it will faced (this depends on your own interpretations). *Read Terms of Services.
iii. A Publisher does not click his/her own ads – “accidentaly” or not “accidently”. (Most important above all else.). Simple and avoidable risks. *Read Terms of Services.
iv. Keep on emailing Google Team about any “suspected – invalid” Adsense Clicks or any sudden spikes in Adsense that led by a click(s). Provides your Awtats, Webalizers complete info – Such as, Known IPs or Unresolved IPs as “backup”/”supportive” evidences.
Busted Myths: Google Team are Friendly and Responsive. – Allow 3 or 4 – 5 (max) days for response. They goes by “e-mail answering rounds”, I assumed. Also one must understand, they are more Publishers vs Google Adsense Team members. Just be patient, you’ll get your round(s). – Tested by me and Proven.
From there onwards, Google Adsense Team knows what to do. It’s better to lose few cents or dollars due to “monetary adjustments” rather than to face imminent risk(s) such as “total account closure” due to click fraud activities.
In short, just play by the rules. You will be safe no matter what “external risks or factors” you may face in any distant future regarding Adsense account “life longetivity”. Make this long story short, Google Knows as long their Adsense code is there. *Read Terms of Services.
You don’t have to report everything to Google because they know everything. The system is like statcounter which monitors visitors: where they came from, which country, IP, OS, screen resolution, and in my own opinion , I think they detect hardware information so even though you erased all your tracks, they can still detect which clicks are valid and which are yours.
Found another list of adsense mistakes.
I just got my account canceled for anon reasons, and have appealed the decision. I wish I had seen this post before I started running adsense.
I have gotten a lot of sudden increases in traffic and Google has never had a problem with it on my site.
Thanks Darren! I’m one of those PR 6 sites that didn’t have the best label on my ads (corrected now!) but I’m wondering about notifying Adsense when you get traffic spikes.
Last week I had a frontpage Digg story (and tons of traffic) but it never occurred to me that I would need to email them about this. Where is that listed in the terms + conditions? I couldn’t find it.
Is this really necessary? Wouldn’t they see the referrer was digg.com and figure it out?
The “don’t click on your own ads” prohibition is EXTREMELY annoying.
First, sometimes I WANT to click on an ad I see on my own site. I don’t care about the Adsense income; I’m interested in the product. For now, I have to right click, cut the url out, determine the real url, and go to that. Annoying.
Secondly, sometimes I click accidentally, either not realizing it is my site or just rocketing the mouse around too quickly. It happens – not often, but it happens. In the past, I’ve been a good boy and reported it and have always gotten back the same preachy response telling me what an awful thing I’ve done. Yeah, right: I get thousands of legitimate clicks a month but a couple of accidental clicks a year are going to destroy the world. Sheesh. A little reality check here, Google.
Google KNOWS my IP. I’m logged into Gmail. Analytics and Adsense every day. They could easily just throw away any clicks and dispense with this nonsense.
This is all good advice. I certainly think that Adsense should be respected as a money-making tool, rather than exploited – though I know seeing the dollars come in it can be tough. However, if everyone sticks to the rules we’ll all have a better environment for online marketing.
Ha, nice comment on his tips. I rushed back here because a story on a blog is getting major publicity.
But I think Google might know what’s going on when my extra 1,000 visitors are coming from Google search. ;-)
I find it odd that a traffic slump was restored last month, but earnings were the same as the prior, very weak, month. Any thoughts?
When I first read the tip for e-mailing Google when I accidentally click an ad, I suddenly clicked on white space in my site—oh! No! NOT white space! Adsense!
I readjusted my layout a bit so there would be less white space, but Adsense has very clickable white space in itself. So when I wrote, I also explained that, and suggested that this abundant white space is a problem. Now that I read this about Google, I got nervous at first, but I remember how friendly they were.
(But what happens if two clicks occur near each other? Will e-mailing both times only help?)
Still, Stas, I’d be nervous to publish your article on clicking ads and even clicking so frequently on those sites you like. I think that’s unusually high responsiveness.
I tend to avoid the ads, knowing what they are, unless it’s a site I strongly favor. I never look for them, but sometimes do notice them.
Mauro, I don’t see how traffic exchanges could cause invalid clicks, but it could effect the impression-based ads.
I once read that people could check URLs for filtering purposes by copying the URL. Then I noticed it wasn’t the real URL. I did this many, many times before then, though, and never got in trouble, so I don’t think it counts for payment. They didn’t even have the IE toolbar until recently. Although now I always just switch to IE to check every time I have those annoying unrelated ads.
(It’s so annoying that 5 days after a post, all the main ads are about key words that aren’t related, but were in the post (and misinterpreted). MAYBE when the post is on top. Oh sigh.)
Since I pay more attention to ads on my own site, I too often want to click, but now we have that new IE toolbar. (I even sent an e-mail suggesting they make one for Firefox, they were appreciative.)
Wow, this post sure has attracted a lot of comments from (G)(g)oogly-eyed visitors.
Guess what? Google is not all-knowing. They make a best effort against click fraud, but the entire infrastructure of the Internet was not set up to defend against this sort of thing. If you think their system is flawless, you’re hopelessly deluded (or just nontechnical).
Bottom line is that Google profits from click fraud. Their growth is spurred by click fraud. It’s not in their interest to reveal their click fraud percentage, as that would lower their revenue and drive away customers. Google’s entire super secretive NSA-type PR strategy is driven by the fact that they don’t want people to know their entire revenue model is built on a “pretty good, not great” ad system.
I’m continually dumbfounded by how much faith people put in Big Brother. Get a clue.
Sometimes I see interesting ads in some of our sites and have to resist the temptation to click. Just mouse-over the URL and type it into the navigation bar the long way. You guys should try it sometimes…. feels good afterwards :)
After 3 years of Adsense use I had started to finally make a little money (we are talking pocket change). Then I got banned and I can not for the life of me find the problem. I don’t click my own ads, I don’t ask others to click, I tried to follow the TOS to the letter.
I looked and looked in the threads and I see people say the contested the ban, got reinstated, etc. But I cant see who to write to. I did reply to the form letter I got telling me I was banned but there is nothing in the email saying I can contact them at all.
So I guess what I’m asking, Who do I contact? Where can I find information to contest my banishment from Adsense?
eh, I answered my own question..
http://tinyurl.com/eceuk
I wonder why google has such a strict policy (for example: you cannot make referrals text link without the JS, and you cannot put more than one adsense referral on one page. Why? I have no idea)
I agree with pcunix – I ALSO want to click my ads, and now I have to copy & paste the links. That’s simply annoying. To prevent accidental click or fraud scheme, I think there should be these options:
1) Disable clicks from certain IP (the one you use for google account) – that would be relatively easy to do.
2) Let authors to ban certain IPs (to avoid fraud) and automatically remove the revenue generated from these IPs.
Please,tell me…
Are adsense traffic exchange sites like :
http://www.adsense-xchange.com
http://adsurfplus.com
http://www.mutualhits.com
can make my account get suspended by Google ???
and are Autosurf Traffic exchange disallowed by adsense ??
They are definately risky. I’ve written a little about these types of programs here.
Darren,
I have read the same advice in one of the adsense forums. Last week, I was surprised when I found out that one of my websites has CTR above normal (it was 80%). I quickly emailed google and reported it. Here is the reply:
“Thanks for letting us know about this situation. I understand that you’re
concerned about the recent activity you’ve noticed on your site.
Unfortunately, due to the proprietary nature of our technology, we’re not
able to disclose any specific details about the clicks on the Google ads
on your site. I can assure you, however, that we’ve noted your input and
we’ll continue to monitor your situation closely.”
Just want to share an experience.
all tips are ok and helpfull but unfortunatelly anyone can take my (or yours) code and put it on any site.
What I (as a publisher) can do to prevent my AdSense code? – nothing!
Recently I’ve got a warning message from Google with info, that my ads were on porno site.
In fact none of my adsense ads shouldn’t be displayed on not my pages, but unfortunatelly I’m not able to ask bad guys “Please do not take my adsense ad code, please do not put it on porno site”.
It’s stupid, but I do really afraid of being suspended for someone doing something completely out of my control!!!
The only way I can really protect myself is to remove all adsense ads from all of my sites and inform Google about it.
And wait, wait and wait, maybe some day Google make something to really protect AdSense publishers.
I have about 600.000 impressions of my site and it’s not easy to screw myself out of AdSense earnings.
[…] Problogger has a nice blogpost about how to not get banned from Adsense […]
I’ve had my site up for just under 2 months, and today I got a letter saying I was banned at Adsense. I was shocked, and I responded politely with as much info as I had on their form, but I seriously do not know why I have been banned. I rushed to this problogger site, because this is where I’ve been getting most of my blogging advice, but in the end I still think I haven’t done anything wrong.
Adsense didn’t tell me anything about why I was banned except for invalid clicks, which seems very vague. I haven’t joined any weird clicking clubs. I don’t click on my own ads. I told my family and friends not to click unless then intended to actually buy something from the advertiser. My target is students of theater and people working community theater. Many of my friends are theater people…. some theater teachers who have encouraged their students to visit my site.
At this point, I am confused and a little angry. How can I be trying so hard to do everything right and end up banned? I’m waiting to see how Google responds to my plea. It does seem to me that if they have to tools to detect fraud, they should have the tools to funnel out fraud and that would certainly be saving me a headache right now.
Is there an ad revenue program that is easier to not offend? Perhaps someone that DOES filter out IP addresses that seem to be excessive or something…. That would still have ads associated with theater? Even if I am cleared of wrongdoing, I think I may shut down adsense for a while on my site until I figure out how I offended in the first place and am able to better control it… even though it feels out of my control. I don’t want to be on anyone’s “bad” list, and if I can end up on the adsnese bad list without knowing I did anything wrong, that makes me very nervous about continuing to use them. I’m not looking to make millions. I’m mostly looking to cover my hosting costs and maybe a few extra dollars on the side.
Perhaps I did something wrong without realizing it. If so, I hope they will tell me what I did and give me a chance to make things right. From what I’ve seen on other forums, I don’t have a lot of hope. It seems that most people who are banned are not reinstated. I do find it a bit extreme that one day they just cut me off and I’m left stunned and clueless.
If there is any advice about what I can do, or another revenue option out there that I will find more friendly to my needs, I am very open to suggestions. I seriously never thought I would have this problem, but people here seem to mostly think that adsense has legit reasons when they shut someone down… and I tend to trust the people on this site. SO, I’m asking for any advice that any of you more experienced technical types have to offer… I’m just a freelance theatrical artist with a blog as a hobby, so perhaps I’m missing something really simple.
Thanks,
Laura
forget about adsense try adbrite
adsense ad s are too boring
adbrite’s ad are much attractive
u can see
it in web pages
i had an adsense account for my blog, but after 1 month it was banned and my appeal was also rejected. Then i created a new blog and applied for adsense for this new blog, it got activated yesterday. Now can u tell me…
Can i post ads from new adsense account on my previous blog?…the one for which my adsense account was banned.
I was running AdSense on some really low traffic sites, and then decided to test it out on a site that was getting 30M hits per month. They kicked me in under a week, and when I explained to them what happened, they gave me some generic response and never reinstated me. I was kicked three times for three different websites and received similar generic responses each time, at least the first time they still payed me though). I’ve switched to YPN for any of my high traffic sites, I have a comparison of CTR and CPC for each program if anyone is interested (YPN did better).
Great, I have time looking for this post.
First of all, we need to know that ADSENSE is the easyer and better way to make money online.
I want to share my experience also I want to clear my answers that I have with adsense.
About 12 months ago I started to build a blog with medical ebooks, when visitors shares their books
and download free (from rapidshare) medical books. My purpose was to help people who hadn’t possibility
to buy those books, and other to view books before buy. On this blog I put my google ads, and I earned 300 $
a month but after 2 months google adsense banned me, because my blog has
copyright infragments. Ok I agree with their email, and I stoped to work on this blog.
But my answer is: WHY ONLY MY BLOG?
on net are more same older sites who weren’t banned from google adsense
http://www.medicalheaven.com/
http://www.flazx.com/
http://www.gigapedia.org/
Darren can you explain this ?
If you have a Google Horror Story and want to share it with the world, please feel free to post it at http://www.googlehorrorstories.net. We are an RSS enabled Article site dedictated to effecting positive change at Google regarding how they treat us small publishers and advertisers. YOU can make a difference by sharing your story with us. The more people that contribute and syndicate our content, the more exposure we will have and the greater the chance we can get the big “G’s” attention. We may be small timers but we number in the thousands and we can make a difference if we all band together!
I agree with all of those points but im not sure about reporting in situations even when you are going to epxect an increase in traffic. As that may or not be known by you. So i dont think that is such a big point. But the rest, yes i absolutly agree, you need to strictly adhere to the TOS google is literally like big brother they no when you are going to cheat them
Is it possible to be banned when we promote our site through a mailing list we join.
Let say I join a job vacancy mailing List. When there is some one asking for vacancy in a specific discipline. I just recommend him to go to my site.
But luckily or probably unfortunately, my CTR become high, even more than 100%.
Am I potentially to be banned ?. If yes, how to avoid it ?
This list is all peaches & gravy but it doesn’t answer the question of what do people who AREN’T TRYING to CHEAT Adsense in the first place have to worry about the most?
That would be a better list.