Recently one of our web hosting clients had her Adsense account disabled right after she crossed the minimum payout threshold so I examined her Analytics and asked about her click-thru rates, if she had ever clicked her own ads, etc. I did a quick search for “disabled Adsense May 2010″ and as expected found a ton of results. What I wasn’t expecting were so many mom and pop websites with seemingly legitimate and hurt web site owners begging Google for even a one line reply about why they were not going to get paid.
The volumes of complaints about Adsense posted in the 24 hours before I started searching was a real eye opener to the potential for fraud from both publishers and from Google.
Could Google steal more traffic this way than anyone else online? I can’t think of a single company in a position to hijack more surfer clicks than good old GewG ;-) The funniest cases I’ve seen are where Google disables Adsense accounts because of fraudulent traffic and Google themselves are the only source of traffic for the account owner.
It’s just good business for Google to review an Adsense account’s quality before sending the first check. They must protect their advertisers and their integrity – I want and need them to do this. I’m more concerned they can use this review window to save themselves a ton of money, and get rid of many small advertisers that aren’t moving the needle with any serious traffic. No one knows what % of publishers get their accounts disabled once they meet the minimum payout level, estimates I’ve seen are sky high. Of course the check is never sent if the account is disabled.
To be honest, from a business standpoint as an advertiser on Google Adwords this is awesome. Every time they nuke a publisher’s site we can keep the traffic and not pay for any of it. I still wonder if Google is crediting back ALL of the money I’ve spent with webmasters they refuse to pay (pesky gewg!).
As a human being, I feel bad for all the legitimate folks who worked hard to grow their revenue to the payout threshold only to have Google kick them in the mouth. What’s the lesson here? Google is evil, but unfortunately so is everyone else. Diversify your revenue streams so you get screwed less directly by advertisers and ad networks.
Lemons Or Lemonade: Did you get screwed on Adsense and you’re sure they are ripping everyone off? Stop crying. Start advertising on the content network and grab your share of the free traffic you know they aren’t paying anyone for!
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The blog of a nomadic internet marketer, web host owner, dating site owner and web developer.
Same thing happened to us exactly! This is outrageous! do i hear class action lawsuit anyone?
To be frank, I don’t see anything besides building partnerships, to be as critical these days. The most critica work that businesses should focus on in the current economy is developing channel partnerships. Media buy, advertising, internet promotion, worries about content monetization – it’s all important too, but the marketing budgets are shrinking, therefore I see channel partnerships to be the main focus of any operation – from emerging start up to a established organization.
Maybe the people should contact as many stores and corporations and tell them that they will not be buying any thing more from them until they stop doing business with google and stop using your credit cards and stop buying anything on the web Hit them in where it hurts their bottom line.
its about time the “little people” let the fat rich cats know they will not take it any more .
I am sick and tired of these millionaires and billionaires
hording all the money!!!
Hi, i use adsense on all my websites. I have about 20 atm and average 20$ a day, is that good?