The Google AdSense has become a strong money making program for many publishers, but do you know that you could loose AdSense account if someone else closes your account? You are probably wondering how someone else can close your account? It is very easy and not mentioned by Google. If you want to know how that could affect you, read my story below and you will learn everything how to close someone's account or how your account could be closed without any possibility to re-apply to the AdSense program.
Some months ago, I had a website and I was a publisher of the AdSense program. I used the AdSense successfully for more than one year. I received some checks. Before my account was closed, I noticed some unusual click-through rates and the amount of money generated was a little higher than usual. That drew my attention, but I did not understand why. Without any warning about a potential disabling of my account, I received some weeks later an email mentioning the following message.
"It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers."
"Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further
participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment."
Naturally, I was NOT the author of the fraudulent clicks and I did not want to destroy my business. I was aware that if I would generate fraudulent clicks, I could loose my account, but I did not expect that someone could do it in my back.
After receiving this message, I decided to contact the support team and I explained my situation. The support told me that I could appeal of the decision if I was not the author the invalid clicks. So, I wrote a long detailed letter explaining that I was not the author of the invalid clicks and I could not do anything. Google kept its decision and my account has been closed forever. Google AdSense does not have any phone number where you can speak to a true person.
Now here are the key points from my experience to determine if your account could be disabled by Google. You need to have a website with Google AdSense ads on your pages.
-Your statistics show a click-through rate around 30% instead of probably 1-2% (or just something not usual rate).
-Have this for 2 to 4 weeks.
For example, if you determine that a website has 1,000 pages viewed per day, that means you need 300 clicks to make a click-through rate of 30%. You can even generate them from a single page. In Internet Explorer, your hold the shift key to open a link in a new window (that will save you time). So, you do not loose your page with the ads. Just in couple of minutes, you can generate hundreds of clicks. Even a child can do it if you have no time.
I cannot believe that after 10 years of Internet, it is so easy to fraud! Naturally Google puts an end to this, but many webmasters loose their ad's revenues. Sadly, that creates more damages for the honest people, but I guess that is part of the business.
Because Google can monitor the IP address where the clicks come from, clicking on the ads will increase the click-though rate and it tells Google that the ads are mainly clicked by one person from one location. What is dangerous in that is the fact that Google cannot know if it is you or someone else clicking the ads. So, Google thinks that you are trying to make more money illegally and this is considered as fraud. Whatever it is you or someone else, the result is the same and Google disable the publisher account to protect its advertiser.
Now you know how weak a wonderful money program can be. It made some people rich, but some others lost their business or website revenues. You can always turn to other ad programs like AdBright (http://www.adbrite.com/). They even have a phone number! So they must care about the customer or people that help them to make money. Personally, I prefer to stay far from that for the moment and I prefer trying to sell online.
I am aware that this message can be a threat for some people or a malicious technique to hurt your competitors. I hesitated to make this fact public, but Google did not tell me the truth about the danger I risked with their advertising program. I lost my website revenues, which were my main revenues, and I lost my time. I believe that people have the right to know the truth that Google does not mention. Sometimes, it is better to know the truth sooner than later. I would not have opened an AdSense account if would have known this before.
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