A letter to Google

[Malcolm]

Copy of e-mail sent today....

Dear Google,

Please help me out here. I'm a BIG Google supporter. It's my default search, I'm a Adwords customer, an Adsense publisher (sort of), a Froogle applicant and I offer Google search in many of my sites.

A few months ago I was booted out of Adsense. The reason given was "spurious clicks". I don't get it. I didn't publish adsense on my sites for the money, I published Adsense to provide depth of content to my visitors. I was owed $80 at the time which had taken quite a long time to build up, I lost that but that doesn't matter. The point is I was hardly screwing the system with a balance of $80 and yet I'm told "It's all over pal, you have been trying to rip off our advertisers, and you lost your 80 bucks too".

I may have clicked on the odd published ad in my sites out of genuine interest but It has never crossed my mind to sit at the computer clicking away to make a few cents, I haven't got the time (and I always assumed you'd have systems in place to track such behaviour anyway). Clearly I was right BUT I have been wrongly accused.

Now I don't know how all of your products link up but I must make an interesting observation. You are perfectly happy for me to spend money with you via my Adwords account and I continue to publish your search box on some of my sites thereby displaying my support and preference for Google. It seems however to have become a one way street. I'm not allowed to publish Adsense and I can't seem to get my products from ampalian.com listed on Froogle, I just get ignored.

Please help me out here, I don't understand what I'm supposed to have done and I LOVE GOOGLE ! Please review my Adsense status and please allow me some response from repeated Froogle support requests.

I look forward to your reply.

Kind regards

Malcolm

(URL links supplied here)

[chrisuk]

"I may have clicked on the odd published ad in my sites out of genuine interest "


That might well be at the heart of your issue, whether that may be true or not, its not wise to do that on your own site because Google are not going to take the time to work out whether your interest was genuine or not, they will assume the worst.

More specifically though its agains't their TOS period, you don't need to click on your own ads for any reason, 'testing' or otherwise. Your report will tell you whether clicks are being tracked properly.

Sorry pal but I reckon you will be lucky to get back in there imho but I wish you luck all the same.

[Malcolm]

Yes, hands up, I'm guilty. I didn't realise I was in breach of T&C by clicking the odd ad myself. It no defense but a) I don't read every single T&C word for word (do you?) and b) I assumed (wrongly) that Google would have technology in place that wouldn't credit clicks from a publisher, I'm surprised they haven't.

The Froogle issue may well be unrelated to my status as lots of people seem to be having the same problem.

I was wrong, I admit it, but I certainly wasn't attempting fraud. At least this thread will be a heads up to other Adsense publishers.

[Lee_Owen]

I forget I'm on my own sites sometimes and there's an accidental click here and there, also when banning competition you can often click when you're not supposed to. Best thing to do is download their adsense preview tool and take the URLS from there. No risks then.

[cowenpa]

My friend clicked on a link to buy the product he saw advertised on his own site without really thinking

Now to the person paying per click they did well out of it - they made a sale but my friend got kicked out of adsense

So be careful out there and like suggested check out the adsense preview tool - I think that is really useful

Paul

[Shane]

google makes me laugh with this click fraud thing.

I've spent enough to buy a small island over the last year and the total amount of credit for dodgy clicks I've recieved is under £20

Now is it that I've simply had little or no click fraud ?

Nope !! no way...

cos the I monitor IP numbers and the same ones come up over and over again so there is no way that £20 is a realistic refund at all,

Some days I've had the same IP click 30 or so times.. on some stuff...

Yet I've read where some people have clicked their own adsense a couple of times and got nailed for it and binned... it just doesn't make sense.. think they just use some people as an example to others rather than make a concerted effort to bin the real click pimps..