15 ms·

Sacked by a Google algorithm

• iwwr 16y ago
  The disease of PayPalism is spreading.
  • archgoon 16y ago
    Hi! I'm sorry to be dense, but could you explain what encompasses PayPalism? I'm guessing you're referring to: -Excessively complex user agreements -Ability to arbitrarily suspend accounts -Ability to void credited funds Are there any other aspects that you (or anyone else) feel should be included?
    • ceejayoz 16y ago
      The inability to reach and speak to a person, as well.
      • patio11 16y ago
        FYI, you actually can reach Paypal support, and it is not a Markov machine.
        • tallanvor 16y ago
          True, although in my experience, Paypal support is worthless at actually resolving issues.
        • iwwr 16y ago
          No, but English is not a strong point in support people, to put it mildly.
    • vladd 16y ago
      I'd define PayPalism as businesses with a significantly risk of fraud as a result of conducting financial activities and transactions with "online" customers. Such businesses take huge risks since they are dealing with money and their bad phenomenons (tax evasion, credit-card/identity abuse, money laundry) without having real face-to-face contact and customer identification. Therefore, in order to stay competitive and manage their risk, they have in their agreements termination clauses which enable them to disable suspicious accounts unilaterally without providing explanations. For both AdSense and PayPal, sustainable competition at feature-parity failed to appear. There aren't any agencies that allow a guy with only a few thousand impressions per month to earn a buck with a pay-per-click model, or any banks that allow you to open an account with them just by providing an email address. Which leads me to believe that the account closures are just part of the business model assumption which allows PayPalism corporations to manage their risk and survive. But maybe I'm wrong and something better will emerge. The trick is to improve interactions with legitimate accounts while keeping abuse detection algorithms secret. Which might be a very, very difficult problem to solve...
    • Natsu 16y ago
      I'd simply say that you're doing business with a computer program, not a human being, because that's, basically, the root of it. And people are learning to adapt on both sides: e.g. people who sweep out their PayPal account constantly. Or those who have learned that you can hose a competitor if you make the programs think they're a fraudulent business.
  • jorgem 16y ago
    You have coined a phrase and should grab paypalism.com before it is too late.
• ecaroth 16y ago
  Damn.. that's a disheartening story. Hope this article gets enough publicity to get Google's hound dogs on the trail, maybe get him some of his earnings back.. AT LEAST re-instate his youtube adsenes account. Bad PR for google.. too bad you hear stories like this all the time.
• Gidion 16y ago
  I'm a big fan of the "let's find an algorithmic solution" approach to everything (because it scales), but if the so called specialists (still assuming they are human specialists) are already involved, would it have hurt to send a little more information about the issue that just a link to the FAQ? You know, the human factor...
  • abhaga 16y ago
    Oh the human factor! Somehow that seems to be completely missing when dealing with anything Adsense. I run a 2 year old startup in the domain of self-publishing. Tried signing up for an Adsense account. Even after multiple rounds of back and forth, I couldn't get any concrete answer about exactly which rules our site was violating. They just kept sending link to the same FAQ. Very frustrating. Fortunately, our business model is not advertising, so it didn't matter much. I wonder how the customer service is going to be now that they are entering e-commerce space.
    • Andrew_Quentin 16y ago
      They are entering e-commerce space?
      • abhaga 16y ago
        Yes, they have been hiring people (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/google-hires-ebay-veteran-for-new-commerce-position/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/google-hires-ebay-v...) and launching products in the space (http://www.boutiques.com/ http://www.boutiques.com/). Also Google ebook Store has also been launched now. I expect we are going to see more from them.
  • mpk 16y ago
    > would it have hurt to send a little more information about the issue [..] Call me a cynic but I think they don't send any information on purpose. They're not required to send information and Legal probably doesn't want anything sent out in these cases that involves writing from a non-lawyer.
• fossuser 16y ago
  It's too bad what happened to him and it doesn't seem fair in this context, but shouldn't there be a reasonable expectation that people who are relying on advertising revenue from google at least read the terms of service? I know it's something that I would make sure I was aware of.
  • meterplech 16y ago
    I understand your point, but have you ever actually tried to read the terms is service of any multi-thousand line legal document written in legalese. You are obviously in a way right, but for Google (and other companies) to purposely obfuscate the process does more harm.
    • Symmetry 16y ago
      Not for every piece of software I install on my computer, but if I'm doing it for work or if its important like an OS or a cellphone plan I do try to read the entire document. Its really not that bad if you're willing to take a few minutes and they aren't written purposefully to be hard to understand - just to be legally precise.
  • archgoon 16y ago
    I don't see how that would have helped him. After having his lawyer review the terms of service (which is probably superior to reading it for himself), apparently he's concluded that there's nothing he could have done to prevent this from happening. He was using Youtube, and that limits his ability to shop around for better terms of service for ads.
  • rbanffy 16y ago
    If Google told him what was the problem, he could correct it.
• irinotecan 16y ago
  Moral of the story: Don't make too much ad revenue with AdSense or you will be accused of click fraud, and have no recourse.
  • arn 16y ago
    It's not too much ad revenue. It's suspicious ad revenue. He had 6% CTR, which is high, and also seemed to encourage his visitors click, at least to some extent. It's not clear to what extent he encouraged clicks, but asking visitors to click your ads is like asking for your account to be terminated.
    • rbanffy 16y ago
      My visitors were usually smart and probably figured out on their own (since many of them had blogs - and AdSense accounts - themselves) that clicking on banners meant supporting the site. Too bad Google shoots first and never asks any question. It's really comfortable to live in a space without meaningful competition.
      • rlpb 16y ago
        If I were an advertiser, why would I want to advertise on your site, if I know that visitors are supporting you by clicking but have no intention of converting? I care about the effectiveness of my ads. They are far less effective if visitors do this. Ultimately the advertisers are paying for your AdSense income. It may not be your fault, but if you're providing less value to the advertiser, then it seems only fair that you don't participate, since your participation harms the whole market. This is undeniably a problem with the current AdSense business model, but we all know this, choose to participate and accept the risk.
        • rbanffy 16y ago
          It would be wonderful if advertisers could pipe conversion rates back into Google so that ads would gravitate towards sites that generated greater conversion rates. This way, sites that have fans that decrease conversion rates will naturally sink to the bottom of the pile without much effort and would bubble up as soon as the behavior changes and conversion rates improve. It seems a natural solution to the problem. Would you be able to pipe back conversion rates based on where the banner was shown?
• motters 16y ago
  This seems to be a not uncommon tale for people who make money out of Adsense.
  • stanleydrew 16y ago
    Yes. I think the problem is that people don't really understand Adsense. They think they are "earning" money by placing ads on their sites. In reality they are outsourcing the placing of ads on their sites to Google, who manages the customer relationships with advertisers and shares a portion of the revenue with the site owner as an incentive. In agreeing to outsource the ads and relationships, site owners put themselves at the mercy of Google, which has a responsibility first and foremost to its paying customers, i.e. the advertisers.
    • rbanffy 16y ago
      Still, helping non-compliant site owners into compliance would create greater revenue opportunities and a healthier market for media buyers and sellers alike, as well as a better environment for the middleman.
    • JoeBracken 16y ago
      I agree there is little understanding by some of how Adsense "works" and how $ from an advertiser ends up in a check to you from Google. Most people don't care however anyone running a business off of Adsense should know in detail how they work or you risk getting your business cut off like this. As others have said diversification of revenue is important especially if you don't have confidence in how the system works - example the stock market. If you are releasing one or a few videos, revenue from Adsense is just about the only game in town. However if you have enough content that can survive outside of YouTube you create an opportunity to work directly with advertisers. Many video podcasters have moved this way, not hosting videos on Youtube and owning the ad relationships and revenue.
• gnosis 16y ago
  Welcome to capitalism.
• joshklein 16y ago
  Relying on Google, or any other single source, for your income is the same as having an employer. This is just as true whether you run a Youtube channel or have a multimillion dollar B2B business with only one client (aka "boss"). Being in the content game is the easy part of the equation; ad sales is the hard part. You can take the easy road and join a network, making pennies on the dollar and potentially getting "sacked" by an algorithm, or you can pound the pavement and sell some ads to people. They're more profitable, you diversify your income, but it's not easy.
  • davidw 16y ago
    Anyone got advice on how to go out and do this? How to calculate fair prices?
    • epoxyhockey 16y ago
      Put AdSense on your site (if you haven't already been banned) and look at what ads are being displayed. Then, go and approach those advertisers directly. For pricing, decide how you want to get paid. You have 3 basic choices: CPM (per 1000 ad/page views), CPC (per click) and CPA (per action, i.e. someone clicks your ad and then buys something from that site). The easiest for you will be CPM. So, set your prices low, like at $2 per 1000 ad views. Raise prices based on demand. My best piece of advice is that you will not get rich from one site. You need to have several websites making a few bucks a day to make a living. Also, those advertisers are most likely advertising on other ad platforms as well. AdSense is king of CPC, but other sites specialize in CPM and CPA. Check out Commision Junction to get some ideas. There are many ad networks out there. And, if you want to run your own ad network, there is open source software to help you setup and manage that too.
    • joshklein 16y ago
      Re: how to do this - watch this video of Gary Vaynerchuk picking up the phone and selling an ad: http://garyvaynerchuk.com/post/78967452/want-to-get-advertisers-on-your-blogvlog-go-and-get-it http://garyvaynerchuk.com/post/78967452/want-to-get-advertis... (it isn't rocket surgery!) Re: fair prices - Totally depends on your content, your market, and how targeted you are to the advertiser's audience. There are plenty of sub-$1 CPM display ads, and I've been a part of buying $170 CPM ads. But you should only worry about this only after you have sold out your ad inventory. Anything is better than nothing.
• blinkingled 16y ago
  He does mention this though - "I did get the odd subscriber sending me an email saying that he had clicked loads of adverts. This is called demon clicking. I would reply that I would prefer them to only click on adverts they were interested in." And then there is reference in the article to another commenter mentioning the same in the comments which he then edited to remove. Sounds like there was at least a reason to suspect - sad if the users did that on their own and he had to suffer due to their actions but I find it hard to believe strangers will do this for making another stranger money.
  • nitrogen 16y ago
    I find it hard to believe strangers will do this for making another stranger money. To an extent, HN readers click on "rate my startup" links out of the goodness of their hearts. In any small, tight-knit community (like sailing, apparently), members of that community will try to help each other out, even if they don't actually know one another.
    • blinkingled 16y ago
      Difference is the effort - one click on rate my startup once is different from watching the videos again and again and clicking several links. It requires more motivation than just helping each other out without too much pain to yourself.
• mcyger 16y ago
  For as many articles that there are about how great, smart, [fill in another positive adjective] Google is, I'm surprised that no news source has pointed out the ridiculous behavior of Google. Who else would you work with (i.e., display advertising for) without having the ability to speak to someone by telephone when a difficult situation has occurred? None of our customers would tolerate this -- why do we continue to allow Google to get away with it? I'm not saying this author is right or deserving of the revenue (I don't have all the details or facts), but what is clear is that he has: 1. Earned Google a good bit of revenue 2. Appears earnest 3. Deserves to interact with a real human in a real way (not by automated emails without the ability to reply) Why aren't more people appalled by Google's actions and the way they treat their partners?!
  • kachnuv_ocasek 16y ago
    vimeo
    • rbanffy 16y ago
      That solves the YouTube part of the problem, but not the AdSense part. Google has for all purposes a monopoly on mass-market web advertising
      • jonprins 16y ago
        In that case, blip.tv (per view, content producers can make more money through us than through YouTube). Full disclosure: I am employed by blip.tv.
        • rbanffy 16y ago
          It's for video content. Bloggers and other site owners have nothing to replace AdSense. They have, but it's always much more work, often more than a hobby would warrant
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
• arn 16y ago
  ...long story... Oh yes, I was also running little blocks of adverts provided by Adsense and, yes, I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers – all of whom were interested in selling stuff to sailors. ...long story... In the end it was click-fraud-ish. There's a huge fear for those dependent on google adsense that they will get terminated out of the blue like this. The problem is, there's no great alternative. But instructing your visitors in some way to click on your ads does cross the line.
  • meterplech 16y ago
    You are completely right- I think the general feeling is that Google needs to do a better job of communicating that to content creators. This guy clearly didn't realize the extent of the damage, and said he would return adsense revenue from the website. They could fairly disable adsense on the website, but knocking the YouTube revenue just seems unnecessary after giving a very stern warning. People find it troubling that a monolithic algorithmic arbiter makes these decision that change people's lives
    • rbanffy 16y ago
      I would suggest a "three strikes" approach. The program warns you (because it may not be your fault) then the program blocks you for, say, 30 days and then you are banned. Disclaimer: I was banned from AdSense too and I still don't know what happened. Since my site had very low traffic, I suspect even one well meaning fan could clickfraud me into nonexistence.
      • eru 16y ago
        How about exponentially increasing ban times, instead of a life-time ban after the third strike? (Perhaps with even a cooling off period, if you behave well for some time.)
        • rbanffy 16y ago
          That's a brilliant idea, really. I wonder how we could generate an economic incentive for Google to adopt it.
• wildmXranat 16y ago
  Tough luck. Yes, that might come across as crass, but did they bother reading Google's terms of service? So they will bitch and moan about it, try the appeal process and not a dent will be made in their case. What it boils down to is: if you rely on those earnings to sustain your business, guard against anything that tosses you into a suspicious category. And that is a moving target as well. I do empathize with him, as I had to toil through AdSense appeal process, but that means diddly-squat.
  • locopati 16y ago
    Doesn't seem like you have a ton of control over the situation, seeing as the rules as written are almost impossible to break in some manner, the rules are only partially declared, and you cannot police your users who may think they're doing you a favor (note: he did actually discourage his users from clicking).
    • wildmXranat 16y ago
      Heh, that is partially true. Once a person is in his situation, I agree, there isn't much to be done. On the other hand, there are ways to guard against getting into hot water and lack of effort counts against him. There are unmentioned albeit publicly verified limits or thresholds that a publisher should abide by. It's in the publishers best interest to learn these, consult on what to do before ad-sense is enabled and what to do afterwards.
    • kefs 16y ago
      There is a big difference between discouraging users from clicking, and telling users to click and then discouraging them from clicking.
• alex_c 16y ago
  Seems like part of the problem is that YouTube revenue is tied together to revenue from AdSense for websites, even though the two services are affected by click fraud differently. Now Google is still making money from the author's popular YouTube videos, and he won't see a penny. The "correct" response would be to pull all his videos from YouTube, move them to a competing service, and write Google to let them know why. Of course, this would unfortunately mean traffic would drop close to zero... (what's the closest competitor to YouTube right now?)
  • geekfactor 16y ago
    Agreed. I don't know the AdSense agreement at all, but I'd think this is a smart argument for creating separate LLCs (or other business entity) for each of your online endeavors.
  • gthank 16y ago
    http://www.vimeo.com/ http://www.vimeo.com/ ?
    • twistedanimator 16y ago
      He should put 30 second clips on YouTube and then have links to the full video on vimeo.
      • phillian 16y ago
        Is it possible to remove your content from YouTube once it's uploaded? Were I the author, I would certainly not want Google continuing to profit from my labors if they ceased paying me.
    • simonbrown 16y ago
      Except Vimeo doesn't allow commercial use.
  • dholowiski 16y ago
    Now that his accounts have been suspended, can he even pull the videos from YouTube? He may have to send a dmca takedown notice just to stop YouTube from profiting off of his misery. As an aside, now that he has been 'sacked' by google, google's making 100% of the advertising revenue from his videos instead of some lower amount. That's very convenient for google.
• byteclub 16y ago
  The Google giveth and The Google taketh away... Moral of the story: diversify your income stream as much as you can. I don't know much about advertising world, but it seems that AdSense is a bit of monopoly, and that sucks. Random idea for a biz opportunity here: A service that insures content providers against AdSense account termination by routing all of the clicks through a filter to prevent "overeager" clicking by your fans, in exchange for a small fee. If your AdSense account is terminated, you'll be paid for it (just like if your car is totaled, your insurance company pays for it)
  • pornel 16y ago
    Who will insure the insurer against Google blocking this business model? Also, given that clickfraud is a danger to Google's core business, Google likely spent enormous amount of money and engineering to have best detection possible. Beating Google at their own game will be difficult (i.e. insurer will lose money whenever fraudsters are better than insurer's detection, but Google catches them).
    • chc 16y ago
      Why would Google block a business model of helping site owners to avoid click fraud? That's doing Google a favor and not even charging them for it.
      • deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
• locopati 16y ago
  So basically, Google has written the rules so they can call you on it at any time and if they deem they're paying you too much money, they kill your account? Seems to weigh the playing field pretty heavily in their favor - they're getting the benefits of your direction of traffic to their advertisers, while reserving the right to arbitrarily kill your revenue. Given their more-or-less monopoly status on search (80% or more - too lazy to check the stats), this should probably be investigated by the FTC or DOJ.
  • arn 16y ago
    This is ridiculous. Google makes more money when they pay you more money. The income is tied together. They get a cut. So, it's not that they feel like they are paying you too much. Many sites/individuals make a lot more money than this guy did on Adsense. In this case, they felt the guy was sending fraudulent clicks through the program.
    • locopati 16y ago
      Do you think the one-strike and you're out policy, with little chance of direct human-contact in resolving disputes is reasonable? For Google, they get to have their cake and eat it too - to them it probably doesn't matter if they lose a small revenue stream like this (yet they're still putting ads on his YouTube videos and search results), but the little guy gets hammered.
      • arn 16y ago
        No, it sucks. I was just objecting to your incorrect assessment that it went down like this: "if they deem they're paying you too much money, they kill your account".
    • stanleydrew 16y ago
      While this is true of Adsense for domains, it's not true for YouTube apparently. Ads still run beside this guy's videos whether or not Google/YouTube decides to give him a cut of the revenue.
• varjag 16y ago
  So the conclusion is, don't build your business model around someone else's business model.
  • Luyt 16y ago
    That's too broad. The lesson is: don't build your business model on AdSense.
• lynx44 16y ago
  This sucks, but telling your visitors to click on ads indirectly is a clear violation of the ToS. I too got fired by Google's algorithm and didn't do anything whatsoever wrong. They are heartless. Worse of all, this article does not mention the monopoly they have. They own the online ad market. No one else exists that is anywhere as good. It's straight-up monopoly, and if you get on their black list, you're out.
  • Luyt 16y ago
    Did this also influence the page ranking of your site? (I would have sent this in email, but your email address is not on your profile).
  • drawkbox 16y ago
    Does anyone actually get paid by Google Adsense? Almost everyone I know has been kicked from it, not early on but usually when a big payment is coming. And this bit about returning the funds to advertisers? Any advertisers ever gotten money returned due to click fraud? I love Google and pay for lots of their products (docs/storage, appengine, etc) but the adsense stuff seems very shady on Google's side as well. Maybe it is my misunderstanding but I know noone making good money on Google Adsense. Granted this dude was violating the ToS but I know plenty of people kicked just before payment and with no reason for it. It seems like smaller sites or medium content sites they are glad to use for free ad space until it comes time to pay dues. I imagine there is lots of free advertising space and metrics gained from these situations.
    • arn 16y ago
      I make good money on Google Adsense. so do these people: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&biw=1214&bih=658&q=markus+frind+google+check&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&b... http://www.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=shoemoney+google+check&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1214&bih=658 http://www.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=...
      • 16y ago
• jeromec 16y ago
  Before everyone jumps all over Google remember there are two sides to every story, and this is told completely from the perspective of the account holder, which should show him in the best light, but still appears he both encouraged ad clicks and had knowledge people were following through on this.
  • chocolateboy 16y ago
    The algorithm was asked for its side of the story, but was unavailable for comment.
• ticktock 16y ago
  the adwords buyers must have complained enough to make his account go bye-bye - if enough adwords buyers do that, you are costing google more than they are making on you.
• chanux 16y ago
  Why I still see posts like this and Google does nothing to make things right?
• futuremint 16y ago
  He should start stopping at all of the little ports, marinas & marine supply stores on his way and tell them about his website. He should then offer them direct advertisements on his website. Sounds like the ads were actually effective. An ad buyer would of course want to do pay per sale instead of pay per click given the site's history :)
• JoeBracken 16y ago
  So what does this say then for all the free ad-supported mobile apps? I keep reading more and more of the success of ad-supported apps that would also face the same risks. I do think however the flaw here is the writer informed users that clicking supports him - simple click fraud.
• phr 16y ago
  If you own several different media properties like this guy, is it a good strategy to incorporate each one separately, to keep an unintentional Adsense TOS violation from affecting all the others?
• larrik 16y ago
  This is why a lot of subscription websites (which this was, apparently), don't display ads to logged in users. A small dedicated audience looks like click-fraud. Adsense and the like is best for drive-by visitors. I did that even with my own websites, even though there is no subscription fee. Logged-in users get no ads, because I don't want them to click on them. There was a similar issue on HN a long time ago (years?), but I can never find past articles that I'm looking for.
• dusklight 16y ago
  Ok this is obviously only one side of the story and the guy who is writing it is obviously a good writer? He knows how to manipulate the emotions of the reader with stuff like losing money right before christmas, which he keeps talking about over and over again even though that is entirely irrelevant to the facts of the case. What we have here is, Google says he is click frauding. He says he is not click frauding. The real problem is, maybe Google is right and this guy is a click frauder. We don't really know because Google shows no proof, holds no trial, allows no mediated appeal. As a company, not a government, they can get away with that. But as companies get larger and larger what is the difference between a company and a government?
  • geekinthecorner 16y ago
    Speak for yourself, I'm an atheist, losing(or wasting) money before zombie day is the intended purpose of the holiday, isn't it? Does it really illicit extra emotions?
  • kjksf 16y ago
    Is that a serious question? Government has many special powers. Government can issue new laws. Government can put you in jail. Government can legally spy on you as long as they have a warrant. The accountability should be proportional to acts. If you want to execute someone, you better hold a fair trial and provide ample proof of wrongdoing. If you create a straightforward agreement where only use of your non-essential service is at stake, you don't need accountability at all. It says right there that the agreement can be voided at any time by any party for any reason. The size of Google has nothing to do with it. They are using the same legal framework as everyone else, big or small. If you were running a 2-person startup offering a service over internet you would be a fool to not include similar clause in your agreement with the exact same amount of accountability. If you don't like that such agreements allow Google to act that way, that's fine, but accept that if you eliminate this possibility for Google, you eliminate it for every other business, small or big, internet-based or not and that would not be a good. We don't want laws that treat big or small companies differently in cases like this (regardless of which one would be favored).
    • 16y ago
• kellysutton 16y ago
  Based on personal experiences, it appears that any two parties doing business under an "American" contract are at any time probably in violation of several clauses of said contract. When the waters get a little rough, you can expect the party with the most leverage to bail. Correct me if I'm wrong, but other countries don't interpret contracts so strictly. I remember someone telling me that German business contracts are often written with intentions and principles, rather than rules. That way, people are encouraged to do "good business" and not resort to the algorithm. Legalese is just a way to cover your ass in a bad scenario; it's not designed to build better businesses. Full disclosure: I work for blip.tv. I am biased.
  • Daniel_Newby 16y ago
    Plenty of Americans view a contract as a starting point for future negotiations. The trouble with AdSense is that Google has corporate autism. They appear to be single-mindedly obsessed with cutting customer service expenditures to zero, which is not even remotely the same thing as maximizing net revenue. Hell, even AT&T will send somebody out to plug in your new telephone as long as you can cough up the per-incident fees.
  • dedward 16y ago
    You have a good point- the point of a contract, and all that legalese, isn't suposed to create a playground where both parties can fight it out, it's supposed to spell out the intentions of both parties as verbosely as possible so everyone is on the same page. The contract is there to be a written account of what both parties agreed to - all terms should be clear and understood before it's signed.
• nestlequ1k 16y ago
  Just one of the many reasons I've always hated adsense. Being told that you aren't allowed to tell your readers to click on links is bullshit. Seems so much more appropriate to pick a few books off amazon, or find something offers from commission junction. Encouraging your readers to buy from sponsors should not be off limits.
• scotty79 16y ago
  So basically you can kill source of income of any website (and probably the site itself) by clicking its ads and not buying anything. Don't tell 4chan. Or anyone with access to botnet.
• ryanto 16y ago
  I don't get why everyone is so upset at Google here? The guy admits to committing click fraud and then gets shut down. As someone who spends a bit of money on adwords I am pretty happy to see Google is active in enforcing these policies.
  • cincinnatus 16y ago
    Where exactly does he admit to click fraud?
    • ryanto 16y ago
      > As part of the deal, and as a way of involving the sailors, I tell them about the revenue for the project which all comes from the website. The more the website earns the more sailing I can do, the more films they see. > Oh yes, I was also running little blocks of adverts provided by Adsense and, yes, I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers – all of whom were interested in selling stuff to sailors. So basically, I am paying for his boat project. People are clicking the ads in order to see his project continue, not because they are interested in the product. Sure, the correlation between users clicking the ads and users interested in the product is going to be a lot closer to 1 than -1. However, that does not justify what is going on... at the end of the day users are clicking the ads so he gets more money, not because they are _absolutely_ interested in the product. I really don't know what else to say about this. Google makes it pretty clear that you cannot do this. Just because he didn't read the T&Cs and just because he is doing videos isn't going to give him a free pass. I think google handled the situation poorly. They should pay him some amount, like the expected CTR for the ads that were displayed on his site. As far as Google never doing business with him, I think thats fine and correct... think of the big picture here.
      • rossjudson 16y ago
        It's not _entirely_ clear that asking users to click on ads is prohibited. That phrase is in section 11 a) ii, in the _Payment_ area, not in section 5, which lists Prohibited Uses. Perhaps it should be. Of interest is section 11's withholding clause, which states that the withholding is "pending Google's reasonable investigation". I don't know why it's there, if Google can terminate at its sole discretion at any time (which is can, according to Section 6). I think it's there to throw some legal chaff in the air and make it _seem_ like there's some protection, so the agreement isn't entirely one-sided. Section 11 (which provides a vague promise of investigation) does NOT survive termination of the agreement, according to section 6. So termination means the investigation is over, and means it never actually has to take place. A fair agreement might require Google to return, to advertisers, confiscated funds. A fair agreement might also create a "suspended" state for an account, preventing termination until the results of a "reasonable investigation" are available. Of course, IANAL. I am just reading what is there, which is what most of us have to do. Looks to me that Google can confiscate any funds it wishes, then terminate.
• patio11 16y ago
  So, as an AdWords advertiser, here is my experience when someone gets "creative" with ways to encourage their audience to click on my ads: 1) I see a sudden spike in my daily spend and think "Yay, I'm going to get more customers!" 2) I go to Analytics and see a wave of people who spent seconds on the website and did not convert to the trial. 3) Google bills my credit card for hundreds of dollars. This has actually happened, although the specific incentive to click fraud was different. I was sixteen flavors of pissed. Google keeping me unpissed is worth $10,000 a year. I'm a wee little customer. The whackamole sites are worth a few tens of dollars a year when behaving normally. What do you expect Google to do?
  • alanh 16y ago
    Don't be heartless. There are thousands of dollars being stolen from an honest cameraman and you don't think Google owes him one word from a real human? Honestly?
    • patio11 16y ago
      I'm the last guy in line to apologize for Google's attitude with regards to customer service, but to the extent my cynical blackened heart beats for anyone, it is the kayaking guy (et al) who paid those thousands of dollars and received no service in return for it. They have kids to put through school and Christmas presents to buy, too. He got a real human to look into his account, incidentally, which I would have killed for a few times. They told him the breaks: you broke the rules, no, there is no second chance.
      • Zak 16y ago
        I'm having trouble understanding what rule he broke. He had some content with ads on it chosen by Google's algorithms. People clicked those ads, then didn't buy anything from the advertiser. How is that his fault? I don't mean this as a rhetorical question. I honestly want to know how someone with an ad-supported site can avoid such a situation. Edit: elsewhere in the comments, I see that he was telling his viewers that clicking the ads gets him money. I agree, that's not fair to the advertisers.
• alanh 16y ago
  I'm realt glad this story is getting told. Bumping up against Google's machine-enforced, unfair rules is easier to do honestly than you may think — and it's a terribly cold, hopeless, impersonal, recourseless, unfair experience. Imagine 1950s automatons running a bureaucracy. It's like that. «I'm-sorry-sir-my-programming-indicates-you-are-a-fraudulent-user.» From TFA: I also spent a lot of time on line finding out why people get thrown out of the Adsense scheme and discovered that Google has three sets of rules you can break: 1. The ones in the very long contract that I confess I did not read very carefully 2. The rules that they try to explain in their many pages of Questions and Answers and FAQs 3. The rules they do not tell you about because they are secret and deal with their algorithms
  • kjksf 16y ago
    You claim that rules are "unfair" but don't provide a standard of fairness you're using or any evidence to support your claim. You claim it's easy to violate the rules honestly. You do not provide any evidence for that claim. In this particular case the guy admits to violating the rules by encouraging his visitors to click on ads. I think he was treated very fairly: his account was suspended, just like accounts of other people who do click fraud.
    • alanh 16y ago
      I could share anecdotes but don't want to get into it, and you're busy blaming the victim anyway.
      • Matt_Cutts 16y ago
        I for one would be interested in hearing more, if you want to share.
        • dfabulich 16y ago
          OK, here's an anecdote. http://www.choiceofgames.com/blog/2010/08/were-banned-from-google-adsense/ http://www.choiceofgames.com/blog/2010/08/were-banned-from-g... We're a game website -- auto-banned, appeal denied. We've done nothing wrong that we know of. Never encouraged clicking, never clicked ourselves. Since we have no access to the data, we'll never know what might have happened. One strike -- you're banned for life. I'll be at Google IO this year; my top priority is to find someone to talk to about this. I know people say it's impossible to get unbanned, but I can't believe that's true. I'm going to keep trying, for years if I have to.
• scotty79 16y ago
  Why Google just doesn't lower value of his clicks accordingly instead of closing his account? This all or nothing, good or bad approach doesn't seem to fit grayness of reality.
• kunley 16y ago
  That guy is pretty immature with his complaints. He choose such risky way of getting the income by himself. He's had expectations bar too high and made few strategic mistakes. He's also got quite luxurious problems like not being able to get decent money for his sailing hobby. Mr Dylan, looks like your 55 years didn't give you much insights on life, otherwise you wouldn't be complaining on the way you've chosen for yourself.
• Shorel 16y ago
  Cut the middle man. I mean cut Google Adsense. What he was doing was paying a big cost of opportunity there. If he has that vertical market of subscribers he should deal with the boat insurance providers or other suitable advertisers himself. Let the 1c become 500c or a lot more.
• dools 16y ago
  I didn't see any way to comment on the story but someone should let this guy know he should certainly be able to delete his truck vids to stop Google profiting from his work since discontinuing his AdSense account.
• epoxyhockey 16y ago
  Selling Android apps in the Market? It's linked to AdSense too. So, if Google kills your website for AdSense abuse, you also won't get paid for your apps which are selling for $0.99. If you get banned from web AdSense, you also get banned from Youtube and from selling apps in the Android Market. That's an ugly monopoly. (edit) source: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=59011926099d3468 http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=590...
  • megablast 16y ago
    Can you setup separate accounts? This might be the way to go.
    • epoxyhockey 16y ago
      Nope. If you setup a separate account with any of the same personal information, Google will disable your account just before you are supposed to be paid out for your app sales. They detect that your new account is related to your banned account. That's the exact case for the individual referenced in the parent post's help forum link.
      • BonesLF 16y ago
        I hate to incriminate myself, actually not really, but anyway create account in mom's name at mom's address. Create account in dog's name at PO Box. You get the idea. Fuck tha G-ride I want the machines that are makin em
  • kjksf 16y ago
    There's a simple solution: don't engage in fraud click.
• zacharyz 16y ago
  So if users clicking on ads without the intention of buying is click fraud - what about when a user accidentally opens one of those lame ads on a youtube video when they were actually trying to close the ad? I certainly had no intention of giving the advertiser any money and yet it probably registers on their end as a click.
• jrockway 16y ago
  Seems like the solution to this problem is to create a legal entity for each company you do business with. Then when they suspend FooBar LLC's Adsense account, you create BarBaz LLC and try again. If you use your real name or real SSN, you're stuck if anything bad happens.
• rebooter 16y ago
  I've had my run-in with Google AdSense in the past. My prediction: If they don't change their ways this is headed to a huge class-action lawsuit and nothing but bad press. My experience was interesting and revealing. I had a bunch of domains (about 200) parked with GoDaddy in something called "cash parking". Not a money maker, but, what the heck. Once I realized that this was actually a service provided by Google I decided to look into cutting-out the middle man. I looked into AdSense and found AdSense for Domains. Exactly the same service being offered by GoDaddy. I took all 200-some domains off GoDaddy, created an AdSense account and parked all of them with Google. They approved every single domain name and put ads on them. Great. Two days later I get this email about fraudulent activity and the termination of my AdSense account. I appealed. No love. So, the termination was, effectively, forever. Here's the irony of this story. The same 200 domains had been parked with GoDaddy for months without any issues. Serviced by Google. They even made a few bucks for all involved. The domains were not advertised in any way anywhere. I just parked them and went on with my business. This means that Google was responsible for sending traffic to these sites, every bit of it. About 50 of the domains were political in nature. Being that this was around election time my guess is that they got more traffic than usual, and, I guess, hits. I'll never know because the account was killed within two days of being formed with no data provided whatsoever. So: Google sends traffic to the sites. The sites get clicks. They close my AdSense account. No appeal, no recourse, no human being to speak to. Bullshit! Google needs to get sued in a major way to "reset" some of their behaviors. Why? Because they are a de-facto monopoly. Search is dominated by them. Video (YouTube) is dominated by them. Advertising (AdWords and AdSense) is dominated by them. They do not provide for any intelligent way to deal with problems. They will tell you that you've done something wrong but will NOT provide proof, details nor an opportunity to rectify the problem. A likely scenario is that of someone just getting started who makes a few mistakes and needs to learn. Google does not provide for any of the above. They are judge, jury and executioner and a pretty mean one at that. This fellow with the boat site probably deserved a slap on the hand for his site. He did no deserve to loose ALL OF HIS INCOME. They could have easily said something like: "Your site-based per-click revenue is now 10% of normal during a probation period. These are the things you did wrong: link. Here's where you can see the activity and what happened: link. Here are the rules you need to pay attention to: link. The account will be monitored and your earnings percentage slowly increased as we see that these violations are rectified. We look forward to a continued relationship with <company name>". ...A far better approach. If you are going to shut down someones entire revenue stream you need to have a humane and reasonable process to review the situation and seek resolution rather than hitting someone over the head with a sledge-hammer. I don't know what will trigger this lawsuit. I do think that it is almost inevitable. They might even need to be broken into different verticals in order to make it all fair. I think they are playing a dangerous game. I think they are playing with fire. The Google "do no evil" thing may have been a nice idea. However, as it pertains to AdWords/AdSense they are headed straight for evil-land if they keep on this path. There's another topic: Google censorship. I think that, because they are a monopoly, they don't have the right to censor. They can't be in charge of what is and isn't appropriate on the web. Different issue.
• lopatamd 16y ago
  rofl at random trolls who says 'Oh google is so evil.. poor man etc..' he broke the rules, his acc was disabled and thats all.. this is not the first time this stuff happens with Adsense...they are Very very strict.. you must be very careful.. those rules are tricky..
• jeffreyrusso 16y ago
  I honestly sympathize. It's a horrible thing to be blindsided by something like this when it's a main source of income. The approach Google took was cold and heartless, that goes without saying. All that being said, I can understand why things like this happen, and I don't necessarily fault Google. When a particular placement generates a lot of traffic that doesn't convert, Google has an obligation to take action on behalf of their paying advertisers.
• dfgherher 16y ago
  === http://path.to/e3067/ http://path.to/e3067/ ==== === http://path.to/e3067/ http://path.to/e3067/ ==== === http://path.to/e3067/ http://path.to/e3067/ ==== Gold autumn, personality Men’s clothing + Shoes, Travel bag that grabs an eye coat + Chao packet Free transport === http://path.to/e3067/ http://path.to/e3067/ ==== === http://path.to/e3067/ http://path.to/e3067/ ==== === http://path.to/e3067/ http://path.to/e3067/ ====
• QuantumGood 16y ago
  Google had no choice: · He encouraged people to click on ads to bring him income; · He had a high level of fraudulent clicks detected. His "encouragement" was mildly phrased, but he mentions that people responded to it by generating fraudulent clicks. This is EXACTLY the kind of person Google MUST ban.
• dasht 16y ago
  One implication of this story is that simple "click spam" can kill off some Google products, censor a small business, etc. The product Google is offering is inherently vulnerable to low-cost, high-price attack.
• doyoulikeworms 16y ago
  I don't have much AdSense experience, but what is there to protect folks from click fraud fraud? Example: A blog/app/whatever is targeted by anonymous/botnet/whatever and intentionally drives the CTR to an insane amount for a sustained period.
• kbutler 16y ago
  This is a product recall by Google. Google has customers (ad buyers) and suppliers (publishers). The product Google sells is ad clicks. Google determined that the supplier delivered a contaminated product. Google issued a recall that also affected (presumably) non-contaminated product (clicks) delivered by the same supplier. Google also has a zero-tolerance policy to prevent any further contamination. It's harsh. It probably is overly broad in this particular case. But Google makes a lot more by protecting its customers (ad buyers) from tainted products (clicks) than by protecting its suppliers (publishers) from overly broad recalls. The only way this will change is if suppliers (publishers) become significantly more rare. kb
  • rossjudson 16y ago
    "Zero-tolerance" is often code-speak for "too lazy to bother to check". Your recall analogy fails because, after the recall, the supplier is never permitted to transact again. A conventional recall is an opportunity for a company to fix a mistake, then move on.
    • kbutler 16y ago
      An analogy doesn't have to be exact to be useful. The interesting case here is that it's the "retailer" initiating the recall, rather than the "supplier". And you're completely right - Google is too lazy to bother to check, because the cost-benefit ratio is just too high. Why bother, when there are lots of other suppliers? If you're a retailer, and a supplier for a tiny fraction of your business does something that makes you process a recall for a bunch of your customers, would you bother working with that supplier again? kb
• Joshim5 16y ago
  I had the same issue a few years ago on my site. It was really annoying. Google got me for "click fraud". I had some friends who were looking at my site in school. Some people clicked on adverts. Since these views were from the same school, Google probably thought they were the same computer/person. It really sucks.
• ddkrone 16y ago
  I think this is fascinating. So if there is some site that I don't like that mostly generates revenue with the help of google ads a really roundabout way of taking them down would be to devise a scheme and raise their click-through rate through the roof and wait for whatever algorithm google uses to catch on and raise red flags.
  • numbchuckskills 16y ago
    that wouldn't work.
• injekt 16y ago
  A very mixed bag of responses in the comments. It appears to me that the writer may have inadvertently asked his users to click on adverts, because it helps him generate profit. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but Google does, and it explicitly says that in its Adsense contract. With that being said, Mr Winter deserved a human voice at the very least. A discussion, not a computer generated decision. Perhaps the adsense account for the personal website should have been ceased, but doing so for the youtube one too, is petty. Of course (assuming) a computer can't tell the difference between these outlets a human voice would have helped in this matter. After reading some of the comments, I really think pulling down the youtube videos and throwing up 30 second 'previews', with a link to the full version on Vimeo, is a great idea. There's no doubt it will generate less income, but you'll get your cut.
• dsgrweger 16y ago
  -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ Gold autumn, personality Men’s clothing + Shoes, Travel bag that grabs an eye coat + Chao packet Free transport -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------
• GDH 16y ago
  Google has advertising all wrong with AdWords, they constantly encourage ad spamming of low value ads, with little relativity to extremely large groups. With the huge amounts of data Google as collected over the years, you would think that they would have created a more efficient advertising platform, where a 6% click through isn't considered to high, where 6% is considered to low. AdWords was, without a doubt, a great business move.... at the time. Times change, I don't see why we have to be bombarded with 1000's of irrelevant ads a day. If I were to see only ONE advert a day, and that ONE advert was for something I was truly interested in, then billions of dollars in useless advertising could be spent on bettering a product. Maybe it's time for conventional advertising to die, imagine clean websites with no ugly, annoying pop ups, scroll overs or sound ads. It's just an idea, highly unlikely to happen, yet it would create a simpler cleaner internet, while cutting down on global advertising spending and driving up conversion rates.
• xcvgreghre 16y ago
  -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://yep.it/fyphgj http://yep.it/fyphgj ------ Gold autumn, personality Men’s clothing + Shoes, Travel bag that grabs an eye coat + Chao packet Free transport -------- http://yep.it/fyphgj http://yep.it/fyphgj ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------
• sdghrth 16y ago
  Click on our website: === ( http://www.etradinglife.com http://www.etradinglife.com ) === === ( http://www.etradinglife.com http://www.etradinglife.com ) === "Priority, my friend!! Christmas is coming, quick to our website shopping, our web site shopping there will be something different, unexpected things to you, let you have different sense, our website wholesale various fashion shoes, such as Nike, Jordan, prada, also includes the jeans, shirt, bags, hats and decoration. All these products are our free transport, prices are competitive, we can also accept paypal j, after the payment within short time, can ship. = New era cap $12; Air jordan(1-24)shoes $30; jordan air max oakland raiders $34a€“39; Ed Hardy AF JUICY POLO Bikini $25; Christan Audigier BIKINI JACKET $25; Tshirts (Polo ,ed hardy,lacoste) $15 coogi DG edhardy gucci t-shirts $18; gstar coogi evisu true jeans $35; coach chanel gucci LV handbags $36; Sunglasses(Oakey,coach,gucci,A r m a i n i) $15; === ( http://www.etradinglife.com http://www.etradinglife.com ) === === ( http://www.etradinglife.com http://www.etradinglife.com ) === === ( http://www.etradinglife.com http://www.etradinglife.com ) === === ( http://www.etradinglife.com http://www.etradinglife.com ) === === ( http://www.etradinglife.com http://www.etradinglife.com ) === === ( http://www.etradinglife.com http://www.etradinglife.com ) === === ( http://www.etradinglife.com http://www.etradinglife.com ) ===
• earino 16y ago
  People click on ads?!?
• SteveJS 16y ago
  While this looks like click fraud to the advertisers, is that failure due to the people clicking? Or Google? This seems to be to be a failure on Google's part to properly leverage a real audience, rather than a legitimate detection of click fraud. Google's Ad system is assuming a transient audience with little invested in the content, so that sending the same (content targeted) ad repeatedly to the site is the right thing. This is a small audience with much invested in the site. Sending ads from the same advertiser to the same small audience has diminishing returns. This is a failure to capture value, based on the investment of the audience rather than the type of the content. Sending a wide variety of ads is necessary to properly leverage a small invested audience.
• rradu 16y ago
  I've had to deal with AdSense's auto-bans before. The appeal process is slow and very rarely do you get a response from an actual person. When you do get in touch with a real person, they offer very little additional information besides copy/pasting whatever's on their help site--even if it's not relevant to your situation. I guess this is akin to Apple's seemingly arbitrary bans of apps, but at least Apple doesn't have the gall to tout that "don't be evil" philosophy.
• dennisgorelik 16y ago
  My guess is that Google calculated how efficient was Dylan's traffic was for AdWords customers. AdWords customers can setup goals for their ads (reach certain page e.g. "ThankYouForYourPurchase.html". So if almost all traffic Dylan sent did not reach any goals, then it's disappointing for AdWords users and for Google. So when Google determined that -- they were only looking for an excuse to drop him, and Dylan gave such excuse by indirectly incentivizing users to click on AdSense ads. --- I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers --- Still Google should be more transparent about reasons why they are dropping AdSense partners.
• Stormbringer 16y ago
  Seems like Google's taking a leaf out of Paypal's book. I think that a system where the only game in town has a financial incentive (they get to steal your money) to ban you is bound to be open to abuse. ==== But even apart from that I think the internet advertising model is all kinds of broken. It seems your choices are: (a) try to get real money for content (b) try to get tiny money (micropayments) for content (c) give it away free, and hope that the ads you slather it with don't drive away too many people (axiom: ads always suck, and are a drain on the goodwill of the people whose time you are wasting with them) (d) abandon all hope of making a living
• giberson 16y ago
  This is what kills me about advertising--I literally can't believe it works. Yet, heres an article about a guy using an ad company to show ads to generate revenue, and in the comments here at HN, a viewpoint from some one using an ad company to have their company advertised. In both cases they actually state that: a) there is actually a conversion rate between ads on a site and purchases for a product, and b) imply that the conversion rate is substantial enough to facilitate ad companies and the whole ad process. This flabbergasts me, because I have never ever once clicked on an advertisement [on purpose] with the intention of finding out more or purchasing an advertised product (nor the purpose to "support" a site). I literally liken it to falling for Nigerian scams. That's not to say I've never been influenced by advertising--but in general I do tend to buy store brands [cheaper] over name brands. I certainly have never been so influenced to feel the immediate actionable need to buy a product after having seen an ad. But this isn't a rant about how I hate ads, actually I'm hoping one of you amazing HN people can explain, with logic, why and how ads work? Whats the mentality of people (sheep?) that see and ad after watching a truck video and think, gee I really must visit this car wax website and buy some car wax now. There gotta be some kind of psychology or game theory that explains the successfulness of the [online] ad industry.
• danenania 16y ago
  Google could show much better judgment in their response. Perhaps he did technically break the rules, but not wantonly and not with malevolent intentions. He deserves a warning, and perhaps to have some percentage of his income returned to advertisers, but taking ALL the money in his account and completely shutting off a significant portion of this man's income stream for what amounts to a relatively innocent mistake is a huge overreaction and a lousy thing to do to someone. You're better than this Google.