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My name is Tom Siegel and I work on publisher and ad traffic quality at Google. Our objective us to keep fraud out of the network while ensuring a fair process

My name is Tom Siegel and I work on publisher and ad traffic quality at Google. Our objective us to keep fraud out of the network while ensuring a fair process with as much transparency as we can justify. We'll take a look at the cases mentioned on this thread. If anyone has additional questions or comments you can email me at tsiegel@google.com. We appreciate the feedback.

victork2 15y ago
Hi Tom, It's a nice gesture, but... this could have been handled way before and from the messages in this thread it seems like a very common occurrence. As somebody who wanted to use your services in the future that thread totally changed my vision of Adsense and I am exploring other companies for ads. We need you guys at Adsense to fix the problem after it happens, of course, but also beforehand because holding money for too long can kill a business. Thanks
powertower 15y ago
Two years ago my AdWords account was permanently suspended. I sell a fairly complicated (120k+ lines of code) .NET application (http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper) that manages the creation and hosting of websites by using the popular Apache, PHP, MySQL stack, and other apps. And I also provide support for it and the mentioned tech, the cost of which is included in the price of my software. And I've been doing this is some way or fashion since 2003. For that, I was told, my site "had been flagged for unacceptable business practices", that is, as far as I could de-crypt the support conversation... Selling free items. A big WTF moment for me. It's unlikely you can help me, but you can help others by white-listing the adwords/adsense customer service representatives’ email domains or IP blocks in Gmail... As both emails I received from them I found in my Gmail’s spam folder (pure luck on my part)! I can’t think of how many people must get the silent treatment from Google due to this blunder.
IsolatedDress 15y ago
Hello Tom, Quick question for you. Does Google have any statement on the thousands and thousands of small businesses that are destroyed because Google doesn't provide any realistic customer service options unless you manage to somehow get a thread to the top of Hacker News?
yeldarb 15y ago
Hi Tom, I am the founder of Hatchlings. Thanks for looking into this. We completely understand the need to fight fraud. We've spent heavily on advertising as well and rely on Google and others to make sure our spend is not going to waste. Our beef here is not even necessarily with the false positive. The main problems here are that a) We have never been accused of wrongdoing by Google. This makes it very hard to defend ourselves. b) That it takes making a lot of noise in a very public manner to get any sort of response. and c) That we had a working relationship with Google and a track record of working with our account manager to improve our ad placements, etc. If there was a legitimate concern with our "traffic quality" why didn't someone at Google give me a call to talk about it and see what we could do to fix whatever issues there apparently were?
- TomSiegel 15y ago
  Thanks for the additional context. Will look into this and get back in touch via email.

victork2 15y ago

Hi Tom, It's a nice gesture, but... this could have been handled way before and from the messages in this thread it seems like a very common occurrence. As somebody who wanted to use your services in the future that thread totally changed my vision of Adsense and I am exploring other companies for ads. We need you guys at Adsense to fix the problem after it happens, of course, but also beforehand because holding money for too long can kill a business. Thanks

powertower 15y ago

Two years ago my AdWords account was permanently suspended. I sell a fairly complicated (120k+ lines of code) .NET application (http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper) that manages the creation and hosting of websites by using the popular Apache, PHP, MySQL stack, and other apps. And I also provide support for it and the mentioned tech, the cost of which is included in the price of my software. And I've been doing this is some way or fashion since 2003. For that, I was told, my site "had been flagged for unacceptable business practices", that is, as far as I could de-crypt the support conversation... Selling free items. A big WTF moment for me. It's unlikely you can help me, but you can help others by white-listing the adwords/adsense customer service representatives’ email domains or IP blocks in Gmail... As both emails I received from them I found in my Gmail’s spam folder (pure luck on my part)! I can’t think of how many people must get the silent treatment from Google due to this blunder.

IsolatedDress 15y ago

Hello Tom, Quick question for you. Does Google have any statement on the thousands and thousands of small businesses that are destroyed because Google doesn't provide any realistic customer service options unless you manage to somehow get a thread to the top of Hacker News?

yeldarb 15y ago

Hi Tom, I am the founder of Hatchlings. Thanks for looking into this. We completely understand the need to fight fraud. We've spent heavily on advertising as well and rely on Google and others to make sure our spend is not going to waste. Our beef here is not even necessarily with the false positive. The main problems here are that a) We have never been accused of wrongdoing by Google. This makes it very hard to defend ourselves. b) That it takes making a lot of noise in a very public manner to get any sort of response. and c) That we had a working relationship with Google and a track record of working with our account manager to improve our ad placements, etc. If there was a legitimate concern with our "traffic quality" why didn't someone at Google give me a call to talk about it and see what we could do to fix whatever issues there apparently were?

TomSiegel 15y ago
Thanks for the additional context. Will look into this and get back in touch via email.