13 ms·

Google AdSense leak?

425 points by rmujica 12y ago

jpswade 12y ago
There's no name given of anyone involved, so nobody can be held accountable for this whether it's true or not.
xtraclass 12y ago
Is this real?
- bitJericho 12y ago
  It would be completely unsurprising.
killertypo 12y ago
I have no reason to not believe this, but I also have no reason to believe this. It does not sound too far fetched though.
jongraehl 12y ago
Plausible sci-fi. The scheme described would have leaked immediately. Too obvious and too many people.
- mmahemoff 12y ago
  Wouldn't that make it not plausible?
cliveowen 12y ago
Making this kind of statements and then not providing any kind of proof is just pointless. No one has any reason to believe any of this and this can't therefore be considered a leak because it carries absolutely no value.
semmem1 12y ago
Is someone shorting Google Stock to make some cash?
birken 12y ago
Let's think about this logically. Google takes 32% of every adsense click [1], so assuming an account makes $5,000/month, Google is making $2,352/month from that account. So by banning the account, they are making $5,000 one-time, and losing $2,352/month forever. No company is stupid enough to do that. However, considering a site making $5,000 or $10,000/month is generating quite a few clicks, I think it makes perfect sense for any account reaching these thresholds to be manually reviewed to ensure they are valid sites. The quality of Google's clicks is one of its main selling points, and by cutting out spammy sites at the source it both improves the quality of its own program and at the same time removes a lot of the financial incentive to run a scummy site. So my guess is these policies (or similar policies that involve manual reviews of sites) make perfect sense, are not illegal in any way, and this whole posting is as bogus as it looks. 1: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en
- DoubleMalt 12y ago
  This not necessarily the case. Most advertisers will have fixed budgets to spend on AdSense. Under this assumption banning a publisher would not diminish the revenue stream but just diverting the ads to other not yet banned publishers. That doesn't mean the scheme as described is true, but it's not as obviously stupid as your first paragraph makes it seem.
  - voicereasonish 12y ago
    Also obviously if Google reduces the pool of adsense publishers, the money is more likely to be spent advertising on Google properties, and Google will take 100% of that, rather than 32%.
    - CaveTech 12y ago
      If that was an ideal strategy they would have never opened it up to publishers in the first place. Google no doubt optimizes their algorithms for profit, but they surely don't need to block out publishers to ensure their own sites have ads to display.
hanley 12y ago
I found this part interesting. So the only way to even find out the reason for your account being banned is to hire a lawyer. > A reason has to be internally attached to the account ban. The problem was that notifying the publisher for the reason is not a requirement, even if the publisher asks. The exception: The exact reason must be provided if a legal representative contacts Google on behalf of the account holder.
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ChuckMcM 12y ago
It reads like some disgruntled AdSense publishers theory as to why they were banned. Now it is true that in 2009, when the Great Recession hit, Google went through its processes and identified places where controls were lax. And its true that there has always been a lot of abuse of AdSense (it is after all the first thing a neophyte ad-fraud wannabe does, which is create a page, put AdSense ads on it, and then pay a bot-net to click on them. It almost seems like some sort of starter project or tutorial it was so common) I would be surprised though if anyone actually sought out to 'screw' the legitimate advertisers. It is after all Google's bread and butter.
- voicereasonish 12y ago
  > It is after all Google's bread and butter. Is it? How much do Google make from the adsense publisher network vs advertising directly on Google properties?
  - ariwilson 12y ago
    http://investor.google.com/pdf/2014Q1_google_earnings_slides.pdf http://investor.google.com/pdf/2014Q1_google_earnings_slides... (slide 3) (revenue) $3.4B network $10.5B Google properties $1.5B other
    - xdleet 12y ago
      http://investor.google.com/pdf/2010Q1_google_earnings_slides.pdf http://investor.google.com/pdf/2010Q1_google_earnings_slides... Check out that dip in '09. Interesting.
- deleted 12y ago
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- andrenotgiant 12y ago
  The BIG Advertisers are their bread and butter, but every big advertiser knows to avoid most contextual targeting Text Ad buys. Here's something that came into play around 2009: When a new advertiser (think small business) goes into AdWords to set up their first account, the default is to show Ads on Search AND Display Network. After setting things up, these two sources of VERY DIFFERENT traffic get lumped together in a lot of high-level reporting. Until they specifically look at the quality of Display vs Search traffic (and see Avg Visit Durations from Display traffic around 5 seconds) they will not know about the crappy quality of sites they are on.
deleted 12y ago
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benlarcey 12y ago
Whilst I've never used adSense much, this does corroborate with chatter in SEO/webmaster forums, especially around 2012. The paragraph on G analytics is also very interesting, it never seems to line up with other tracking tools like Piwik.
- at-fates-hands 12y ago
  This is one the thing that I found curious as well. I worked at a company who used WebTrends. Some of the their customers installed Google Analytics alongside Webtrends and then would complain that the numbers didn't match up between the two. Sometimes it wasn't close (+/- 10%) other times it was closer, but there was always a discrepancy between the two. Of course it looked since we used WebTrends, we were inflating the numbers, when in reality, it was the exact opposite. When I read this part of the post, I could totally see them tweaking the GA numbers so they were lower.
  - hagbardgroup 12y ago
    The reason for this would be that GA filters out bot traffic differently than other vendors. That includes legitimate bots like search engine crawlers. Web analytics are just not that accurate. The number quoted by the Xoogler in an analytics manual I recently went though is an expectation of ~10%+ wiggle. GA is always going to show 'lower' numbers than straight logs in particular because of this.
- guyzero 12y ago
  And no one on an SEO forum would ever try to get questionable traffic to their site for the purposes of pumping up AdSense revenue.
- spada 12y ago
  Seems that GA is always lower than Piwik and adsense is always much lower than GA.
ewillbefull 12y ago
Funny; back in 2010 this exact thing happened to a company I worked at. The day before payout (for the previous month) our AdSense account was banned. So we lost 2 months worth of ad revenue. They completely ignored all of our emails and we had to move to another ad provider immediately.
- camus2 12y ago
  that happened to me , now i dont know if there is a wide scale scam or it was just a "bug" but they banned me for no reason and of course no way to appeal.And they owed me quite a lot.I moved to some other ad service,it pays less but i still get my money.
  - ensignavenger 12y ago
    One way to appeal- file a lawsuit. :)
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - camus2 12y ago
      While the money they owed me was significant it would have been difficult(and expensive) to sue google at that time. It would be very different today.I had to write it off.And they had the audacity to send me a 50$ voucher for adsense just after that...
      - ensignavenger 12y ago
        That is certainly a challenge. It really irks me when there is such a power imbalance and people take advantage of it. When I have to use the courts, I generally use small claims court and represent myself when I can, and I've had good luck with that, even though the time and cost for legal filings is not insignificant. The amount they owed you was likely more than the max in your state for small claims, though.
    - 12y ago
oh_sigh 12y ago
If this is such a slam dunk, why not just go directly to the FBI or IRS? I'm sure there are tons of people in those orgs who would LOVE to smash google if they really were behaving in such an illegal manner. It seems a bit more realistic than hoping that they see this pastebin text, and decide to follow up on it, track you down, and get your statements on the record.
- HNaTTY 12y ago
  I guess the IRS isn't the right place to go because all that money is probably reported as income by Google. Too bad because IRS whistleblowers are eligible for a percentage of any amount the IRS is able to collect, and with a company as big as Google, that could be an earth-shatteringly large amount of money.
- mstade 12y ago
  Reaching out to the authorities may take much longer or even be ignored, and causing a PR stink may be a much more effective approach. As an example, the SEC was contacted with regards to Bernard Madoff likely running a ponzy scheme as early as 1999, yet went largely ignored for a decade. Just because you contact authorities doesn't necessarily mean they believe you or even care, regardless of how much actual evidence you have (of which the OP has presented none, by the way.) Causing a PR stink raises the profile of the issue, and could be a much more effective approach to getting the authorities attention. That said, I don't believe OP's story for a second, for many of the same reasons other have cited. If this was a true case of whistle blowing, there would be tangible evidence but the OP has presented none.
deleted 12y ago
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- piokuc 12y ago
  Does it prove anything? Google has offices in many countries and employees of many nationalities.
- adventureartist 12y ago
  Not being a native English speaker doesn't exactly eliminate the possibility of being a Google employee...
baby 12y ago
Happened to someone I know back in 2005 I think, he lost 2 months of payment, and it was a lot of money. But he had some erotic videos on his website so... mostly his fault.
tty 12y ago
The link went from being #3 on the frontpage to below #20 in a matter of minutes.
- sscalia 12y ago
  How dare anyone on HN attack Google.
  - Matt_Cutts 12y ago
    It's a fake. It's an anonymous post on pastebin, submitted by a one-time account. The terminology is wrong. The policies are wrong. The post is full of typos. The post has almost no specifics, and the one specific thing they mentioned ("AQ3C") isn't real. If this story isn't getting traction, then HN is doing the right thing here.
    - ltorresv 12y ago
      I do see a decent number of people posting they've had issues with cancellations that match what the pastebin describes. Why aren't you replying to any of them if you're acting as the voice of reason here?
      - whatevsbro 12y ago
        > Why aren't you replying to any of them if you're acting as the voice of reason here? Exactly because the fraudulent bans are actually a widespread phenomenon, but that goes against what Matt's been telling us here.
6thSigma 12y ago
The risk/reward here doesn't add up. Taking an extra few thousand a month from publishers isn't worth risking the billions in revenue they make per year.
__xtrimsky 12y ago
I got banned from Google Adsense as a teenager (7 years ago). Still regret my stupid decision to try and hack Google Adsense clicks. My account was never restored :(.
- soaringabove 12y ago
  Most murderers get out in a few years. Google has no sense of due process whatsoever. You should be allowed back in after a while -- especially if you were very young.
rikacomet 12y ago
"Don't be evil" It is a beautiful peace of rhetoric. Yet I wonder, about its effectiveness/achievement inside Google in last 5 years since its inception. Perhaps its because, don't be evil translates to, a middle ground always. Its almost like trying to keep your company on 0-loss/0-profit. That is not a great place to be, because you fall from grace easily. "Be more good than evil" anyone?
Greenisus 12y ago
I'm inclined to believe this, but I'm skeptical of Google Analytics numbers being deflated. Wouldn't people notice the data not being consistent with other tools or their own web server logs?
- justanotherlurk 12y ago
  It's funny you mentioned this. I was researching Piwiks as an analytics tool today. In a few of the articles, they gave reason to use Piwiks because it shows more traffic than Google Analytics does, with graphs to demonstrate. These were articles from over the past few years. DDG or google search "piwiks analytics better than" and you'll likely see the same articles. I've also seen on many SEO forums that people have complained about the same things in regards to getting banned days before their payout. Most website advertiser types are the kind of people who are recalcitrant to file a lawsuit. I know I am myself. So really, it's a good business decision in this regard. I can't accuse Google of anything though. On the other hand, automating account bans past a certain earning threshold unless they're high profile people seems easy to implement, with a massive earning when done on the multi-billion-dollar [0] ad revenue scale that Google oversees. [0] http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/google-finally-crosses-50-billion-annual-revenue-mark-146710 http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/google-finally-crosses...
  - fastolfe 12y ago
    "... automating account bans past a certain earning threshold ... seems easy to implement, with a massive earning" More earnings than not banning them and letting them continue to make money for Google?
- hagbardgroup 12y ago
  This was also my take. Also, during the period being written about, Adsense fraud at scale was a really huge issue.
perlgeek 12y ago
I somehow doubt this is true, but Google has done its fair share to give rise to such rumours. Mostly they have been very opaque on the reasons of account bans, they haven't payed out the remaining balances of banned accounts (even when they presented no proof of any fraud), and finally they haven't provided a working way to appeal any bans. I can understand their decisions, but they do come with the risk of bad PR.
adventureartist 12y ago
As a developer, I have had, and friends have had thier Adsense accounts banned right before payout for legitimate earnings. It hurts so bad to have that happen, and Google gives you little recourse. I cannot speak to the legitimacy of this pastebin, but reading it, it sounds completely plausible. If it walks like a duck...
scott_karana 12y ago
If it's an anonymous leak, exposing overt fraud, why would the poster not name names, unless this leak was a fake? > "...fuck the rest" (those words were actually said by a Google AdSense exec) > there was a "sit-down" from the AdSense division higher ups to talk about new emerging issues
DrJosiah 12y ago
If you are going to sit around and "see what happens" for 3 years, you talk to a lawyer. You gather evidence. Emails, text chats, etc. You audio record meetings and conversations with people (subject to lawyer advice). You collect enough information over a long enough period of time so that an investigator can trivially search a dumped archive of email to verify your claims. But we are supposed to believe someone who offers effectively no evidence from the duration of their claimed tenure, and who pushes it off as "I stayed because I had a family to support, and secondly I wanted to see how far they would go." and identity protection at the level of "such as waiting for the appropriate employee turn around" So... no Hardy Boys level of investigation was performed, no evidence was gathered, no voices were recorded, no text messages were saved, no emails were forwarded, not a single byte was smuggled out on a flash drive nestled in the poster's pocket. Nothing was done to offer even the slightest bit of recording of anything. The poster is either the most pathetic excuse for a whistle blower that I've ever heard, or it's a poor-quality April fool's joke that is 28 days too late.
- 7952 12y ago
  There is obviously no proof one way or the other, questioning the veracity of the source does not change that. My guess is that new evidence will emerge sooner or later. A graph of cancellation dates would be an interesting start.
  - DrJosiah 12y ago
    In cases of whistle blowing, which this is purporting to be, evidence is one of the most important things that you can gather and report on. Yet we have literally none from the OP. What we have instead is a compelling story written anonymously, but for which there is no supporting evidence provided. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, yet there is none. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7668230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7668230 brings up the most important point to this entire thread, which is that the premise under which the OP claims that Google steals money from people through cancellation falls on its face when you look at the economics of a cancellation. It's just not economically viable for Google to do that - it's like eating your leg because you're hungry. And of all the things that Google is, it's not stupid.
halayli 12y ago
This is aligned with what I've heard from people working in Adsense department.
grimmfang 12y ago
The whole click bombing argument is undoubtedly true, I've seen it happen too many times. Additionally, from my experience, Google will wait until immediately before the payout period to ban. I had $750 waiting to be paid out one month then poof! Three days before the payout my account was banned. I don't know if this guy is telling the truth, but his arguments have truth in them.
mtnboy 12y ago
I know the mass ban affected a lot of my friends in 2012, and they all had legitimate websites.
praeivis 12y ago
GOOG around 520 for day of the leak: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GOOG+Interactive#symbol=GOOG;range=1m http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GOOG+Interactive#symbol=G... Lets wait how market will react.
- abritishguy 12y ago
  Nothing will happen because of some unsubstantiated pastebin.
tomp 12y ago
Hm... something does not compute: > Having signed many documents such as NDA's and non-competes, there are many repercussions for me, especially in the form of legal retribution from Google. > No one on the outside knows it, if they did, the FBI and possibly IRS would immediately launch an investigation, because what they are doing is so inherently illegal and they are flying completely under the radar. Wait, what legal repercussions? If what they're doing is illegal, (1) they probably wouldn't win the lawsuit against you, and (2) more importantly, NDAs don't apply (IANAL, but AFAIK contracts are overruled by law), and he could and should report the crime directly to the police. Unless, of course, s/he has too much to loose from bullying, or if s/he fears Google bought politicians.
- MertsA 12y ago
  That's correct, an NDA is completely irrelevant in terms of keeping someone from disclosing a crime.
jgalt212 12y ago
Regardless of whether this is true or not, I'd say it's a good rule of thumb when dealing with a Monolith (Google) to expect better treatment when paying them money (AdWords) than when they pay you money (AdSense).
jacquesm 12y ago
reocities.com got banned for no reason that I can think of, never bothered to try to engage google on this because it is as good as pointless. Google just simply doesn't care, as long as more people are signing up than they are cancelling they can keep the ship afloat. On the off-chance that you're trying to social engineer them they apparently can't take the risk to re-enable an account. So, I've taken the attitude that google adsense is to be avoided like the plague for anything approaching a business. It's found money if you can get it, and if you can't that shouldn't be a factor in your business plan at all.
fixermark 12y ago
"The new policy was officially called AdSense Quality Control Color Codes (commonly called AQ3C by employees)." You know, you'd think that if Google had a 2-years-running official policy, some other bit of leakage about it would have occurred by now. Two years is a long time for an official policy on a giant company's largest product to have never even been whispered, in accident, on the Internet before. Let me do a quick search... https://www.google.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+color+codes%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+c... Nope. Just three instances of Pastebin (Hm, wonder why three?). Oh, I know what I did wrong. I'm using the wrong search engine! http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+color+codes%22 http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+colo... Hm, nope, only one result there too. Curious.
- Matt_Cutts 12y ago
  There you go bringing reason to a conspiracy discussion. :) For what it's worth, I immediately searched for "aq3c" within Google and within my email--no matches found there either. In my estimation, this post is absolutely fake.
  - robin69 12y ago
    In whole explaination it seems like you ae defending Google. :). and why will anyone comeup with his original identity. The Leaker:P is also smart guy SIR. :)
    - nevi-me 12y ago
      Who else should defend his employer? Someone external who doesn't have any resources to follow?
- Springtime 12y ago
  Now being filled with news pieces about the pastebin. Reminds me somewhat of the Citogenesis XKCD panel (https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/).
deftnerd 12y ago
This makes me think of the HN link yesterday about identifying businesses that are doomed to fail because the only way they can sustain themselves is moving into new markets. If Google keeps on banning publishers from hosting AdSense ads in order to keep the AdSense money, that's the same dangerous behavior that's indicative of an unsustainable business. The question becomes can they sustain the growth and movement? Are there enough new publishers for Google to sign up to replace the ones they arbitrarily ban or will they eventually start having a hard time finding publishers and web properties?
adsenseclient 12y ago
As a large publisher, we have witnessed both the $10,000 and $5,000 thresholds. It's simply true. We are now using other networks and directly working with advertisers, and our AdSense revenue is $4,500 (total ad revenue is $25,000+/mo). We also quite presciently considered making a PR stink after the first AdSense ban (we were re-instated later), but decided this could tarnish the image of our company and of our product for our clients- AdSense revenue was not important enough. Even though after the initial ban (when we overshot $10,000/mo) we were OK'ed by a contact in their Policy Team and re-instated (a contact we found after a lot of work), EVERY time when we bounced back to $10,000 and then to $5,000 after scaling down, we would have new vague and inane threats from AdSense about our perfectly NORMAL UGC ,as if the initial conversation with their Policy has never taken place. We basically migrated away from AdSense, but if their are ANY SERIOUS LAWYERS here interested in a class action, we have a WEALTH of DETAILED documentation. ANAL, but it's definitely interesting: we have never encountered such a SHITTY treatment by any other company, and we have about 1,500 corporate clients. Once again, we never did anything shady or different than some other publishers that are apparently Green-listed by Google.
- adsensertoo 12y ago
  Also a large publisher, though we've surpassed the 5k/10k thresholds without issue. Out of curiosity, though, which other networks do you use and how do they compare to Adsense?
- fireworks10 12y ago
  Had an Adsense account banned in January with $15k credit taken days before payout date (After 8 months of $2k-$12k earnings history per month) and extremely low RPM&CTR. No answer to appeals, no explanation other than the vague phrase 'for policy violations'. :/
  - driverdan 12y ago
    Did you sue them for your money? If not, why not?
Matt_Cutts 12y ago
Everything about this post strikes me as a conspiracy-laden fake, from the typos to wrong terminology to untrue policies to the lack of specific names of people. I passed this pastebin to the ads side to confirm for sure, but I would treat this as completely untrue. Added: Yup, I'm hearing back from multiple people on the ads side that this is pretty much untrue from start to finish. Also notice that the "rmujica" account that submitted this item has never submitted any other story or written any other comment on Hacker News before today.
- hosay123 12y ago
  I hate to break out the tinfoil, but do you have any reason to expect the Ads team would admit to you if any of this were true? Secondly, I'd be impressed if after the China incident, you still had access to Ads mailing lists given that you work in Search, so it at least seems unsurprising that your searches would reveal nothing.
  - btian 12y ago
    It doesn't make any sense for ads team to lie. If the accusations are true, relevant employees can simply become a whistle blower, and collect bounty (i.e., a percentage of fine that Google will need to pay).
    - hosay123 12y ago
      It'd require incredible certainty that any of this were illegal for an employee to risk their career going that route.. personally I'm not sure anything described in the pastebin is definitely illegal, but IANAL
  - Matt_Cutts 12y ago
    hosay123, I've worked with the people this post talks about since 2005. Even though I'm the head of the webspam team, I'm familiar with how AdSense deals with fraud. For example, I often see disgruntled publishers complaining on the web, and from time to time I've followed up on specific blog posts to get the other side of the story. In addition, the group that manually fights webspam at Google is a sibling organization to the group that fights adspam. Finally, I passed these claims directly to the ads side and so far I've gotten three (now four) different "this is fake" responses from people I trust and have worked with in different capacities for years, including an engineer that I worked with in search quality who later went to work in ads.
programminggeek 12y ago
I did enough ad buying from AdWords and dealt with the changeover to "Quality Score" to know that Google cares a lot about raising their ad rates, but not having the perception of doing so. The same goes with things relating to SEO and since AdSense sits at the intersection between SEO and AdWords, it is not at all surprising that some managers at Google would use the guise of "quality" to juice their numbers. I don't know if it's true or not, but the story certainly lines up with my experiences with Google over the years unfortunately. They deal with a lot of spammers and scammers, which is a legitimately difficult job, but they also are a giant megacorp out to make a buck, and that doesn't always mean they do the right thing. Mostly I bet this gets swept under the rug and isn't investigated, which is a shame.
callesgg 12y ago
Holy shit, if this is true....
deleted 12y ago
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Donzo 12y ago
Why would they take all of your earnings for one month instead of 1/3rd to infinity? That's just dumb. That said, I have noticed AdSense policy enforcement ratcheted up, but protecting the advertisers is in everybody's best long term interests. My experience with AdSense policy enforcers was fair. I preferred having ad units that encouraged unintentional clicking, I made more money like that, but I understand why they made me change it. Having made my ads less blended to the site, I have had no issues since.
tmarman 12y ago
This doesn't surprise me at all. My account was banned for "invalid activity" in the timeframe mentioned. The automated emails said they wouldn't even tell me what I supposedly did wrong. I tried appealing and only got an automated email telling me my appeal was denied. I was never able to talk to anyone or get any actual details on wrongdoing. A quick search and you'll quickly realize this happened to a lot of people. I had something like $200 sitting in my account, which was obviously forfeited. Before this even happened, I removed ads from my blog (which is where the revenue was earned) because it wasn't performing well enough to justify having ads there anyway. In the end, I didn't really care so much about my forfeited balance - hell, I even volunteered to forfeit it during the appeal if it was in any way associated with invalid activity among other things. The big issue is that this seems to be a lifetime/universal ban. BEFORE WE EVER RAN ADS, an AdSense account with an unrelated corporate tax ID was also banned for "Invalid Activity". The only reason I can conceivably come up with on the ban is that this was also associated with a Google Apps account that I have. I'm a longtime Google shareholder and supporter, but it's times like this when you realize you can't trust "Don't Be Evil" any more. Ironically, I've spent way more in Google Apps + AdWords than I ever earned with AdSense.
phaser 12y ago
I had my AdSense account and site blocked just before i got to the $5000/month mark. I followed every consideration in the official AdSense blog, ensured that every content policy was met. Appealed with a strong case and got revoked. No official explanation was given even by Google employees I contacted. I see tons of sites with shit content and link building monetize with adsense while ours is loved by 1,000,000 users who spend 12 minutes average and a bounce rate below 6%. Everything on the leak makes total sense to me and we spent so many days implementing stuff to get Google's approval (like image fingerprinting, spam database, porn detection, overseas moderators) to get a shitty robot response with no real explanation.
robk 12y ago
Former Adsense PM here. It sounds implausible but there were certainly lots of shady accounts from emerging markets. I could see them ratcheting up enforcement on questionable sites from those markets surely but not at this level of randomness cited here.
rodmix 12y ago
As a security researcher I can confirm the existence of bullet-proof AdSense accounts mentioned in the leak. There are some big accounts which can break TOS not being banned. For example, localmoxie.com, a high traffic[1] malware[2] site uses AdSence [3]. 1: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/localmoxie.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/localmoxie.com 2: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&safe=off&filter=0&q=localmoxie.com https://www.google.com/search?num=100&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&safe... 3. Jan 2014 http://archive.today/jsfNy http://archive.today/jsfNy Apr 2014 http://archive.today/AkpoO http://archive.today/AkpoO
ribena59p 12y ago
I am an adsense publisher, never experienced a ban before, however I did get my account deactivated once for a violation. It was like extracting teeth, they would not tell me what it was! It took me 5 days to notice that in an area of my site if hovered over with the mouse an ad would be fractionally covered at the corner (I know, so evil). I addressed the issue and emailed them back to ask if that was the issue sorted now, they thanked me and said it was now sorted, and sent me screenshots of the problem from the past. Google, we are not little stringed puppets, realistically all they had to do was tell me what the problem was (with screenshots they had), and it would've been fixed in under 5 minutes. No, Google apparently doesn't work like the other 99.9% of the population. Are the workers all just sitting around on some massive ego trip? Wondering when daddy is going to bring in a candy floss machine. Put it this way, if Google were seen as a good company these stories would get no attention at all, I think secretly deep down we all think your eViL and we honestly wouldn't put it past you to do something like this.
f00_ 12y ago
People should really stop using pastebin to post leaks, I'm pretty sure there's still a timing-based SQL injection to get at least the user's IP
netcat-xx 12y ago
An account was banned on 2012-Nov. We did sign a contract with Google as partnership publisher at that time. No reason, and no invalid activities.
superunion 12y ago
what about this part http://pastebin.com/cGGV3kpE http://pastebin.com/cGGV3kpE
jacky04 12y ago
Though the adsense is best possible option for monetizing, it seems that they have some UNANSWERED question raising every time. I am an old adsense publisher and serving adsense ads on my sites since last three years but it is becoming a bit difficult to cope with their Terms and services. They have disabled ad serving on my few real MONEY MAKING sites only because my site was having one Google trademarked WORD in URL. ( I don't know how do they understand this as violation of TOS after three years of ad serving.) If we look in to this policy of adsense which says do not use Google trademarked WORD in URL then almost all possible site that is dedicated to TECH news is violating this rule because they all writes news about Google, Youtube, Adsense, Gmail, Google Drive, Blogspot etc and all of them are registered trademarks of Google. These tech news sites DO HAVE GOOGLE RELATED WORDS IN THERE URL and violating this rule. Google does not disables such huge site only because they are so called AUTHORITIES???? This thing is really getting suspicious.
ripped_off_pub 12y ago
Unjustified banned AdSense accounts, and Google keeping the money... they kept around $9,000 that I had earned. Here's my story, and my thoughts and considerations: http://pastebin.com/WHUis32f http://pastebin.com/WHUis32f

425 points by rmujica 12y ago

jpswade 12y ago

There's no name given of anyone involved, so nobody can be held accountable for this whether it's true or not.

xtraclass 12y ago

Is this real?

bitJericho 12y ago
It would be completely unsurprising.

killertypo 12y ago

I have no reason to not believe this, but I also have no reason to believe this. It does not sound too far fetched though.

jongraehl 12y ago

Plausible sci-fi. The scheme described would have leaked immediately. Too obvious and too many people.

mmahemoff 12y ago
Wouldn't that make it not plausible?

cliveowen 12y ago

Making this kind of statements and then not providing any kind of proof is just pointless. No one has any reason to believe any of this and this can't therefore be considered a leak because it carries absolutely no value.

semmem1 12y ago

Is someone shorting Google Stock to make some cash?

birken 12y ago

Let's think about this logically. Google takes 32% of every adsense click [1], so assuming an account makes $5,000/month, Google is making $2,352/month from that account. So by banning the account, they are making $5,000 one-time, and losing $2,352/month forever. No company is stupid enough to do that. However, considering a site making $5,000 or $10,000/month is generating quite a few clicks, I think it makes perfect sense for any account reaching these thresholds to be manually reviewed to ensure they are valid sites. The quality of Google's clicks is one of its main selling points, and by cutting out spammy sites at the source it both improves the quality of its own program and at the same time removes a lot of the financial incentive to run a scummy site. So my guess is these policies (or similar policies that involve manual reviews of sites) make perfect sense, are not illegal in any way, and this whole posting is as bogus as it looks. 1: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en

DoubleMalt 12y ago
This not necessarily the case. Most advertisers will have fixed budgets to spend on AdSense. Under this assumption banning a publisher would not diminish the revenue stream but just diverting the ads to other not yet banned publishers. That doesn't mean the scheme as described is true, but it's not as obviously stupid as your first paragraph makes it seem.
- voicereasonish 12y ago
  Also obviously if Google reduces the pool of adsense publishers, the money is more likely to be spent advertising on Google properties, and Google will take 100% of that, rather than 32%.
  - CaveTech 12y ago
    If that was an ideal strategy they would have never opened it up to publishers in the first place. Google no doubt optimizes their algorithms for profit, but they surely don't need to block out publishers to ensure their own sites have ads to display.

hanley 12y ago

I found this part interesting. So the only way to even find out the reason for your account being banned is to hire a lawyer. > A reason has to be internally attached to the account ban. The problem was that notifying the publisher for the reason is not a requirement, even if the publisher asks. The exception: The exact reason must be provided if a legal representative contacts Google on behalf of the account holder.

deleted 12y ago

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ChuckMcM 12y ago

It reads like some disgruntled AdSense publishers theory as to why they were banned. Now it is true that in 2009, when the Great Recession hit, Google went through its processes and identified places where controls were lax. And its true that there has always been a lot of abuse of AdSense (it is after all the first thing a neophyte ad-fraud wannabe does, which is create a page, put AdSense ads on it, and then pay a bot-net to click on them. It almost seems like some sort of starter project or tutorial it was so common) I would be surprised though if anyone actually sought out to 'screw' the legitimate advertisers. It is after all Google's bread and butter.

voicereasonish 12y ago
> It is after all Google's bread and butter. Is it? How much do Google make from the adsense publisher network vs advertising directly on Google properties?
- ariwilson 12y ago
  http://investor.google.com/pdf/2014Q1_google_earnings_slides.pdf http://investor.google.com/pdf/2014Q1_google_earnings_slides... (slide 3) (revenue) $3.4B network $10.5B Google properties $1.5B other
  - xdleet 12y ago
    http://investor.google.com/pdf/2010Q1_google_earnings_slides.pdf http://investor.google.com/pdf/2010Q1_google_earnings_slides... Check out that dip in '09. Interesting.
deleted 12y ago
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andrenotgiant 12y ago
The BIG Advertisers are their bread and butter, but every big advertiser knows to avoid most contextual targeting Text Ad buys. Here's something that came into play around 2009: When a new advertiser (think small business) goes into AdWords to set up their first account, the default is to show Ads on Search AND Display Network. After setting things up, these two sources of VERY DIFFERENT traffic get lumped together in a lot of high-level reporting. Until they specifically look at the quality of Display vs Search traffic (and see Avg Visit Durations from Display traffic around 5 seconds) they will not know about the crappy quality of sites they are on.

deleted 12y ago

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benlarcey 12y ago

Whilst I've never used adSense much, this does corroborate with chatter in SEO/webmaster forums, especially around 2012. The paragraph on G analytics is also very interesting, it never seems to line up with other tracking tools like Piwik.

at-fates-hands 12y ago
This is one the thing that I found curious as well. I worked at a company who used WebTrends. Some of the their customers installed Google Analytics alongside Webtrends and then would complain that the numbers didn't match up between the two. Sometimes it wasn't close (+/- 10%) other times it was closer, but there was always a discrepancy between the two. Of course it looked since we used WebTrends, we were inflating the numbers, when in reality, it was the exact opposite. When I read this part of the post, I could totally see them tweaking the GA numbers so they were lower.
- hagbardgroup 12y ago
  The reason for this would be that GA filters out bot traffic differently than other vendors. That includes legitimate bots like search engine crawlers. Web analytics are just not that accurate. The number quoted by the Xoogler in an analytics manual I recently went though is an expectation of ~10%+ wiggle. GA is always going to show 'lower' numbers than straight logs in particular because of this.
guyzero 12y ago
And no one on an SEO forum would ever try to get questionable traffic to their site for the purposes of pumping up AdSense revenue.
spada 12y ago
Seems that GA is always lower than Piwik and adsense is always much lower than GA.

ewillbefull 12y ago

Funny; back in 2010 this exact thing happened to a company I worked at. The day before payout (for the previous month) our AdSense account was banned. So we lost 2 months worth of ad revenue. They completely ignored all of our emails and we had to move to another ad provider immediately.

camus2 12y ago
that happened to me , now i dont know if there is a wide scale scam or it was just a "bug" but they banned me for no reason and of course no way to appeal.And they owed me quite a lot.I moved to some other ad service,it pays less but i still get my money.
- ensignavenger 12y ago
  One way to appeal- file a lawsuit. :)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - camus2 12y ago
    While the money they owed me was significant it would have been difficult(and expensive) to sue google at that time. It would be very different today.I had to write it off.And they had the audacity to send me a 50$ voucher for adsense just after that...
    - ensignavenger 12y ago
      That is certainly a challenge. It really irks me when there is such a power imbalance and people take advantage of it. When I have to use the courts, I generally use small claims court and represent myself when I can, and I've had good luck with that, even though the time and cost for legal filings is not insignificant. The amount they owed you was likely more than the max in your state for small claims, though.
  - 12y ago

oh_sigh 12y ago

If this is such a slam dunk, why not just go directly to the FBI or IRS? I'm sure there are tons of people in those orgs who would LOVE to smash google if they really were behaving in such an illegal manner. It seems a bit more realistic than hoping that they see this pastebin text, and decide to follow up on it, track you down, and get your statements on the record.

HNaTTY 12y ago
I guess the IRS isn't the right place to go because all that money is probably reported as income by Google. Too bad because IRS whistleblowers are eligible for a percentage of any amount the IRS is able to collect, and with a company as big as Google, that could be an earth-shatteringly large amount of money.
mstade 12y ago
Reaching out to the authorities may take much longer or even be ignored, and causing a PR stink may be a much more effective approach. As an example, the SEC was contacted with regards to Bernard Madoff likely running a ponzy scheme as early as 1999, yet went largely ignored for a decade. Just because you contact authorities doesn't necessarily mean they believe you or even care, regardless of how much actual evidence you have (of which the OP has presented none, by the way.) Causing a PR stink raises the profile of the issue, and could be a much more effective approach to getting the authorities attention. That said, I don't believe OP's story for a second, for many of the same reasons other have cited. If this was a true case of whistle blowing, there would be tangible evidence but the OP has presented none.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

piokuc 12y ago
Does it prove anything? Google has offices in many countries and employees of many nationalities.
adventureartist 12y ago
Not being a native English speaker doesn't exactly eliminate the possibility of being a Google employee...

baby 12y ago

Happened to someone I know back in 2005 I think, he lost 2 months of payment, and it was a lot of money. But he had some erotic videos on his website so... mostly his fault.

tty 12y ago

The link went from being #3 on the frontpage to below #20 in a matter of minutes.

sscalia 12y ago
How dare anyone on HN attack Google.
- Matt_Cutts 12y ago
  It's a fake. It's an anonymous post on pastebin, submitted by a one-time account. The terminology is wrong. The policies are wrong. The post is full of typos. The post has almost no specifics, and the one specific thing they mentioned ("AQ3C") isn't real. If this story isn't getting traction, then HN is doing the right thing here.
  - ltorresv 12y ago
    I do see a decent number of people posting they've had issues with cancellations that match what the pastebin describes. Why aren't you replying to any of them if you're acting as the voice of reason here?
    - whatevsbro 12y ago
      > Why aren't you replying to any of them if you're acting as the voice of reason here? Exactly because the fraudulent bans are actually a widespread phenomenon, but that goes against what Matt's been telling us here.

6thSigma 12y ago

The risk/reward here doesn't add up. Taking an extra few thousand a month from publishers isn't worth risking the billions in revenue they make per year.

__xtrimsky 12y ago

I got banned from Google Adsense as a teenager (7 years ago). Still regret my stupid decision to try and hack Google Adsense clicks. My account was never restored :(.

soaringabove 12y ago
Most murderers get out in a few years. Google has no sense of due process whatsoever. You should be allowed back in after a while -- especially if you were very young.

rikacomet 12y ago

"Don't be evil" It is a beautiful peace of rhetoric. Yet I wonder, about its effectiveness/achievement inside Google in last 5 years since its inception. Perhaps its because, don't be evil translates to, a middle ground always. Its almost like trying to keep your company on 0-loss/0-profit. That is not a great place to be, because you fall from grace easily. "Be more good than evil" anyone?

Greenisus 12y ago

I'm inclined to believe this, but I'm skeptical of Google Analytics numbers being deflated. Wouldn't people notice the data not being consistent with other tools or their own web server logs?

justanotherlurk 12y ago
It's funny you mentioned this. I was researching Piwiks as an analytics tool today. In a few of the articles, they gave reason to use Piwiks because it shows more traffic than Google Analytics does, with graphs to demonstrate. These were articles from over the past few years. DDG or google search "piwiks analytics better than" and you'll likely see the same articles. I've also seen on many SEO forums that people have complained about the same things in regards to getting banned days before their payout. Most website advertiser types are the kind of people who are recalcitrant to file a lawsuit. I know I am myself. So really, it's a good business decision in this regard. I can't accuse Google of anything though. On the other hand, automating account bans past a certain earning threshold unless they're high profile people seems easy to implement, with a massive earning when done on the multi-billion-dollar [0] ad revenue scale that Google oversees. [0] http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/google-finally-crosses-50-billion-annual-revenue-mark-146710 http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/google-finally-crosses...
- fastolfe 12y ago
  "... automating account bans past a certain earning threshold ... seems easy to implement, with a massive earning" More earnings than not banning them and letting them continue to make money for Google?
hagbardgroup 12y ago
This was also my take. Also, during the period being written about, Adsense fraud at scale was a really huge issue.

perlgeek 12y ago

I somehow doubt this is true, but Google has done its fair share to give rise to such rumours. Mostly they have been very opaque on the reasons of account bans, they haven't payed out the remaining balances of banned accounts (even when they presented no proof of any fraud), and finally they haven't provided a working way to appeal any bans. I can understand their decisions, but they do come with the risk of bad PR.

adventureartist 12y ago

As a developer, I have had, and friends have had thier Adsense accounts banned right before payout for legitimate earnings. It hurts so bad to have that happen, and Google gives you little recourse. I cannot speak to the legitimacy of this pastebin, but reading it, it sounds completely plausible. If it walks like a duck...

scott_karana 12y ago

If it's an anonymous leak, exposing overt fraud, why would the poster not name names, unless this leak was a fake? > "...fuck the rest" (those words were actually said by a Google AdSense exec) > there was a "sit-down" from the AdSense division higher ups to talk about new emerging issues

DrJosiah 12y ago

If you are going to sit around and "see what happens" for 3 years, you talk to a lawyer. You gather evidence. Emails, text chats, etc. You audio record meetings and conversations with people (subject to lawyer advice). You collect enough information over a long enough period of time so that an investigator can trivially search a dumped archive of email to verify your claims. But we are supposed to believe someone who offers effectively no evidence from the duration of their claimed tenure, and who pushes it off as "I stayed because I had a family to support, and secondly I wanted to see how far they would go." and identity protection at the level of "such as waiting for the appropriate employee turn around" So... no Hardy Boys level of investigation was performed, no evidence was gathered, no voices were recorded, no text messages were saved, no emails were forwarded, not a single byte was smuggled out on a flash drive nestled in the poster's pocket. Nothing was done to offer even the slightest bit of recording of anything. The poster is either the most pathetic excuse for a whistle blower that I've ever heard, or it's a poor-quality April fool's joke that is 28 days too late.

7952 12y ago
There is obviously no proof one way or the other, questioning the veracity of the source does not change that. My guess is that new evidence will emerge sooner or later. A graph of cancellation dates would be an interesting start.
- DrJosiah 12y ago
  In cases of whistle blowing, which this is purporting to be, evidence is one of the most important things that you can gather and report on. Yet we have literally none from the OP. What we have instead is a compelling story written anonymously, but for which there is no supporting evidence provided. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, yet there is none. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7668230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7668230 brings up the most important point to this entire thread, which is that the premise under which the OP claims that Google steals money from people through cancellation falls on its face when you look at the economics of a cancellation. It's just not economically viable for Google to do that - it's like eating your leg because you're hungry. And of all the things that Google is, it's not stupid.

halayli 12y ago

This is aligned with what I've heard from people working in Adsense department.

grimmfang 12y ago

The whole click bombing argument is undoubtedly true, I've seen it happen too many times. Additionally, from my experience, Google will wait until immediately before the payout period to ban. I had $750 waiting to be paid out one month then poof! Three days before the payout my account was banned. I don't know if this guy is telling the truth, but his arguments have truth in them.

mtnboy 12y ago

I know the mass ban affected a lot of my friends in 2012, and they all had legitimate websites.

praeivis 12y ago

GOOG around 520 for day of the leak: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GOOG+Interactive#symbol=GOOG;range=1m http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GOOG+Interactive#symbol=G... Lets wait how market will react.

abritishguy 12y ago
Nothing will happen because of some unsubstantiated pastebin.

tomp 12y ago

Hm... something does not compute: > Having signed many documents such as NDA's and non-competes, there are many repercussions for me, especially in the form of legal retribution from Google. > No one on the outside knows it, if they did, the FBI and possibly IRS would immediately launch an investigation, because what they are doing is so inherently illegal and they are flying completely under the radar. Wait, what legal repercussions? If what they're doing is illegal, (1) they probably wouldn't win the lawsuit against you, and (2) more importantly, NDAs don't apply (IANAL, but AFAIK contracts are overruled by law), and he could and should report the crime directly to the police. Unless, of course, s/he has too much to loose from bullying, or if s/he fears Google bought politicians.

MertsA 12y ago
That's correct, an NDA is completely irrelevant in terms of keeping someone from disclosing a crime.

jgalt212 12y ago

Regardless of whether this is true or not, I'd say it's a good rule of thumb when dealing with a Monolith (Google) to expect better treatment when paying them money (AdWords) than when they pay you money (AdSense).

jacquesm 12y ago

reocities.com got banned for no reason that I can think of, never bothered to try to engage google on this because it is as good as pointless. Google just simply doesn't care, as long as more people are signing up than they are cancelling they can keep the ship afloat. On the off-chance that you're trying to social engineer them they apparently can't take the risk to re-enable an account. So, I've taken the attitude that google adsense is to be avoided like the plague for anything approaching a business. It's found money if you can get it, and if you can't that shouldn't be a factor in your business plan at all.

fixermark 12y ago

"The new policy was officially called AdSense Quality Control Color Codes (commonly called AQ3C by employees)." You know, you'd think that if Google had a 2-years-running official policy, some other bit of leakage about it would have occurred by now. Two years is a long time for an official policy on a giant company's largest product to have never even been whispered, in accident, on the Internet before. Let me do a quick search... https://www.google.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+color+codes%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+c... Nope. Just three instances of Pastebin (Hm, wonder why three?). Oh, I know what I did wrong. I'm using the wrong search engine! http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+color+codes%22 http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+colo... Hm, nope, only one result there too. Curious.

Matt_Cutts 12y ago
There you go bringing reason to a conspiracy discussion. :) For what it's worth, I immediately searched for "aq3c" within Google and within my email--no matches found there either. In my estimation, this post is absolutely fake.
- robin69 12y ago
  In whole explaination it seems like you ae defending Google. :). and why will anyone comeup with his original identity. The Leaker:P is also smart guy SIR. :)
  - nevi-me 12y ago
    Who else should defend his employer? Someone external who doesn't have any resources to follow?
Springtime 12y ago
Now being filled with news pieces about the pastebin. Reminds me somewhat of the Citogenesis XKCD panel (https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/).

deftnerd 12y ago

This makes me think of the HN link yesterday about identifying businesses that are doomed to fail because the only way they can sustain themselves is moving into new markets. If Google keeps on banning publishers from hosting AdSense ads in order to keep the AdSense money, that's the same dangerous behavior that's indicative of an unsustainable business. The question becomes can they sustain the growth and movement? Are there enough new publishers for Google to sign up to replace the ones they arbitrarily ban or will they eventually start having a hard time finding publishers and web properties?

adsenseclient 12y ago

As a large publisher, we have witnessed both the $10,000 and $5,000 thresholds. It's simply true. We are now using other networks and directly working with advertisers, and our AdSense revenue is $4,500 (total ad revenue is $25,000+/mo). We also quite presciently considered making a PR stink after the first AdSense ban (we were re-instated later), but decided this could tarnish the image of our company and of our product for our clients- AdSense revenue was not important enough. Even though after the initial ban (when we overshot $10,000/mo) we were OK'ed by a contact in their Policy Team and re-instated (a contact we found after a lot of work), EVERY time when we bounced back to $10,000 and then to $5,000 after scaling down, we would have new vague and inane threats from AdSense about our perfectly NORMAL UGC ,as if the initial conversation with their Policy has never taken place. We basically migrated away from AdSense, but if their are ANY SERIOUS LAWYERS here interested in a class action, we have a WEALTH of DETAILED documentation. ANAL, but it's definitely interesting: we have never encountered such a SHITTY treatment by any other company, and we have about 1,500 corporate clients. Once again, we never did anything shady or different than some other publishers that are apparently Green-listed by Google.

adsensertoo 12y ago
Also a large publisher, though we've surpassed the 5k/10k thresholds without issue. Out of curiosity, though, which other networks do you use and how do they compare to Adsense?
fireworks10 12y ago
Had an Adsense account banned in January with $15k credit taken days before payout date (After 8 months of $2k-$12k earnings history per month) and extremely low RPM&CTR. No answer to appeals, no explanation other than the vague phrase 'for policy violations'. :/
- driverdan 12y ago
  Did you sue them for your money? If not, why not?

Matt_Cutts 12y ago

Everything about this post strikes me as a conspiracy-laden fake, from the typos to wrong terminology to untrue policies to the lack of specific names of people. I passed this pastebin to the ads side to confirm for sure, but I would treat this as completely untrue. Added: Yup, I'm hearing back from multiple people on the ads side that this is pretty much untrue from start to finish. Also notice that the "rmujica" account that submitted this item has never submitted any other story or written any other comment on Hacker News before today.

hosay123 12y ago
I hate to break out the tinfoil, but do you have any reason to expect the Ads team would admit to you if any of this were true? Secondly, I'd be impressed if after the China incident, you still had access to Ads mailing lists given that you work in Search, so it at least seems unsurprising that your searches would reveal nothing.
- btian 12y ago
  It doesn't make any sense for ads team to lie. If the accusations are true, relevant employees can simply become a whistle blower, and collect bounty (i.e., a percentage of fine that Google will need to pay).
  - hosay123 12y ago
    It'd require incredible certainty that any of this were illegal for an employee to risk their career going that route.. personally I'm not sure anything described in the pastebin is definitely illegal, but IANAL
- Matt_Cutts 12y ago
  hosay123, I've worked with the people this post talks about since 2005. Even though I'm the head of the webspam team, I'm familiar with how AdSense deals with fraud. For example, I often see disgruntled publishers complaining on the web, and from time to time I've followed up on specific blog posts to get the other side of the story. In addition, the group that manually fights webspam at Google is a sibling organization to the group that fights adspam. Finally, I passed these claims directly to the ads side and so far I've gotten three (now four) different "this is fake" responses from people I trust and have worked with in different capacities for years, including an engineer that I worked with in search quality who later went to work in ads.

programminggeek 12y ago

I did enough ad buying from AdWords and dealt with the changeover to "Quality Score" to know that Google cares a lot about raising their ad rates, but not having the perception of doing so. The same goes with things relating to SEO and since AdSense sits at the intersection between SEO and AdWords, it is not at all surprising that some managers at Google would use the guise of "quality" to juice their numbers. I don't know if it's true or not, but the story certainly lines up with my experiences with Google over the years unfortunately. They deal with a lot of spammers and scammers, which is a legitimately difficult job, but they also are a giant megacorp out to make a buck, and that doesn't always mean they do the right thing. Mostly I bet this gets swept under the rug and isn't investigated, which is a shame.

callesgg 12y ago

Holy shit, if this is true....

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Donzo 12y ago

Why would they take all of your earnings for one month instead of 1/3rd to infinity? That's just dumb. That said, I have noticed AdSense policy enforcement ratcheted up, but protecting the advertisers is in everybody's best long term interests. My experience with AdSense policy enforcers was fair. I preferred having ad units that encouraged unintentional clicking, I made more money like that, but I understand why they made me change it. Having made my ads less blended to the site, I have had no issues since.

tmarman 12y ago

This doesn't surprise me at all. My account was banned for "invalid activity" in the timeframe mentioned. The automated emails said they wouldn't even tell me what I supposedly did wrong. I tried appealing and only got an automated email telling me my appeal was denied. I was never able to talk to anyone or get any actual details on wrongdoing. A quick search and you'll quickly realize this happened to a lot of people. I had something like $200 sitting in my account, which was obviously forfeited. Before this even happened, I removed ads from my blog (which is where the revenue was earned) because it wasn't performing well enough to justify having ads there anyway. In the end, I didn't really care so much about my forfeited balance - hell, I even volunteered to forfeit it during the appeal if it was in any way associated with invalid activity among other things. The big issue is that this seems to be a lifetime/universal ban. BEFORE WE EVER RAN ADS, an AdSense account with an unrelated corporate tax ID was also banned for "Invalid Activity". The only reason I can conceivably come up with on the ban is that this was also associated with a Google Apps account that I have. I'm a longtime Google shareholder and supporter, but it's times like this when you realize you can't trust "Don't Be Evil" any more. Ironically, I've spent way more in Google Apps + AdWords than I ever earned with AdSense.

phaser 12y ago

I had my AdSense account and site blocked just before i got to the $5000/month mark. I followed every consideration in the official AdSense blog, ensured that every content policy was met. Appealed with a strong case and got revoked. No official explanation was given even by Google employees I contacted. I see tons of sites with shit content and link building monetize with adsense while ours is loved by 1,000,000 users who spend 12 minutes average and a bounce rate below 6%. Everything on the leak makes total sense to me and we spent so many days implementing stuff to get Google's approval (like image fingerprinting, spam database, porn detection, overseas moderators) to get a shitty robot response with no real explanation.

robk 12y ago

Former Adsense PM here. It sounds implausible but there were certainly lots of shady accounts from emerging markets. I could see them ratcheting up enforcement on questionable sites from those markets surely but not at this level of randomness cited here.

rodmix 12y ago

As a security researcher I can confirm the existence of bullet-proof AdSense accounts mentioned in the leak. There are some big accounts which can break TOS not being banned. For example, localmoxie.com, a high traffic[1] malware[2] site uses AdSence [3]. 1: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/localmoxie.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/localmoxie.com 2: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&safe=off&filter=0&q=localmoxie.com https://www.google.com/search?num=100&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&safe... 3. Jan 2014 http://archive.today/jsfNy http://archive.today/jsfNy Apr 2014 http://archive.today/AkpoO http://archive.today/AkpoO

ribena59p 12y ago

I am an adsense publisher, never experienced a ban before, however I did get my account deactivated once for a violation. It was like extracting teeth, they would not tell me what it was! It took me 5 days to notice that in an area of my site if hovered over with the mouse an ad would be fractionally covered at the corner (I know, so evil). I addressed the issue and emailed them back to ask if that was the issue sorted now, they thanked me and said it was now sorted, and sent me screenshots of the problem from the past. Google, we are not little stringed puppets, realistically all they had to do was tell me what the problem was (with screenshots they had), and it would've been fixed in under 5 minutes. No, Google apparently doesn't work like the other 99.9% of the population. Are the workers all just sitting around on some massive ego trip? Wondering when daddy is going to bring in a candy floss machine. Put it this way, if Google were seen as a good company these stories would get no attention at all, I think secretly deep down we all think your eViL and we honestly wouldn't put it past you to do something like this.

f00_ 12y ago

People should really stop using pastebin to post leaks, I'm pretty sure there's still a timing-based SQL injection to get at least the user's IP

netcat-xx 12y ago

An account was banned on 2012-Nov. We did sign a contract with Google as partnership publisher at that time. No reason, and no invalid activities.

superunion 12y ago

what about this part http://pastebin.com/cGGV3kpE http://pastebin.com/cGGV3kpE

jacky04 12y ago

Though the adsense is best possible option for monetizing, it seems that they have some UNANSWERED question raising every time. I am an old adsense publisher and serving adsense ads on my sites since last three years but it is becoming a bit difficult to cope with their Terms and services. They have disabled ad serving on my few real MONEY MAKING sites only because my site was having one Google trademarked WORD in URL. ( I don't know how do they understand this as violation of TOS after three years of ad serving.) If we look in to this policy of adsense which says do not use Google trademarked WORD in URL then almost all possible site that is dedicated to TECH news is violating this rule because they all writes news about Google, Youtube, Adsense, Gmail, Google Drive, Blogspot etc and all of them are registered trademarks of Google. These tech news sites DO HAVE GOOGLE RELATED WORDS IN THERE URL and violating this rule. Google does not disables such huge site only because they are so called AUTHORITIES???? This thing is really getting suspicious.

ripped_off_pub 12y ago

Unjustified banned AdSense accounts, and Google keeping the money... they kept around $9,000 that I had earned. Here's my story, and my thoughts and considerations: http://pastebin.com/WHUis32f http://pastebin.com/WHUis32f