12 ms·

Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

359 points by beambot 17y ago

coliveira 17y ago
One has to understand that Adsense publishers are not clients for Google. There are millions of websites trying to get Adsense working for them, so Google here is the client. Real clients of Google are Adwords advertisers, so these are the ones that they try to please. Anything that makes your site suspect will take you out of the network, and Google makes it very clear that they will do it first and ask questions later. I don't see this changing, because it is a really good assurance for advertisers.
- invisible 17y ago
  Google doesn't have a phone support for Adwords either. That's another story, though. Google wouldn't have Adwords customers were it not for AdSense, so I think your point fails in that sense. Google "traps" your money, whether make legally or not, and you never see it again unless you manage to appeal "correctly." Furthermore, there is no proof whatsoever that Google returns all of that money to advertisers. I've never seen a trace of evidence they don't just mark that as profit.
ujjwalg 17y ago
On a side note, google should definitely get its act together related to customer service. I have heard so many horror stories about google's indifferent/insignificant customer service lately.
- there 17y ago
  especially in the instances where they've taken over companies that previously had, at the least, decent support. in postini's web administration panel, there are certain actions that require you to contact support to be done. now that google owns them and you have to contact google, it's a long, painful process.
  - ujjwalg 17y ago
    we should just make this post top news at HN for as long as we can.. hopefully someone at google will notice it...
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      while you're at it vote this one up as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=781751 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=781751 it's about this story: http://archlinux.me/dusty/2009/08/23/why-im-quitting-gmail/ http://archlinux.me/dusty/2009/08/23/why-im-quitting-gmail/
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Side note to your side note: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/google-kills-anti-scientology-sites-adsense-account/ http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/google-kills-anti... There are plenty more like that. I've also noticed a tendency to adsense account holders to avoid talking about issues in public because this may 'rock the boat'.
  - shiranaihito 17y ago
    And the same excuse again: While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers
- vaksel 17y ago
  that's because they are pinching every penny, their support is probably outsourced to some drone farm in india.
- 10ren 17y ago
  "I think I've saved $64 million since we started talking," replied Google. Google, being founded and run by Comp Sci PhDs, wants to automate everything. Though they don't publicize it, they are practically an AI company. Unfortunately if the Google Corporation complaints division succeeds in this automation, the first words spoken by a strong AI probably won't be along the lines of "What hath God wrought", or "I am become the angel of death", but more like "Share and Enjoy". "Share and Enjoy" is the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years. The motto stands — or rather stood — in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young complaints executives — now deceased. The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig", and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration. http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book2.html http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book2.html Calvin and Jobs http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3191/2723090810_6501c93ae2_o.png http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3191/2723090810_6501c93ae2_o....
- patio11 17y ago
  On a side note, google should definitely get its act together related to customer service. This implies that they're incompetent at providing customer service. My biggest fear is that this behavior is by design, that they are achieving all their customer service objectives, and that they have the metrics to prove it.
  - DTrejo 17y ago
    (Meaning that they have low customer service objectives?)
    - onreact-com 17y ago
      Yeah. Don't pay people to do customer service is still more profitable than losing a few customers a they are not many search and Adsense/Adwords alternatives that can really compete when it comes to reach.
      - Ardit20 17y ago
        That's walking a very tight rope as the way you put it sounds very much like monopolistic behavior. I would suggest that it does not make business sense to have the government looking over you as being an evil monster, which, is most probably what will occur if the horror stories continue.
        kijiki 17y ago
        Governments move slowly, and execs (and shareholders) rarely look past the next quarter.
fnid 17y ago
It's because visitors from those sites are worthless. They may click on the ads, but they aren't going to buy anything and even if they do, the conversion rate is so low that the advertisers get mad at Google.
- Rantenki 17y ago
  I fail to see how Google mispricing impressions is the fault of the Hizook admin. Google already modifies the payout on clickthrough using a completely opaque system. If that system cannot handle traffic spikes, they shouldn't be defaulting to banning the Adsense account, they should just throttle inventory.
  - fnid 17y ago
    Google shoots first and doesn't ask questions later. I'm not defending google. I've been anti-google for years. I'm just saying why they disable the account. It's the easiest, automated solution to combat lots of problems like click-fraud, advertiser complaints, etc. If they don't disable the account, they have to constantly handle this type of account, the high traffic, potentially high click-thru, but low conversion attracting account. The other solution requires making a lot of changes to a lot of accounts. The advertisers' ad positioning, the rates for the ads, which affect other adsense sites, etc. In that case, Google runs the risk of angering a lot of customers, both advertisers, and real estate providers. The other solution: ban the account -- angers only one real estate provider.
- alain94040 17y ago
  That does not excuse Google's behavior in any way. The most amazing to me is that it's now Thursday, and Google has not responded. Even if they don't like humans, they could have automatically detected by now that the traffic is due to the links. Don't they have this thing called pagerank that computes exactly that? Another example of the left hand not talking to the right hand (and not caring).
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    There is nothing 'amazing' about it, unfortunately, Google tech support is from Mars. The only answers I have ever had to date were cut & paste emails which usually did not address the issue at all. We keep some of them for amusement value. Adwords is not much better by the way, we've simply stopped using it after detecting some major discrepancies (read undetected click fraud) between googles reporting and our own log files. Complaining is pretty much pointless, we no longer bother, possibly this experience is unique but I highly doubt it. I guess some computer in googles database records that as 'customer satisfaction going up', but in fact it is the opposite and if I ever come across a real alternative to adwords/adsense we will be gone in a heartbeat.
stuntgoat 17y ago
If only Get Satisfaction could get the Google account. . .. Perhaps Google should acquire them; that would likely solve the customer service issues people seem to be so upset about.
jrockway 17y ago
Wow, I'm so sad that blogspam-ing is becoming unprofitable. So very sad...
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
sachinag 17y ago
What's crap is that AdSense's TOS say that you can't run someone else's context- or content-sensitive ads. So you can't run both AdSense and whatever Yahoo/Bing/whoever has. If you could, stuff like this would be a great boon, not an automatic circuit breaker that cut you off.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  My favorite term from the TOS is the one where they forbid you to talk about your accounts statistics: " Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google's prior written consent. "Google Confidential Information" includes without limitation: (a) all Google software, technology, programming, specifications, materials, guidelines and documentation relating to the Program; (b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Property performance in the Program provided to You by Google; and (c) any other information designated in writing by Google as "Confidential" or an equivalent designation. However, You may accurately disclose the amount of Google’s gross payments to You pursuant to the Program. Google Confidential Information does not include information that has become publicly known through no breach by You or Google, or information that has been (i) independently developed without access to Google Confidential Information, as evidenced in writing; (ii) rightfully received by You from a third party; or (iii) required to be disclosed by law or by a governmental authority. " For the whole thing see here: https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms
  - pbhjpbhj 17y ago
    You can bet they wanted to write "The first rule of adsense is ..."
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      That's definitely what it feels like. My main issue with this part of the TOS is this: Google is extremely lacking in transparency, the only way to puncture that is to team up with other publishers/advertisers and compare notes. Right now the feeling is simply that you're being screwed and you can't even talk about that feeling or verify it. At the risk of getting my adsense account blocked, and because I'm not going to let the big G muzzle me I'm going to post my adsense stats for July. edit: they're up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=791158 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=791158
redcap 17y ago
Has anyone ever fronted up to Google and ask to see some customer service there? Over the past few months there have been a number of stories about Google's bad customer service particularly in relation to the AdSense/etc programs, so I'm curious if anyone has been brave/silly enough to try.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I know one of those cases personally and no, they're not 'brave/silly' enough to try because there appears to be some chance you get shut down completely if you become too vocal about support issues.
Dove 17y ago
Power corrupts.
- param 17y ago
  Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incorrect (business) feature prioritization
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    I'm with the GP on this one, certainly after my personal experiences with Google on issues like this.
riffic 17y ago
waaah. just be grateful that messrs. brin and page allowed you the privilege, for as such a brief period as it were, to make a meager pittance from these text and/or image based advertisements. find no pity from me.
MattCutts 17y ago
I'm happy to ask the right team at Google about this and point them to the post on hizook.com.
- patio11 17y ago
  As happy as I am that you're Google's unofficial ombudsman, Matt, you're a big billion dollar company who many of us are intensely reliant on for our businesses. There needs to be a support channel other than "make a PR issue for Google and Matt Cutts will swoop by to save the day". I had a big issue with AdWords earlier this month. Google made it all but impossible for me to reach anyone about it. Earlier this year, I had an issue with my bank denying an AdWords bill (to protect me against possible fraud). It took one minute on the phone to resolve. You make a hundred times what my bank does off me. Why is human contact only possible if we speak the secret password into the telephone disguised as a shoe which is stored in the unused broom closet marked Beware of Leopard.
  - pavs 17y ago
    I couldn't agree more. Much smaller companies with much smaller capital have options to contact for support issues in a person to person basis. With Google Adwords, it is virtually non-existant. Considering the fact that you have to either really screw up or get a lot of attention to yourself for Google to get to you, without that you are out of luck. Automated response is not a solution to all problems.
  - bk 17y ago
    Here's my thinking: 1. Google knows how to scale computers, and perhaps engineering teams, but not people in general. 2. "You make a hundred times what my bank does off me" - Exactly, and hiring pesky call center employees, who would have to be good on top of it, would ruin Google's profit/stock price. We're all desperate, depending on practically the only ad game in town, so we bark but have no bite. A higher-end (aka non-cpc|cpm) revenue model is the only way out, I'm afraid.
    - barrkel 17y ago
olefoo 17y ago
Two points: 1. This is not a problem with Google's Customer Service, it is a problem with their vendor relations. When Google publishes ads on your site, you are selling that space to them. Google is your customer and isn't obligated to tell you a damn thing except that they don't want to buy from you anymore. 2. There is a market opportunity here for an ad network that is willing to find good sites dropped from Google Adsense by erroneous algorithms. And that can appeal to the news herd (all the traffic driven by reddit, hn, slashot, digg, etc.) with either brand advertising or targeted ads designed to appeal to surfers from those sources. The thing is, from a strictly mathematical point of view Google may be perfectly correct, the 100 visitors a day coming to the site while looking for robotics news may have been more valuable to their advertisers than 10,000 stimulus hungry nerds that don't buy shit. And while it's hard on the site in question Google is playing for the percentages, not sheer volume.
- jemka 17y ago
  While you make valid points, the major issue in question is Google's lack of customer service for the advertisement brokerage service they provide. Google may not have to "tell you a damn thing", but they should at least make themselves available to deny any requested information.
  - olefoo 17y ago
    Google is the customer here. They happen to be a very big customer who is aggregating and organizing adspace inventory for thousands of their customers. But as with any such relationship, they are free to walk away at any time. And yes it sucks; but there must be advertisers out there who think that a site that gets 10,000 impressions a day and is linked from most of the popular news sites is worth something; selling to them is a better move than whining about how Google doesn't love you anymore.
- jasonkester 17y ago
  Well said. Further to the above, Google had a very good reason to drop this particular site: Over the span of a week, their impression count shot through the roof with the sort of traffic that never clicks ads. So all Google sees is a whole ton of 0.0000001% clickthru impressions coming from a former backwater site. If my ads were serving there, I'd certainly want them pulled. Granted, Google is terrible when it comes to situations like this. But technically they did the correct thing here.
shiranaihito 17y ago
Didn't anyone else notice that Google's "explanation" for disabling the account was the same as in another recent story: While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. This was on HN a while ago: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=781751 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=781751
- Tangurena 17y ago
  That is one of those empty, formulaic phrases that mean the exact opposite of what they say. Like when a company says for your convenience which really means for this company's convenience or more commonly we're about to make things harder for you. These formulaic phrases are spit out by the form letter generator and have no meaning.
  - shiranaihito 17y ago
    I realize it's meaningless bullshit - I was just surprised that they're using the same excuse all the time.
jemka 17y ago
Hizook could have prevented losing advertising revenue (or at least reduced losses) by having a backup or parallel ad network on their site. So if not Google adsense, what's the next best game in town?
- lsc 17y ago
  I have used 'project wonderful' as an advertiser to great success. It's extremely transparent. http://www.projectwonderful.com/ http://www.projectwonderful.com/ It's really big with the webcomics people
onreact-com 17y ago
This is a well known issue with the so called Digg effect. I warned people years ago not to aim for Digg traffic because Adsense tracks page impressions and click throughs and Digg users behave like robots, flooding a site with requests and bouncing off right away. [edit:] Reddit is even worse, higher bouncer rate (95%+), and even lower engagement than Digg.
- ars 17y ago
  When you find an article on a site via digg you are supposed to check out the rest of the site? That literally did not occur to me till I read your sentence. I've certainly never done so, I've never even thought to do so. I've sometimes clicked a link inside the story text, but not often.
  - onreact-com 17y ago
    Digg is only for posting ugly comments and offending others so that's why you actually don't have to click or even read something on Digg. ;-)
c00p3r 17y ago
It seems like some lame automatic anti-fraud (too successful SEO) trigger at google, based entirely on statistics (like high-speed stock trading, etc.) Those people had their top moment, but google spoiled their bonuses.
netsp 17y ago
I remember a comment at some point by pg that customer service might be Google's Achilles heel. The evidence is accumulating. Any service that cannot be provided without it cannot be provided by Google and there is an opportunity to compete. Judging by how keen people are to share google customer service frustrations at any opportunity, I think this is evidence.
numbchuckskills 17y ago
I'm very happy with the support I get from the Google AdSense team...but it sounds like i'm outside the norm....
- numbchuckskills 17y ago
  and by outside the norm I mean someone interacts with me once every quarter or more.
traskjd 17y ago
I'm surprised to see the default thinking is that there is something dodgy at play here. Jumping from 100 impressions per day to 10,000+ probably just triggered some automatic fraud prevention system.
- invisible 17y ago
  Yeah, except for the fact that the person had been with AdSense for a year and there was no recourse after the trigger was hit.
jeremymcanally 17y ago
I made Reddit, Digg, and Lifehacker in one day and Google didn't disable mine. Apparently YMMV.
sfphotoarts 17y ago
Although I am sympathetic to everyone's disgruntlement with Google over the adsense and adwords programs, it makes for very boring news for the rest of us unconcerned with revenue streams derived that way.
s800 17y ago
This comes up all the time. Happened to me too, I gave up on AdSense as a result. How all the crappy parking and spam sites keep their adsense going I'll never understand.
jcsalterego 17y ago
I'm curious to know why, on that page, there are three vertical AdSense banners.
zach 17y ago
Unfortunately, the real problem here is that Google is a company that tries to be nice and pleasant to their users, but has to deal with unreasonable customers on a massive scale. In fact, not just unreasonable customers, but many who are actively attempting to systematically defraud them and their other customers. So I think we can all agree that this was a pretty bad example. What are the best ways that others have found to handle things in similar situations without causing these kinds of scenarios?

359 points by beambot 17y ago

One has to understand that Adsense publishers are not clients for Google. There are millions of websites trying to get Adsense working for them, so Google here is the client. Real clients of Google are Adwords advertisers, so these are the ones that they try to please. Anything that makes your site suspect will take you out of the network, and Google makes it very clear that they will do it first and ask questions later. I don't see this changing, because it is a really good assurance for advertisers.

invisible 17y ago
Google doesn't have a phone support for Adwords either. That's another story, though. Google wouldn't have Adwords customers were it not for AdSense, so I think your point fails in that sense. Google "traps" your money, whether make legally or not, and you never see it again unless you manage to appeal "correctly." Furthermore, there is no proof whatsoever that Google returns all of that money to advertisers. I've never seen a trace of evidence they don't just mark that as profit.

ujjwalg 17y ago

On a side note, google should definitely get its act together related to customer service. I have heard so many horror stories about google's indifferent/insignificant customer service lately.

there 17y ago
especially in the instances where they've taken over companies that previously had, at the least, decent support. in postini's web administration panel, there are certain actions that require you to contact support to be done. now that google owns them and you have to contact google, it's a long, painful process.
- ujjwalg 17y ago
  we should just make this post top news at HN for as long as we can.. hopefully someone at google will notice it...
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    while you're at it vote this one up as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=781751 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=781751 it's about this story: http://archlinux.me/dusty/2009/08/23/why-im-quitting-gmail/ http://archlinux.me/dusty/2009/08/23/why-im-quitting-gmail/
jacquesm 17y ago
Side note to your side note: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/google-kills-anti-scientology-sites-adsense-account/ http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/google-kills-anti... There are plenty more like that. I've also noticed a tendency to adsense account holders to avoid talking about issues in public because this may 'rock the boat'.
- shiranaihito 17y ago
  And the same excuse again: While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers
vaksel 17y ago
that's because they are pinching every penny, their support is probably outsourced to some drone farm in india.
10ren 17y ago
"I think I've saved $64 million since we started talking," replied Google. Google, being founded and run by Comp Sci PhDs, wants to automate everything. Though they don't publicize it, they are practically an AI company. Unfortunately if the Google Corporation complaints division succeeds in this automation, the first words spoken by a strong AI probably won't be along the lines of "What hath God wrought", or "I am become the angel of death", but more like "Share and Enjoy". "Share and Enjoy" is the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years. The motto stands — or rather stood — in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young complaints executives — now deceased. The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig", and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration. http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book2.html http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book2.html Calvin and Jobs http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3191/2723090810_6501c93ae2_o.png http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3191/2723090810_6501c93ae2_o....
patio11 17y ago
On a side note, google should definitely get its act together related to customer service. This implies that they're incompetent at providing customer service. My biggest fear is that this behavior is by design, that they are achieving all their customer service objectives, and that they have the metrics to prove it.
- DTrejo 17y ago
  (Meaning that they have low customer service objectives?)
  - onreact-com 17y ago
    Yeah. Don't pay people to do customer service is still more profitable than losing a few customers a they are not many search and Adsense/Adwords alternatives that can really compete when it comes to reach.
    - Ardit20 17y ago
      That's walking a very tight rope as the way you put it sounds very much like monopolistic behavior. I would suggest that it does not make business sense to have the government looking over you as being an evil monster, which, is most probably what will occur if the horror stories continue.
      - kijiki 17y ago
        Governments move slowly, and execs (and shareholders) rarely look past the next quarter.

fnid 17y ago

It's because visitors from those sites are worthless. They may click on the ads, but they aren't going to buy anything and even if they do, the conversion rate is so low that the advertisers get mad at Google.

Rantenki 17y ago
I fail to see how Google mispricing impressions is the fault of the Hizook admin. Google already modifies the payout on clickthrough using a completely opaque system. If that system cannot handle traffic spikes, they shouldn't be defaulting to banning the Adsense account, they should just throttle inventory.
- fnid 17y ago
  Google shoots first and doesn't ask questions later. I'm not defending google. I've been anti-google for years. I'm just saying why they disable the account. It's the easiest, automated solution to combat lots of problems like click-fraud, advertiser complaints, etc. If they don't disable the account, they have to constantly handle this type of account, the high traffic, potentially high click-thru, but low conversion attracting account. The other solution requires making a lot of changes to a lot of accounts. The advertisers' ad positioning, the rates for the ads, which affect other adsense sites, etc. In that case, Google runs the risk of angering a lot of customers, both advertisers, and real estate providers. The other solution: ban the account -- angers only one real estate provider.
alain94040 17y ago
That does not excuse Google's behavior in any way. The most amazing to me is that it's now Thursday, and Google has not responded. Even if they don't like humans, they could have automatically detected by now that the traffic is due to the links. Don't they have this thing called pagerank that computes exactly that? Another example of the left hand not talking to the right hand (and not caring).
- jacquesm 17y ago
  There is nothing 'amazing' about it, unfortunately, Google tech support is from Mars. The only answers I have ever had to date were cut & paste emails which usually did not address the issue at all. We keep some of them for amusement value. Adwords is not much better by the way, we've simply stopped using it after detecting some major discrepancies (read undetected click fraud) between googles reporting and our own log files. Complaining is pretty much pointless, we no longer bother, possibly this experience is unique but I highly doubt it. I guess some computer in googles database records that as 'customer satisfaction going up', but in fact it is the opposite and if I ever come across a real alternative to adwords/adsense we will be gone in a heartbeat.

stuntgoat 17y ago

If only Get Satisfaction could get the Google account. . .. Perhaps Google should acquire them; that would likely solve the customer service issues people seem to be so upset about.

jrockway 17y ago

Wow, I'm so sad that blogspam-ing is becoming unprofitable. So very sad...

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

sachinag 17y ago

What's crap is that AdSense's TOS say that you can't run someone else's context- or content-sensitive ads. So you can't run both AdSense and whatever Yahoo/Bing/whoever has. If you could, stuff like this would be a great boon, not an automatic circuit breaker that cut you off.

jacquesm 17y ago
My favorite term from the TOS is the one where they forbid you to talk about your accounts statistics: " Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google's prior written consent. "Google Confidential Information" includes without limitation: (a) all Google software, technology, programming, specifications, materials, guidelines and documentation relating to the Program; (b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Property performance in the Program provided to You by Google; and (c) any other information designated in writing by Google as "Confidential" or an equivalent designation. However, You may accurately disclose the amount of Google’s gross payments to You pursuant to the Program. Google Confidential Information does not include information that has become publicly known through no breach by You or Google, or information that has been (i) independently developed without access to Google Confidential Information, as evidenced in writing; (ii) rightfully received by You from a third party; or (iii) required to be disclosed by law or by a governmental authority. " For the whole thing see here: https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago
  You can bet they wanted to write "The first rule of adsense is ..."
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    That's definitely what it feels like. My main issue with this part of the TOS is this: Google is extremely lacking in transparency, the only way to puncture that is to team up with other publishers/advertisers and compare notes. Right now the feeling is simply that you're being screwed and you can't even talk about that feeling or verify it. At the risk of getting my adsense account blocked, and because I'm not going to let the big G muzzle me I'm going to post my adsense stats for July. edit: they're up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=791158 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=791158

redcap 17y ago

Has anyone ever fronted up to Google and ask to see some customer service there? Over the past few months there have been a number of stories about Google's bad customer service particularly in relation to the AdSense/etc programs, so I'm curious if anyone has been brave/silly enough to try.

jacquesm 17y ago
I know one of those cases personally and no, they're not 'brave/silly' enough to try because there appears to be some chance you get shut down completely if you become too vocal about support issues.

Dove 17y ago

Power corrupts.

param 17y ago
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incorrect (business) feature prioritization
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I'm with the GP on this one, certainly after my personal experiences with Google on issues like this.

riffic 17y ago

waaah. just be grateful that messrs. brin and page allowed you the privilege, for as such a brief period as it were, to make a meager pittance from these text and/or image based advertisements. find no pity from me.

MattCutts 17y ago

I'm happy to ask the right team at Google about this and point them to the post on hizook.com.

patio11 17y ago
As happy as I am that you're Google's unofficial ombudsman, Matt, you're a big billion dollar company who many of us are intensely reliant on for our businesses. There needs to be a support channel other than "make a PR issue for Google and Matt Cutts will swoop by to save the day". I had a big issue with AdWords earlier this month. Google made it all but impossible for me to reach anyone about it. Earlier this year, I had an issue with my bank denying an AdWords bill (to protect me against possible fraud). It took one minute on the phone to resolve. You make a hundred times what my bank does off me. Why is human contact only possible if we speak the secret password into the telephone disguised as a shoe which is stored in the unused broom closet marked Beware of Leopard.
- pavs 17y ago
  I couldn't agree more. Much smaller companies with much smaller capital have options to contact for support issues in a person to person basis. With Google Adwords, it is virtually non-existant. Considering the fact that you have to either really screw up or get a lot of attention to yourself for Google to get to you, without that you are out of luck. Automated response is not a solution to all problems.
- bk 17y ago
  Here's my thinking: 1. Google knows how to scale computers, and perhaps engineering teams, but not people in general. 2. "You make a hundred times what my bank does off me" - Exactly, and hiring pesky call center employees, who would have to be good on top of it, would ruin Google's profit/stock price. We're all desperate, depending on practically the only ad game in town, so we bark but have no bite. A higher-end (aka non-cpc|cpm) revenue model is the only way out, I'm afraid.
  - barrkel 17y ago

olefoo 17y ago

Two points: 1. This is not a problem with Google's Customer Service, it is a problem with their vendor relations. When Google publishes ads on your site, you are selling that space to them. Google is your customer and isn't obligated to tell you a damn thing except that they don't want to buy from you anymore. 2. There is a market opportunity here for an ad network that is willing to find good sites dropped from Google Adsense by erroneous algorithms. And that can appeal to the news herd (all the traffic driven by reddit, hn, slashot, digg, etc.) with either brand advertising or targeted ads designed to appeal to surfers from those sources. The thing is, from a strictly mathematical point of view Google may be perfectly correct, the 100 visitors a day coming to the site while looking for robotics news may have been more valuable to their advertisers than 10,000 stimulus hungry nerds that don't buy shit. And while it's hard on the site in question Google is playing for the percentages, not sheer volume.

jemka 17y ago
While you make valid points, the major issue in question is Google's lack of customer service for the advertisement brokerage service they provide. Google may not have to "tell you a damn thing", but they should at least make themselves available to deny any requested information.
- olefoo 17y ago
  Google is the customer here. They happen to be a very big customer who is aggregating and organizing adspace inventory for thousands of their customers. But as with any such relationship, they are free to walk away at any time. And yes it sucks; but there must be advertisers out there who think that a site that gets 10,000 impressions a day and is linked from most of the popular news sites is worth something; selling to them is a better move than whining about how Google doesn't love you anymore.
jasonkester 17y ago
Well said. Further to the above, Google had a very good reason to drop this particular site: Over the span of a week, their impression count shot through the roof with the sort of traffic that never clicks ads. So all Google sees is a whole ton of 0.0000001% clickthru impressions coming from a former backwater site. If my ads were serving there, I'd certainly want them pulled. Granted, Google is terrible when it comes to situations like this. But technically they did the correct thing here.

shiranaihito 17y ago

Didn't anyone else notice that Google's "explanation" for disabling the account was the same as in another recent story: While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. This was on HN a while ago: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=781751 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=781751

Tangurena 17y ago
That is one of those empty, formulaic phrases that mean the exact opposite of what they say. Like when a company says for your convenience which really means for this company's convenience or more commonly we're about to make things harder for you. These formulaic phrases are spit out by the form letter generator and have no meaning.
- shiranaihito 17y ago
  I realize it's meaningless bullshit - I was just surprised that they're using the same excuse all the time.

jemka 17y ago

Hizook could have prevented losing advertising revenue (or at least reduced losses) by having a backup or parallel ad network on their site. So if not Google adsense, what's the next best game in town?

lsc 17y ago
I have used 'project wonderful' as an advertiser to great success. It's extremely transparent. http://www.projectwonderful.com/ http://www.projectwonderful.com/ It's really big with the webcomics people

onreact-com 17y ago

This is a well known issue with the so called Digg effect. I warned people years ago not to aim for Digg traffic because Adsense tracks page impressions and click throughs and Digg users behave like robots, flooding a site with requests and bouncing off right away. [edit:] Reddit is even worse, higher bouncer rate (95%+), and even lower engagement than Digg.

ars 17y ago
When you find an article on a site via digg you are supposed to check out the rest of the site? That literally did not occur to me till I read your sentence. I've certainly never done so, I've never even thought to do so. I've sometimes clicked a link inside the story text, but not often.
- onreact-com 17y ago
  Digg is only for posting ugly comments and offending others so that's why you actually don't have to click or even read something on Digg. ;-)

c00p3r 17y ago

It seems like some lame automatic anti-fraud (too successful SEO) trigger at google, based entirely on statistics (like high-speed stock trading, etc.) Those people had their top moment, but google spoiled their bonuses.

netsp 17y ago

I remember a comment at some point by pg that customer service might be Google's Achilles heel. The evidence is accumulating. Any service that cannot be provided without it cannot be provided by Google and there is an opportunity to compete. Judging by how keen people are to share google customer service frustrations at any opportunity, I think this is evidence.

numbchuckskills 17y ago

I'm very happy with the support I get from the Google AdSense team...but it sounds like i'm outside the norm....

numbchuckskills 17y ago
and by outside the norm I mean someone interacts with me once every quarter or more.

traskjd 17y ago

I'm surprised to see the default thinking is that there is something dodgy at play here. Jumping from 100 impressions per day to 10,000+ probably just triggered some automatic fraud prevention system.

invisible 17y ago
Yeah, except for the fact that the person had been with AdSense for a year and there was no recourse after the trigger was hit.

jeremymcanally 17y ago

I made Reddit, Digg, and Lifehacker in one day and Google didn't disable mine. Apparently YMMV.

sfphotoarts 17y ago

Although I am sympathetic to everyone's disgruntlement with Google over the adsense and adwords programs, it makes for very boring news for the rest of us unconcerned with revenue streams derived that way.

s800 17y ago

This comes up all the time. Happened to me too, I gave up on AdSense as a result. How all the crappy parking and spam sites keep their adsense going I'll never understand.

jcsalterego 17y ago

I'm curious to know why, on that page, there are three vertical AdSense banners.

zach 17y ago

Unfortunately, the real problem here is that Google is a company that tries to be nice and pleasant to their users, but has to deal with unreasonable customers on a massive scale. In fact, not just unreasonable customers, but many who are actively attempting to systematically defraud them and their other customers. So I think we can all agree that this was a pretty bad example. What are the best ways that others have found to handle things in similar situations without causing these kinds of scenarios?