Mar 31 2009
Nearly Booted Out of Adsense
I noticed a couple of weeks ago that Adsense ads had stopped displaying on my London and Sydney websites and I had no idea why. I hadn’t received an email-of-doom to tell me I had been banned from the programme and all of my other sites were still working fine, so I was baffled. I made a couple posts to some web geek forums and nobody could shed light on my problem. I emailed Google and after no response for a week, I was ready to throw in the towel and accept that two of my sites had been banned and more might be on the way. Scary stuff.
My Adsense login email address had changed awhile ago for reasons I forget and realised today that I hadn’t checked the new Gmail address (that I never use), I had only checked the old Yahoo address. Yesterday I had a look at my Gmail account and, surprise, surprise, there was an email sitting there from the powers that be at Google about my websites, the reason it was banned and what I could do about it.
The reason the ads were pulled is because I had a ‘Partner Sites’ heading with a couple of text links under it and then an Adsense unit under those. According to Google, and I can see where they’re coming from, this is misleading as it makes the reader think that the Adsense unit is a partner site since it falls under that heading. I was told that only ‘Sponsered Links’ or ‘Advertisements’ were suitable headings and that I had to change this within 72 hours. If I didn’t respond in 72 hours, I was told the ads would be permanently pulled from the offending site.
As I hadn’t seen the warning for over three weeks I was way above the 72 hour limit and kind of crapping myself. I sent a borderline begging email reply saying that I had only just checked this email address, I had been a member of Adsense for over five years with no offences, that my site was full of quality content etc etc. I had a reply within the hour saying that if I made the changes, my Adsense would be reinstated on both sites within 48 hours.
Less than 24 hours later, Adsense is back on my London site and soon to be back on my Sydney site (I made a mistake with the code which didn’t fix the problem straight away). After hearing horror stories of Google banning people without any notification whatsoever, I’m really impressed with the speed of their replies and extremely happy they’ve been flexible with me about the 72 hours thing.
You can bet that from now on I will be paying closer attention to the Adsense terms and conditions and that I will be checking that Gmail account from time to time! Most of all, this experience has reminded me how easy it is for Adsense to be taken away and how important it is to diversify across as many income streams as possible.
Has anyone else ever run afoul of the Adsense gods?
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Wow. I’m glad everything worked out for you. It’s somewhat amazing they even found that. How long had the ad unit been under those links?
Somehow a site of mine got some malicious code in it and it is being banned from Google. I have submitted a review request but haven’t heard from Google yet.
We really live and die by the big G either for traffic or income.
Phew! that was a close shave…
I have had a couple with Adsense myself but have also sent semi-begging mails back and both times it worked!
I have had lots of issues with malicious code, even though I keep things up to date the only advice is to keep checking your pages for dodgy links..
I had one of my star performers hit with the -50 penalty over a malicious code issue, and two months on have still not heard from google!
Phew lucky - I live in dread of losing my Adsense account I must admit! Remember to update your privacy policy before 8 April and use the “allowed sites” feature to stop people steeling your adsense ID and putting it on sex sites to get you banned (Ive seen it happen on hubpages)
Lissie
I wasn’t even aware they do ban individual sites from Adsense, I thought they could just kick you out of the program altogether. Good to hear that it worked out for you.
Here’s the skinny on Google…they don’t care and they usually don’t respond. However, it does seem like they are trying to work things out with advertisers. But, they really have no incentive to work things out with smaller advertisers. Smaller advertiser = smaller $$.
I was kicked out 2 years ago because I was using Adwords to drive traffic to a sales page which also had Adsense ads on it. It’s not even spelled out in their terms. So beware.
My only question is, why post in a forum first? Unless someone in the forum is a Google employee, any answer would only be a guess. That’s why I don’t like forums, all conjecture and hearsay
I had my brush of death with Adsense a couple of years when I first started using it. Like most people, I was trying to take the easy way out, a few pictures (too near) beside the Adsense.
Was warned, and took it down!
Glad to hear it all work out for you there Kristy.
How long had the ad unit been under those links?