Google collects ad revenue from the leads generated by AdSense users, but is not always paying. All of the revenue you have built up in your AdSense account may erased at any time, saving them money. This revenue generation scheme appears to be disguised under the umbrella of ‘invalid clicks’.
Don’t believe it? It occurs often enough for Google to write it on their own AdSense FAQ:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en#q5
I have run Google’s AdSense ads on my site for several months. Google did not send me a check immediately for the revenue I earned, but has waited for the account balance to reach a certain amount. After a couple months of running the ads, I finally received the check and cashed it.
Google’s check bounced.
The bank called me and told me Google placed a stop payment on the check!
I then received this email from Google AdSense:
Email Subject: Google AdSense Account Disabled
While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.
Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.
If you have any questions about your account or the actions we’ve taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by visiting https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en_US.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Because of Google’s actions, the bank charged me a $25 fee, then charged an additional fee for reaching a negative balance (there was a $0 balance in my account when the check was cashed).
Two line items in the Google AdSense account say ‘Adjustment – Invalid Clicks’ and have deducted the entire balance I’ve earned while prostituting my website to Google the last couple months. I already felt dirty and used in placing Google’s ads on my formerly untainted site, but after so much ‘exposure’ to only have Google take all the earnings away without warning, explanation or reason, just seems fraudulent.
A second email came last week…
Email Subject: Google AdSense Account Reinstated
As you know, Google treats instances of invalid click activity very seriously. We have reviewed your circumstances and have reinstated your account, effective immediately. However, there will be a delay before ads start running on your website. It may take up to 48 hours before all of our servers are informed of the change.
We appreciate your patience, and apologize for any inconvenience. If you have any questions, please feel free to respond to this email.
For your reference, you can find tips and guidelines for keeping your account in good standing by visiting our Help Center at
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23921.
How financially convenient for Google to have their ads posted on my site for a couple months (which advertisers pay them for), but when it comes time to pay me, they disable my account and zero out my balance. They then later miss the revenue I have brought them and say ‘oops, I guess your account is ok after all’, but they chose to not refund the money, because of their ‘Terms and Conditions’.
The AdSense account has not had any click fraud. A high percentage of the visitors are from Google’s organic listings itself. So, by Google saying there was click fraud, wouldn’t that be saying that Google’s search itself attracted the ‘fraudulent’ clickers?
Google cites their ‘Terms and Conditions’ as an excuse to not pay. This sounds to me like an employer refusing to pay an employee after working a while. That would be unethical and illegal, wouldn’t it?
This issue is not over. I encourage anyone else to share their story.
Hello all I have just started with a AdSense account and had the same thing I asked google to tell me what exactly what i have done this is the reply
Hello,
Thank you for providing us with additional information. However,
after thoroughly reviewing your account data and taking your feedback
into consideration, we have re-confirmed that your account poses a
significant risk to our advertisers. For this reason, we are unable
to reinstate your account. Thank you for your understanding.
As a reminder, if you have any questions about your account or the
actions that we have taken, please do not reply to this email. You
can find more information by visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.
As you can see my question has not been answered
WHAT CAN I DO I was not due lots of money but have been ripped off
Google can be like a big bully. There’s really no one keeping them accountable for paying what they owe people. They owe me about $500 by now and they just conveniently put ‘invalid clicks’ in the account each time they don’t feel like paying me. I sent them a bill to their AP department, have sent various emails, but no response. It’s a big problem. If we keep talking about it online in different forums, maybe they will eventually take notice and start paying.
I have sent another email simply asking “what have I done wrong”
THERE REPLY
Hello,
Thank you for providing us with additional information. However,
after thoroughly reviewing your account data and taking your feedback
into consideration, we have re-confirmed that your account poses a
significant risk to our advertisers. For this reason, we are unable
to reinstate your account. Thank you for your understanding.
As a reminder, if you have any questions about your account or the
actions that we have taken, please do not reply to this email. You
can find more information by visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.
This does not answer my question
Add me to this list. After about a month I’m out $40+ with no explanation other than the same email mentioned above. I’m trying to start up a real website. I’m not trying to scam google by putting months of time into developing my pages so I can click them over and over for $40.
I sent them a message about this. It will be interesting to see their reply. If they blank out my balance without sending a cent I will definitely drop them.
We all moan about this but what can we do they just walk all over us and we do nothing me included, in my case they said after i asked them what i had done their reply was
Thank you for providing us with additional information. However,
after thoroughly reviewing your account data and taking your feedback
into consideration, we have re-confirmed that your account poses a
significant risk to our advertisers. For this reason, we are unable
to reinstate your account. Thank you for your understanding.
As a reminder, if you have any questions about your account or the
actions that we have taken, please do not reply to this email. You
can find more information by visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.
This does not answer my question
CAN ANY ONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT I HAVE DONE WRONG AS THEY WON’T TELL ME
This exact same situation happened to our site – a fun, family based shopping site which baffled us for Google to state:
“We have re-confirmed that your account poses a significant risk to our advertisers.”
I’m becoming increasingly disturbed by Google’s practices – they want the law changed so they can hold data on you for up to 10 years (I actually think they settled for three years very recently) If you have any form of account with Google (GMail, Google Calendar, Google Desktop) and if you have signed in for Search all of that information is held under your name.
I recently removed Google Desktop from my computer as I found it was sending all my files and information about the programs I use back to Google for their ‘Improvement program’
Anyhow we’ve lost $80 from Google Adsense, no major loss but irritating enough as it had taken a year to grow that much and they don’t give us any reason as to why they’ve done it.
they did the same thing to me adter reaching $250.00 in advertising on my high traffic gamers site. i have filled out the appeal forum and have not heard form them in 4 days, my guess that Google found a way to scam us… i`m sure they are being paid for the ads posted on my site and flat refuse to pay me. guess a class action law suit would work into the deal soon
They put a straight hold on my $9k about 7 days ago. I let them know about it and the first response was there was no such hold. The next day I replied asking them why I see it then after I logged in? Well the response to that was there was a hold and they would look into it with a payment specialist.
That didn’t answer if I was going to get paid this month or not. So I asked, and the reply was no, they were going to hold the $9k and not pay me until they could sort it all out. WTF?
I have made over $73k to date with adsense this year.
I have held the same adsense account for over 6 years.
I’m about to switch to another ad network. Perhaps Yahoo ads?
I mean it’s not like my account was in violation somehow. The ads are still displaying across over 70,000 pages on my network of sites.
Imagine if you lost a percentage of half a million dollars in revenue over the next 6 years because you wouldn’t pay somebody the $9k you owed money to in a timely fashion? I’m willing to accept even a week late, but a month is ridiculous. It’s not like I’m bringing in like $20k-$30 a month. If it did I’d just suck it up and wait.
I now have to borrow $9k from somebody at probably 4%-5% interest for a month. What’s that all for? Rent, keeping the lights on, cable bill, food, water, credit cards, car payment, medical bills, other bills, etc., oh and paying the data center bill for our bandwidth and sever, where the pages resides that Google’s ads get served upon.
It’s not like Google is going to reimburse me that cost of the loan I have to take out now.
I will add at the same time they’re making interest off my money, I have to pay to borrow against it. How the hell does that seem right?
Are you kidding me?
Google owes me $9k from September 2009 that should have been paid on October 27thg 2009, and they’re holding it back for no reason other than bugs in their payment system. I’ve been an adsense publisher for over 6 years and never had a problem like this.
I hope their stock price tanks for making me take out a 4%-5% loan for 30 days on my money that they’re getting paid interest on holding for an additional month!
Hello,
They (Google) are still at it!
I too “prostituted” by blog for the past six months and accumulated a nice little pile of money. Now that I’d like my pile of money Google has disabled my account and sent me this email:
Hello,
While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our
advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.
Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.
If you have any questions about your account or the actions we’ve taken,
please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by
visiting https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153
.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
There has been absolutely NO fraudulent activity on my account. I’ve made an appeal, but wonder whether I even want to move forward with a company who has essentially stolen money from me.
I never thought I’d be victim to an internet scam…and by Google!
Too bad Yahoo ceased their ads program, otherwise I would have switched already. Google fails to pay me out for 3 months now and I am definitely not happy with it. Like all of you, I pay for my sites, hosting, my web admin time, electricity, etc. just to run those Google-ads. Yes my sites are prostitutes that get f***ed by Google. But if i don’t get my money, I will ban Google mafia from my sites. Prostiutes don’t f*** for nothing. There are other ad-click schemes around, perhaps not as generous, but at least they pay. Better 10 bucks paid out than 100 bucks left on the screen.
hello email methods are prohibiter inside the adsens i am a person that earn from google more than 24000$ last year so they pay me correct time . thay wont scam untill you cheat them . faults is not in Google hand . some stipid people dont even read their policy they think . only that Google is serving ads to our sites and we need to get traffic by using any method . please read their policy first than .