AdSense and Sensibility
Friday, 13. January 2006, 23:30:21
a cautionary tale.
Some months ago I started my own blogs here and while setting up noticed the offer of putting ads on my blogs by "Adsense". I wasn't sure, but the little ads on the blogs and sites of others seemed to be nicely related to topic and designed not to compete with content. since I'd been using Google as a search engine after Alta Vista became less than user friendly it was like doing business with a friend. Some friend. Last October I put the ads on my one blog, just to try it out, and the following month on my other blogs. By December I put it on my webpages. So user friendly even my skeptical roommate (also disabled) decided to give it a try on his website also All done in good faith. These are two wholly independent sites, but we share a computer, and a telephone line. We aren't the sort of people who break rules, we cross at the lights, pay taxes, we may not like the rules but we abide by them, we were raised to be honour bound.
One of the points in the terms of the agreement with AdSense, without going into the details of it all (so murky it would take pages) my roommate received a notice that he'd been cut off for clicking on his own ads. Now the allegation was made based on what? Admittedly I browse through his pages, and certainly he does editing work on his pages, and I do on mine. Exactly then, how do they decide who does what and where?
Reasonably unless they are sitting in the room next to the computer they cannot. It is rather like having an ad on my site clicked by someone in a library where I happen to be among the book browsers and therefore it is decided I am creating artificial clicks on my ads. The technology also exists for someone to use your email address and hijack it, by now we've all fallen prey to that one time or another, and that person doing the hijacking has spammed all our friends and groups and possibly even sent along a virus.
So, how then, would that determination that I am or my roomate, or a visitor in my home, was willfully clicking on an ad on their own site be made? the preview tool they provide to check on the ads can only be used with Explorer 6.0 of higher and I use Opera or Mozilla, sometime even Netscape, but not Explorer, despite persistent enquiries on our parts to provide something that would work for other browser users not one reply was received beyond this form letter
"Hello Aletta,
Thank you for your email. Unfortunately, the preview tool is currently only available for Internet Explorer. However, please know that we greatly appreciate any feedback or suggestions for ways we can improve AdSense. Your comments provide us with the assistance we need to optimize our program, so please continue to give us feedback in the future.
For additional questions, we suggest you visit our AdSense Support site at https://www.google.com/support/adsense . If you're unable to find an answer to your question on our site, please feel free to reply to this email.
Sincerely,
Kassidee
The Google AdSense Team"
Well, that was no bloody help at all. It was a matter of time I suppose. It was wrong for me to be happy finally having found a way to make some earnings. I's worked especially hard the last month finishing some children's stories to post and other articles to keep my website interesting, a good place to advertise and I could at long last have some additional income and the dignity that comes with earning income in spite of being chair bound.
I received this:
"Subject: Google AdSense Account Disabled
Cc: Google AdSense
Hello aletta mes,
Your AdSense account was found to be related to an account previously disabled for invalid click activity and we have therefore disabled your account. Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment. The earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected advertisers.
As outlined in our program Terms and Conditions, Google reserves the right to terminate any publisher's participation at any time.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team"
I object strenuously to being cut off punitively for association with someone who also uses your AdSense. To begin with I can't even imagine why you cut him off. Possibly because I looked at his site from the same computer he used to do some editing on? Don't other families share computers? For that matter don't roommates, library patrons etc.?
Either these are random allegations, completely unfounded, or haphazard spying which build notions from poorly interpreted statistics, using a set of rationale that is only going to be applicable some of the time. Does this mean all my friends and family world wide will also be cut from your service? If one is found to be working for Google will you be cutting yourself off also?
Perhaps this is something you do as a matter of routine. Find some actual or perceived slight as soon as payment should be made to save yourself the pay outs and make a handsome sum. How do I know with certitude that you give back every penny of it to your advertisers?
Could be quite the little racket you have going on. I mean, every time someone comes close to being owed even $50. you accuse them of clicking on one of the ads on their site or one somehow perceived to be associated to them (none of which needs to be proved, apparently), you pocket the advertisers monies, don't pay the website owners, and return none or only a portion of the advertisers monies. After all how would they know which advertisers are owed what, they only have your word on it, and I am not impressed by your sense of honour.
Between my roommate and I, I was using the service quite some time before he (I was the one recommending the service, for which I hope he will forgive me), so this means you will then feel free to take all my earnings (a humble amount admittedly) earned previous to your terminating his account?
This is now day 7 since my first enquiries on how to check on the ads on my site when you do not offer a tool to do so with the browsers I use on my machine, without incurring your wrath, I'd still like answers even if it seems pointless to you. This letter of enquiry was sent more than a week prior to you terminating my account.
I regret having urged friends to join your service. I hope they will forgive me. I was really quite excited having found a means to recoup some of the efforts and outlay for web sites we maintain as housebound persons with disabilities, some of us are in danger of no longer being able to afford keeping our web sites going. When you have orphan illnesses with few resources/supports those web sites serve a purpose and are badly needed.
I will avoid using the term Google in my everyday conversations, I will avoid using your search engine and urge others to do the same. If this stunt has been used on others about to expect a payment and then getting the proverbial "boot" I will collect up the particulars. Imagine if you do this one million times (not entirely unreasonable to think so) for a sum of about $50. you have just pocketed $50,000,000 from poor hard working people trying their best to provide informative and entertaining sites without which your service would be pointless.
I noted also that in the agreements provided by other advertising services similar to AdSense the agreements read almost verbatim like yours with the addition that anyone found to have been terminated by another service will be terminated. Essentially that mean you've blackballed anyone given this treatment from being able to go elsewhere. this impeded people making a living, and making a living is a human right.
All this without proving any wrong was ever committed by anyone, just the allegation, termination of the account, taking the monies already earned and pocketing it. Quite the little racket you have going there. I think it is contemptible. Absolutely.
At this point you've ignored my requests for answers over a week and I feel entirely justified in posting this wherever I like. If you have something you wish to refute, well, apparently you know how to find me, although not at my Gmail account, that was the first remnant of Google to be happily extricated from my life.
This has all caused me a great deal of grief and hurt. How many other disabled persons have you done this to? How many poor mom's trying to make a little extra from home/have you done this to? How many elderly trying to make ends meet? How many are intimidated by your size to even speak up, and where can you even go to complain - seriously if anyone knows, tell me.
aletta mes
I shall keep you posted.
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