Fired by a google algorithm.
duckworksmagazine.com/11/columns/guest/winter...Posted Dec 29, 2010, 3:05 PM UTC
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duckworksmagazine.com
Well from my experience, never rely on google money as a source of income. The fact they can kill your account at the drop of a hat is always something to consider. It's out of your hands, and thats not a good business model.
The fact he states "I did get the odd subscriber sending me an email saying that he had clicked loads of adverts. This is called demon clicking. " and "Oh yes, I was also running little blocks of adverts provided by Adsense and, yes, I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers – all of whom were interested in selling stuff to sailors." really isn't helping. One of the first thing Google tells you not to do is invite clicks on ads, and if your account has a suspicious clickthrough rate it's gonna raise flags.
I have sites with 10% click through rate and have never had an issue ... but I suspect once google seems something is up it's in their interest to protect the their Adverstising client as that is where the final revenue ends up coming from.
Not saying it is fair or balanced, but thats the way it goes ...
321
I think you might be right about that. I think Google would gain more respect if they at least told the guy why his account has been frozen.
At the end of the day he was making them money so it would make mores sense to freeze the account for 3-6 months with an explanation why.
I think they can also do this with websites by setting their page rank to zero. it basically shitlists them but a popular site will make the pagerank back over time.
It's a fine line between protecting your interests and being heavy handed.
126
I think the reason they did not tell him why they shut it down might be due to reasons similar to VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat). If they inform their users why the account is shut down, it makes it easier for people trying to cheat the system to figure out its weaknesses.
142
This is almost certainly correct.
If you're working to defend against humans cheating your system, the last thing you would want to do is say "We shut you down because you have more than three bursts of five clicks over ten seconds from one IP - clearly you're having people fraudulently click links."
If I'm a bad guy, I'm going to take that information and use it to tailor my next round of exploitation. If I'm a good user, I'm just going to be pissed, because, "nuh uh!"
75
Traditionally, security through obscurity hasn't worked out all that well.
[edit: wow, downvoted for a well known security axiom? Interesing...]
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There are actually lots programs out there that specifically target adsense users in order to kill their accounts by creating lots of fake clicks.
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Clearly they don't have to be that detailed. They could have simply told him it was because of your posting that encouraged site visitors to visit the ads or we showed evidence of click fraud instead of just the incredibly vague "invalid activity"
2
They wouldn't need to be so specific though. They could have just said the click rate was iffy and if you know why then stop doing that stuff. In 3 months you can come back and behave.
1
That sounds like exactly what the TSA does.
1
That's the reason Google gives and there probably is some merit to it, but I suspect another important reason is to cut costs. Google adsense has over 1 million publishers and Google adwords has millions of advertisers. I've worked at both sides and whether you're making money for them or paying them to advertise for you, there is no way to contact them buy phone, email or otherwise. Google adsense/adwords has zero support cost and I suspect only two types of employees: engineers and accountants.
6
this is an inherent user experience disadvantage (company advantage). By not tying x support hours to y activity they are able to support a huge global userbase and gain fantastic efficiency of scale. "What's that bob? We want to expand to tajikistan? Ok, throw all of our auto support messages into google translate and turn the service on for google.co.tj."
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[deleted]
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While they may have considered this in the abstract, it almost certainly wasn't a factor in why they didn't inform him of why the account was shut down.
The reason they didn't tell him why they shut it down is because no human was involved in the process, except for one who probably spent a maximum of 30 seconds reviewing the graphs created for them by the automated system, and then clicked the button marked 'reviewed; terminate' and sent him the second automated email.
Google never communicates with agents in any kind of actual human way unless they generate in the millions of dollars of revenue per year. They simply don't give the faintest hint of a shit about them: there are always more where they came from, so there's no point in spending even a second of a human being's time on them. Humans are expensive.
1
Cutting off a business relationship for "undisclosed reasons" when doing so causes financial harm to the other party is basically fraud. In the Google case, Google has promised the adsense account holder money and isn't paying. In the Valve case, the user has paid for games and is no longer able to play them.
In neither case is the existence of a click-through TOS really relevant. If a court disagrees, then the law is fradulent.
-2
I suspect Google's lawyers are smarter than you, me, and most of reddit. What you or the person in question here thinks doesn't matter much - it's what the lawyers managed to cover their asses on.
I'd imagine the same agreement that spells out how they can can you is the one that promises to pay you - so if one claims it's not valid, they'd be also claiming Google has no obligation to pay either, as it's not relevant :)
7
It's not really fraud, he admits to breaking the TOS they set out. It may be a bit extreme of them, but it's fully within their rights. If I have a client that gives me most of my work and that client chooses not to do business with me anymore because he finds out I'm fudging numbers in my billing department the only person approaching anything near fraud is me.
Just because Google is a big company and this guy is a very small business does not mean we should treat their business dealings any differently then the dealings of businesses of equal size.
5
He admitted to clicking a box stating that Google could terminate his account at any time for any reason (which they do not need to disclose). Even he doesn't argue that what they did is fraudulent or illegal, because it isn't. It's simply shitty and inhuman.
4
This is an excellent point. That company's right to protect its uber-mega-turbo-hyper-secret algorithms and whatnot end on that side of my right to use the product as promised.
0
The first thing our security Prof told us, was, that security that relies on obscurity/secrecy is not good security in the first place. Good security is unbreakable, even if it is known how it works. Guess Google has no good security then.
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Secrecy is another form of security. Call it another layer if you want. The only unbreakable security is something that can in no way, shape, or form be accessed, ever. The only 100% secure network, is one that is completely unplugged from the rest of the world, with no physical access to it at all.
Your "Security Prof" should know this.
1
There's a difference between relying on obscurity/secrecy and just not blasting info about your system to potential hackers. For instance, the Bullion Depository at Fort Knox doesn't publish their blueprints, but that doesn't somehow make them less secure because they're not fully transparent.
1
It may be a simple of issue of his subscribers not buying anything when they click the ads.
1
I dislike that they can simply take your accrued money without providing a reason. This seems very unethical.
1
They provided him a reason. It's click fraud and against the ToS.
1
Eh, except it wasn't click fraud. What he said, while not ToS compliant, he actually told them ONLY to click ads if interesting to them. If anything he was more a model customer in that case than not. He never unexplicitly asked them to click either.
1
A similar story reported here, from someone who got shitlisted... http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/google-false-confessions/
1
You took the words out of my mouth. The guy clearly states multiple times that people were clicking ads just to click them. That's the problem, and that's why he was banned.
Anyone who is deep into internet marketing knows that google is a piece of shit and many try to avoid them. Yes, you get the most hits (with adwords), but bing/yahoo are comparable and won't throw you under a bus.
66
but bing/yahoo are comparable and won't throw you under a bus.
Yet.
26
Probably because they want all the ad revenue they can get, so they aren't as strict in enforcing rules like Google's.
1
Hmm, since google seem to block accounts that get unusual click-through patterns wouldn't it be possible to kind of do a denial-of-service attack on a website by clicking repeatedly on the ad-sense adverts on their site? Perhaps some tricks like using multiple IP's/users (anonymous - anyone?) would be needed.
Google advertising does quite indeed seem quite bad.
23
This is actually a very clever way to strip the income of a website. Not that I would endorse that type of thing.
7
It's the same click-fraud scams people where doing by clicking on competitors ads to dry up their advertising budgets.
7
... which doesn't work anymore and hasn't for years.
1
I've heard of this happening before; unfortunately, I can't give any specific instances off the top of my head, but it's effective.
1
Sounds like the future of commercial Internet warfare will be the financial DoS.
1
clickspamming is one of the stock weapons in 4chan's arsenal.
1
My assumption is that they've tuned their algorithms well enough to avoid punishing the webmaster for attacks like that. Note that in this case, it sounds like he violated a number of the Adsense rules, such as revealing his click-through rate and encouraging visitors to click the ads. A site that wasn't violating the rules and had unusual click-through pattens would probably just have those clicks deleted, but wouldn't get kicked out of Adsense.
1
Hmm, since google seem to block accounts that get unusual click-through patterns
This is the faulty assumption you based your entire post on.
Google suspends people who beg for clicks. NOT people who just get weird clicks. Fraudulent clicks aren't paid, but they don't get you suspended unless they think the account owner actually tried to instigate it.
Why are people upvoting this person? He stated a bunch of facts with no basis.
1
This is the faulty assumption you based your entire post on.
Uhm, that was the only thing I posted - a question/idea regarding if this system could be exploited assuming that it is too hard for google to correctly verify if fraudulent clicks have been instigated by the account owner or by someone else (can you show that this is not the case? That they actually make a real investigation of who instigated it when there is a weird click-through pattern? I'd bet you that this is just an automated algorithm that seems a weird pattern and shuts down the account)
1
Microhoo will throw you under the bus, but they actually let you talk to people and explain your situation. I have successfully resolved a few issue with MSN Adcenter support. Does google even let you talk to people?
19
Google only lets you talk to people after they decide you are important/profitable enough to be invited to a premium Adsense account. You then get an account manager who helps you optimize revenue and who talks to the policy team for you. You can still get banned for things that were approved by your account manager though; in the end the policy team is king.
16
Msft+yahoo employee count = ~104,000
Gooogle employee count = ~23,000
It makes a difference.
13
Microsoft has a massive number of other business lines. Nearly all of Google's revenue comes from advertising.
Their advertising revenue is significantly more than Microsoft. No, this is just shitty customer support. Oh wait, this guy isn't their customer (and neither are you) -- their only customers are people who pay for ads.
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I advertise on Bing and I can tell you they are very attentive to your needs when you have a problem. You can easily get them on the phone and they will actually open a ticket and not close it until the issue is resolved. They also send out follow-up satisfaction surveys.
9
Fully agree. But then, nothing stops them from hiring people to actually answer the damned phones/emails unhappy customers send them.
2
The first time it became apparent people were clicking on links to support him he should have pulled the ads from the site. I've heard similar sob stories from people with dedicated fans on their sites. Most of them learn the hard way when google pulls their accounts.
1
I skimmed a lot of what he said, but I don't think that google would suspend a legitimate account for no reason. They must have an algorithm that checks for unusal activity as you mentioned, so it seems like he got caught is all.
If people love his videos so much, then they will follow him to a new video hub.
48
Don't see why people are downvoting this. There may be legitimate reasons why his account was suspended, there ought to be some recourse for him to determine if this is the case and whether or not he can do anything about it.
You must consider the possibility that there was an advertiser that was seeing a lot of unconverted traffic being generated by his site (google analytics can see that).
Regardless, google should still pay him for any advertising that is on his youtube page and those monies should still be available to him. Since it is HIS copyright, he could always pull his youtube videos and post them under say... his wife's name on youtube with a new adsense account and that would be a perfectly legal way for him to continue generating revenue with those.
It is also illegal for youtube to generate income from someone else's intellectual property without compensation. In terms of his website, he's probably SOL and since he was asking for clicks, he did open himself up to this. Ignorance may be a compelling argument, but it isn't one that will stand a legal challenge (even if his intentions seem pure).
39
there ought to be some recourse for him to determine if this is the case and whether or not he can do anything about it.
Hm. Maybe he could ask Google? Oh wait, he tried that. Their response was "nothing to see here... move along"
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I can't help but read your comments in Gimli's voice.
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"nothing to see here... move along"
What is there to see? He broke the rules. The rules are straightforward. He profited from breaking the rules, causing low-conversion clicks, and didn't report that. Why should Google be in a business relationship with that kind of person?
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AND MY AXE
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[deleted]
-2
Regardless, google should still pay him for any advertising that is on his youtube page and those monies should still be available to him.
The thing is, Google isn't just taking that money from him, it's returning it to the advertisers. If they didn't do that, they'd be shafting the advertisers who spent good money putting ads on the guy's site and who then failed to see the conversion rate they expected.
I'm not saying things went ideally here, but I don't see any indication that Google isn't doing its best to do the right thing here.
9
They should know the percentage of invalid clicks though, and be able to return that percentage. Taking all the money after the fact, when there obviously was lots of real clicks there, THAT's the worst part. Refusing to do future business with a guy is their decision, but refusing to pay at all, that's just stealing.
1
Is the conversion rate thing this guy's fault, though? Say I was on a site catering to my interests and clicked through to a lot of their ads, because these also catered to my interests. I'd never buy anything though, because I'm cheap/poor/on a budget and already spent it, or I was just looking.
That's like a store having a policy that you have to come in and buy something if you're going to browse. What? I mean, yes, I know brick-and-mortar stores lose money if they're open and nobody's buying, but that's not the people's fault, it's the store's.
0
It is also illegal for youtube to generate income from someone else's intellectual property without compensation.
I believe when you post a video to Youtube you grant them a permanent license to use your copyrighted material in this way.
4
You're missing the point. He basically tells us in his over-long post why his account was banned - his followers were deliberately clicking his Adsense links in order to help finance his boating hobby, and not because they were interested in the subject of the ad. This is in breech of the rules. The only question is: to what extent was he responsible for this happening?
4
In the license you agree to when you upload a YouTube video:
“…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successor’s) business… in any media formats and through any media channels.”
2
You can still remove the content, can't you?
2
I agree, Google seem to have made a couple of mistakes here.. firstly they should not be touching the revenue he earned from his Youtube truck video. That's a website that they completely control, they know nothing untoward has been happening there, he's earned his money fair and square.
As for his sailing website, it's likely that a bunch of his overzealous fans have been clicking with no interest in the adverts.. however I don't understand the decision to ban him. What Google should have done is sent him an email saying "Our algorithm has detected that your website is now a much lower quality one for advertisers, so we're refunding them 50% of the money we have on account for you, if you want to earn more money in future please take steps to improve the quality of your site for advertiers".
The guy could then post on his website telling people not to click ads unless they were actually interested, his site would improve and it would be win win all around. Instead, he's banned, and neither he or google or the advertisers stand to make any money at all.
1
but I don't think that google would suspend a legitimate account for no reason.
Cite?
They must have an algorithm that checks for unusal activity as you mentioned
So... "he must be doing something wrong because their algorithm would never flag a false positive based on [magic happens here]"?
19
So... "he must be doing something wrong because their algorithm would never flag a false positive based on [magic happens here]"?
It wasn't a false positive. His users were clicking through the links without buying anything because he did in fact encourage that behavior.
18
MAY have encouraged the behaviour.
2
Did you read the same article I did? When did he encourage the clicks?
0
Why would google kill the golden goose? If he was making so much money for google, it doesn't make any logical sense for them to end it. Can you provide any logical reasoning?
5
Yes - the possibility that Google has an acceptable false positive rate, and it's just not worth their time to deal with it.
Maybe he was doing bad things and openly in breach of the contract. On the other hand, maybe he slipped a bit and made an honest mistake (like mentioning that he gets revenue from clickthroughs). My problem is that without Google explaining why he was banned (the wonderful "oh we checked our numbers, and we're right" explanation) then there is no way of knowing, and IMHO that's bad.
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[deleted]
18
Because if people are gaming the ads by clicking them with no intention of buying anything, then the advertiser will stop using google ads. Google might get a little extra money in the short term since people are clicking on the ads, but in the long run, loss of people buying advertisements, and loss of brand trust, will hurt them a LOT more. In other words, if people start thinking that selling ads via google aren't good returns because of false clicks, then google will have to lower its prices, or people won't seek to advertise with google at all.
5
On the contrary, playing along with schemes like this would be "killing the golden goose". ie, destroying something of lasting value just for short-term gain.
His users spamclicking was making money for google in the short term. But in the long term, a pattern of fraudulent clicks (and therefore billing) would cause advertisers to think of ads on google as being less valuable, leading them to advertise less, or pay less for it.
So it's in google's long-term interest to make sure that ads placed through them are trustworthy and valuable. That's why they not only end sources of fraudulent clickthrough as quickly as they find them, they return all money still available to the affected advertisers.
2
Google may be making money but a low conversion rate makes them less appealing to advertisers. It probably makes sense for them to find any reason to ban publishers that don't create sales for the advertisers because otherwise the advertisers would leave.
It's not like there's a shortage of publishers so Google are willing to completely obliterate some individuals for their greater good and that's what makes them evil.
1
You can stop reading after this
"Oh yes, I was also running little blocks of adverts provided by Adsense and, yes, I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers – all of whom were interested in selling stuff to sailors."
I use adsense and they make you sign a contract that states that you will not participate in any "click incentive" programs. This guy's story is sad but he broke the rules.
12
How is stating the truth a "click incentive" program? He didn't ask them to click the links so that he would get more money, he is just saying that, yes, these are paid advertisements that pay-per-click. I don't see how this is "breaking the rules".
-3
Really?
Why exactly do you think that he was mentioning that he gets money from clicks? You don't think there's any chance that his point was that users could do him a favor by clicking?
5
Google has strict rules about this kind of stuff. Calling attention to the ads like this, even if you don't explicitly ask people to click on them, is against their rules. It's a hard lesson if you mess up, but if so much of your income is coming from Adsense, you really should read through the rules at least once.
2
They do have an algorithm, since most advertisers use google analytics, google tracks conversions, so when google sees that most clicks from ads on this dude's videos don't result in conversions it raises a nice red flag.
And I am not apologising for google, i hate them too, they killed my adsense account with 0 explanation and i wasnt even inviting clicks like this guy. Up to this day i have no idea why they kept my 200$ :( And i had tons of problems with adwords too.
When you just use their gmail/youtube/whatever services, google is awesome. As soon as you start advertising with them, or have any sorts of business relationships, they become a faceless cold corporation just like any other. This whole do no evil motto is bullshit - it's "do no evil to shareholders".
8
Yes, because computers NEVER make mistakes, and neither do the appeal "specialists" who are likely outsourced from India or China.
6
If they come from India, they must be incompetents.
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It has more to do with the motivation for outsourcing than the employees themselves. Corporations outsource to save money. When evaluating outsourcing the number one concern is budgetary and not excellent customer service. It is no surprise that when outsourcing to take advantage of manipulated labor markets, that sub-par employees are also selected with an eye towards saving even more money. After deciding how much crap service customers will put up with, the company chooses employees that can provide the bare minimum of service.
They are not incompetent because they are Indian but because competent people can get better paying jobs.
2
sarcasm you dolts
-2
I don't think that google would suspend a legitimate account for no reason.
They have an automated system suspending accounts. That system has some error rate.
5
yes, I agree there must be a false positive rate. If I understand his article though, a human checked it later?
1
Which changes what?
That human sits all day dealing with well crafted excuses from people who are legitimately trying to game the system. He has no incentive to sympathize with the user.
A few years back, I worked tech support for a company that provided email service. I'd get spam complaints with some regularity, and I can assure you - I was never on the user's side. Any grey area means constant abuse, and so when working on any sort of network abuse grey is black.
1
I think that's why he spent a bit of time talking about how long his videos are on his private site. He probably doesn't have that many page impressions, but a high click through rate for those page impressions. Which might have thrown the google algortyhm off.
It sounds like his viewers were loyal, but maybe too loyal.
3
It is very very well known by now that if you deal with Google and have a problem it is going to be nigh impossible to actually speak to a human being. This is a fundamental problem if you are relying on Google for a significant portion of your income.
This man is articulate and if he had a relationship with a person this could probably be straightened out. I doubt that either of the emails he received was written by a human being. That "thorough review" was probably just another algo that evaluated the first algo.
To really service its adsense employees Google would probably need 150K employees. They have about 20K. Sadly you have to know the monster you're getting in bed with and in the case of Google you had better read every line of the TOS if it accounts for a significant source of income.
15
in the case of Google you had better read every line of the TOS if it accounts for a significant source of income.
Dude, "don't direct users to the ads" is the most important, most clear rule in AdSense. I signed up for AdSense in 2004 and even then it was front and center. It's not legal mumbo-jumbo and it's not a hidden rule.
1
Even more to the point, don't create your main source of income around someone else's api.
7
Impossible. Google controls everything, namely rankings and traffic.
1
Your site will still function perfectly fine without it though. I'm just amazed at all the little companies out there whose principle product is based on interaction with things like twitter, facebook and so on.
I'm sure most of them are just little projects by dev's but I've read stories about people whose main source of income came from little clients build around api's provided by completely unaffiliated websites.
1
Yeah, he should have used his massive bargaining power to set up favorable agreements with all the major YouTube competitors.
Oh wait...
1
So your argument is, "He's wrong because he should have known Google is evil?"
4
Yeah, all those jackasses who got killed by Hitler, it was their own fault, I mean c'mon who didn't know he was evil.
(/sarcasm, just in case)
0
Not saying it is fair or balanced, but thats the way it goes ...
Best point here. I wouldn't easily trust a burglar to clean my house, nor would I ever purposefully engage with a company whose processes are so esoteric that they appear arbitrary unless I understood that risk going in.
3
Yes it's his fault he got robbed because he chose to business with the infamous criminal Google.
4
Exactly my thoughts. This:
I need it. I still have two teenage children at English Universities. So I have to bale pretty hard to stay afloat
... should never be mixed with this:
I signed up to a set of rules I did not fully understand. I also ticked a box agreeing to Google stopping our relationship at their discretion and without them having to tell me what I did wrong.
Don't put all of your eggs in one basket, especially when the basket has a hole in it.
3
The shit that is messed up is that even if you never tell your subs to do anything, all it takes is a few haters and they can get your adsense account suspended by ad-click bombing your account. If you do not notice it within a day and report it...
2
What prevents a group of attackers from ruining a website's credibility by repeatedly clicking on their adds? Is this a problem, or is the potential revenue enough to deter this?
2
There is encouragement and then there is full disclosure.
While most may think Adsense does not warrant full disclosure since the advertisers are not controlled by the site owner. However Adsense does allow for blocking ads going to particular sites so there is in fact some control that a site owner could exploit.
If someone who writes a blog for example and has links that they get compensation from the companies they write about, but does not disclose the relationship to readers, this can be viewed as a conflict of interest.
The site owner would be taking business risk when they are building a serious following with their expert content over time and later the fact that they are getting compensation has not been transparently communicated.
But at the end of the day the message, "never rely on Google money" is good advice.
Google is not much interested in spending time on correcting collateral damage. It is best to diversify the types of advertising used.
2
Yeah I don't get people who "live off Adsense", etc. -- sorry, but that gravy train isn't going to last forever.
1
Sometimes, the webmaster doesn't have a choice. I have a blog that gets 100,000 pvs per month. I can't do text link ads as it violates google's policies. I am currently using Infolinks and Adsense. However, Infolinks earnings is about 1/4rth of Adsense revenue. I had previously tried some affiliate ads from my niche, that didn't turn out so well. Due to my low traffic volume the big name CPM networks are out of my reach. I have tried 125x ads (buysellads) also without success.
So, I am being forced to be almost completely reliant on Adsense.
1
Why isn't 4chan out there clicking on ads and DDOSing poor suckers like this?
1
"Adverstising", eh? I like it.
1
How does one achieve such a high ctr?
1
It depends on your content and the quality of the ads google gives your visitors, as well as intelligent placement.
For example, if you site is about, I dunno, curtains, chances are there are not many GOOD advertisers looking for that, and the ads won't be reflective of your content. But say your site handles currency conversions or DVD's, the ads tend to be a better quality and more related to your content ( and probably give a better price too ).
The point is not to cheat. Try different things, see what works and what doesn't. Don't break the rules. Make the google ads the same color as your links / font on your site. Make them blend into your content. I use my x3 allocation, with one at the top, one at the side and one in the middle - but you NEED to have good quality content surrounding it.
For my generic sites I may get 0.1% CTR and a low CPC or less ( but I have high volume ) For quality targeted sites on high advertiser rated topics it ranges from 5% to 10% and a very high CPC ( depending on season etc etc )
2
never rely on google money
Do you recommend an alternative? I run a large AdSense-supported site and it's my nightmare that one day Google will pull the plug, leaving me unable to pay for hosting. I've looked for alternatives, but they all seem to push terrible ads: they're intrusive (flashflashflash), deceptive (You have won! Click here to read your message!), or potentially offensive (poker, liquor, drugs).
1
Not that gives the same amount of cash Google does. The point with me is I keep my day job, Google pays for beer, cars, hookers, holidays etc. If the Google money goes, I can still eat and I keep my server costs down so I can still keep running.
One other thing is to open more than one adsense account. If you run 4 sites, have 2 accounts. If one goes down, you still have the other income.
1
TIL that I can launch a distributed Denial of Revenue attack against anyone that uses AdSense.
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I've seen a poster about a 4chan operation where they wanted to use bots against Know Your Meme.
6
Ok here's the plan:
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Get lots of people
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Go to site and claim affiliation with owner
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State or imply by posting/commenting on that site that the owner instructed you (via some sort of private communication) to click the ads so he can make money
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Click ads (with bots)
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Hope google algo scrapes the site and sees your comments
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...
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PROFIT!
2
Actually, it's true that if this were easy, you could just shut down your competitors. And if it weren't easy, then you could outsource a bunch of people to click your ads for you (and this exists).
But Google's algorithm lands somewhere in the middle. Clicks can be affected by diminishing returns, and some repeat clicks can even be totally invalidated. It's why your Adsense data will never match any other click analytics software you have set up. It's also why Adsense revenue is always shown as an "estimate capable of changing".
Also, you'd be punishing Adwords users (the advertisers) more than anything, as they're paying per click. If you did launch a large campaign, an Adwords user that saw a burst in sudden expensive activity would probably just block that channel, but Adwords generally does that for you if it looks suspicious.
A better strategy is to click on your target's Adwords ads, if they have any.
1
This has 103 votes. Do people seriously think that this would work? The guy openly asked for clicks. That's how he broke the rules, not by merely receiving the clicks.
Fraudulent clicks will have their revenue returned to advertisers, but that won't get you banned unless they think you're actually instigating the fraud. Like this gentleman did.
0
But since they initially suspend the revenue by using an algorithm as compared to a human investigation, which comes later after an appeal, you could really fuck with people. Because I'm sure their computer doesn't see a ridiculous spike in revenue and decide "internet heroes playing epic prank!", it just naturally assumes it is the AdSense account holder themselves.
2
That didn't happen. Do you have reports of this happening? Stories? Anecotes?
Or are you just bitching because Google is the bad guy in your mind?
1
How about...the original story posted? They suspended his account because of the click spike, based on their algorithm which detects suspicious activity. After you appeal, a human (hopefully) looks into the matter. In this case they found that he did in fact "ask for clicks" as you say, although it was more along the lines of him saying "I get paid for clicks" which still violates the contract. I like Google, I just have to agree that the AdSense contract and the way they use it can definitely bully the end user - especially when it is their main source of income.
Imagine your boss at work firing you because you told a customer to "put in a good word for you" and on page 56526, section D7 of your contract, that wasn't allowed.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make was someone doing this could definitely warrant an investigation by Google and potentially fuck shit up for the AdSense account.
1
Did you even read the article?
0
I read a story about a dude who begged for clicks and got busted. Which one did you read?
1
I read a story about a dude who mentioned that he got money from ads (because for some reason some people are dense enough to not realize that), but then told his viewers to only click on ads they were interested in. So no, I don't think he begged for clicks.
1
GENIUS!
-4
off to the Justin Bieber channel
-14
I've never come across a person who likes Justin Bieber or knows anything about him other than they hate him. If all you grown adults (I presume) would stop talking about him, we could all forget he exists.
16
Nah. Bieber's got corporate backing--even if you fuck up his account, he's got people who will bitch to Google and all will be set right again. He'll get his--win, lose, or draw.
If anything, let's find some Stormfront fucks or something like that. Someone whose presence is a detriment to society, but is still small enough to be fucked with.
-1
Nah. Bieber's got corporate backing
I think it's actually the other way around. Bieber is nothing but the latest "sock puppet" for a corporate merchandising structure.
As he ages and becomes "unpopular" (only a matter of time), they will discard him like a dirty dishrag and move onto the next sock puppet.
2
Absolutely true. But right now, he's their golden goose--and they shall strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger if you interfere with that.
3
Corporate's got Bieber backing?
0
Wow, did you figure that out all by yourself Einstein? Congratulations on being a retard.
-15
TL;DR His adsense account was flagged for invalid activity, he appealed to no avail. He lost $3,000 and future income.
Two things.
-
His intro was agonizingly long winded.
-
This is his his side of the story (of course). I would like to see a follow up reply from google, though I doubt it'll happen.
113
- He admitted to accepting their ToS, then violating it.
72
Aaaaaaand this one is a wrap!
9
I admit that I don't read a lot of these terms and conditions but if it's going to be my main source of income and it's going to feed my children then you bet I'm going to read every word.
2
you can't get adsense with accepting the tos though, not much to admit.
1
Ctrl+F tl;dr == UPVOTE!
6
Hahaha! Too true. You have my up-vote, sir.
2
I'm right here with you
2
Why do people upvote comments like this. Does no one read the reddiquette anymore. For a second question, why would you post a comment like this?
Lastly. if you can't be assed to read the goddamned article, you're on the wrong site.
-2
Sorry sir, but you should know by know that everybody does not behave like you. The last thing I need is a stranger telling me how to use my time... U MAD?
1
I think the most interesting parts of the story were the many ways he managed to make money. Kind of reminded me of an old-fashioned jack of all trades doing odd jobs to make money.
2
1A) ...and horribly misspelled. Fiancés instead of finances and Chrsistmas? Don't mind my grammar nazism, but if you're a free-lance writer shouldn't you proofread a little better?
2
I was wondering what he meant there. I kept thinking: "His family fiance? His fiance's family? No, that doesn't really make sense." It almost seems like he's writing from an iPhone, but that would be pretty abnormal for a middle-aged English writer.
1
Wish I read this before I read the op's entire post.
2
I.O.U. Five minutes of my day. :)
1
I find it very odd any regular reddit user would come out slandering some decent guy for the benefit of some advertising company that stole his money.
1
Thank you for the TL;DR.
1
yes, I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers – all of whom were interested in selling stuff to sailors.
80
I think a more effective (and legal) approach would be to do what reddit does -- explain that ads help run the site, and thank users for keeping add-ons such as AdBlock turned off. I think that gets the point across nicely without blatantly asking users to click on ads.
9
Breaking the rules without being blatant about it. Got it.
27
Anecdote: Is this a breach of the intent?
Penny-Arcade is one of my favorite sites. I don't click ads on most sites. Penny-Arcade is a rare exception. I do it partially cause I'm to poor to offer direct support. However the only time I click an ad is if I'm actually interested in the product, which Penny-Arcade's ads seem to be targeted directly at me. I make a conscience effort to click their ads to support their site, but only if it is a product I might actually be interested in. I have actually bought products mentioned on their site, which I'm not aware of doing from any other site. For instance I bought some Sumo chairs and downloaded some games for my droid that they recommended. I've also bought x-box games that they've had ads up for. However, the fact remains that the primary reason I click their links is because I want to support their work. So in the above example am I in the wrong?
8
Apparently. Although I don't get it - this effectively comes down to advertisers complaining/penalizing phone book companies becuase people call from a number they see in the phone book and not purchasing anything. IMO you don't get to have it both ways - you can put an ad out there and deal with all of the traffic you get becuase of it, either positive or negative, or don't put the ad out at all. The real solution would be for the advertiser to see that a given website is generating a bunch of clicks that lead to no revenue and not allow only their ad to no longer be displayed on the site, as opposed to whining to Google and getting the site banned from adsense altogether (and revoking all revenue generated by the ads linked to that account, apparently whether the revenue was directly involved in that specific site or not).
-1
Isn't that what Reddit does?
1
I couldn't say what rules reddit has agreed to, but they don't seem to be with Adsense. They've probably got their own advertising contract, so probably they aren't breaking it.
1
Today, I turned Adblock off for Reddit (funny how you never think about it when it's always there).
Reddit gave me a kitten in the ad box. Thank you Reddit! :)
9
It's actually still breach of agreement to say things like "Support us!" or "Check out our sponsors to keep us afloat!"
1
But how did he tell his subscribers that? Was there a way that Google saw this piece of information, or did they ban him from their Adwords program because of the high click rates?
1
[deleted]
70
... Except that when AdSense is working, the money is huge...
22
Until they pull the rug out from under you, take your money and never tell you anything. Its also next to impossible to track adsense down and get to actually discuss the problem. My wife had a few web sites up using adsense and her decent marketing skills got more and more people to go to the websites. She wasn't making a lot, maybe about $800-900 a month off it, but all of a sudden they stopped sending cheques. We figured one month was just a glitch and waited for next months cheque. Nope. Nothing. Google took about $2,000 of my wife's income for a little over 2 months, kept it and never told her why they were doing this.
After three months of trying to contact them my wife gets a cheque for $100. She had never exchanged emails with anyone, there is no number to call, it was just silence on their end.
Fuck Google. They are an evil company.
61
If the agreement was truly not broken, you could always sue or take them to small claims court (no lawyer needed).
Small claims is great for that stuff. You can get up to 10,000 (plus expenses) back from the other party and you don't need to be or have a lawyer.
6
The problem is in the 'contract' Google is the Judge, Jury and Executioner. Taking them to small claims court wouldn't do much. So my wife decided to just give up and move on.
I fully believe this is part of Google's business plan with adsense. Fuck over people, make it as difficult as possible for them to even complain, and then keep their money. Why? I don't know. But that's what appears to be the case from the amount of people that have had the same things happen to them.
7
Same happened here. Smaller numbers, but exactly the same thing. Now all my sites are ad-free. Can't be happier about it.
3
Blip.tv gives publishers a fortune, it's like $10.00 per 1,000 views on average apparently (more like $6.00 for me but shrug).
10
That can't be right; source please. Or maybe its very high quickly but with a small cap. So you can quickly get paid something but then never make more than like $50 on a video, etc.?
4
Straight from my own Blip.tv dashboard (they've paid my Autumn earnings so I know it works): http://i.imgur.com/n8qkq.png
And straight from the Blip.tv blog: http://theblog.blip.tv/post/2418736037/extra-money-for-presents-this-year
Many shows on blip.tv this holiday season are earning $1,000 or more per hundred thousand views. That’s $10 per thousand views and more money in your pocket for presents this holiday season. Some shows are making as much as $15 per thousand views.
13
Holy shit, I wonder how much money Day9 is making off his StarCraft 2 show.
5
Have you double checked your allowed to share that info? In Google TOC you aren't.
3
Day9 must be making some serious cash, then...
1
Well us on the EU Reddit Starcraft IRC channel just guessed he's making at least $200 per daily, that's a very rough guess though, likely a heap more than that!
2
Yeep, Google is just like any other corporation - they don't give a flying shit and only have their own interests at heart. Once you do any sort of business with them other than using gmail or using their search, you will realize how horrible they really are. They are no different than microsoft or paypal or anyone else.
3
I've been able to get to a human being at every other company I've dealt with. Google makes it difficult to impossible to have even an e-mail conversation with a staff member.
This, combined with TOS designed so that some minor infraction can almost always be found makes good much worse in terms of support then almost anyone out there. Easily worse then both Paypal and Microsoft.
4
I've not gotten contact at Yahoo. Will never do paid business with yahoo again.
And every so often I wrte to them about it again. apparently just for the memories.
OK I finally did it seemed. But he totally misunderstood and didnt answer back anyway.
1
He'll never make the money he made from AdSense and youtube.
0
This needs more attention. The Author makes a good case and is getting the shaft from the Google.
65
The way I read it, he admits to telling readers he gets paid for click-through. That's not "the shaft". That's getting caught breaking the number one rule of carrying ads. I haven't even read the Google adsense contract and I would have known that's something that they'll boot you for. It's bloody obvious what happened. He had unusually high click-through, which may or may not have been legit. Regardless, when Google looked into it and saw that one stupid line on his web site where he mentioned to his readers he gets paid for clicks (hint hint), that irrevocably tainted his credibility with Google. He fucked himself.
126
Really? You are not allowed to tell your viewers that you get paid for the ads? Is that because then your loyal readers would click them just to pay you, obviously not going to buy anything from the advertiser?
I see the point, but come on, isn't it obvious he makes money from adsense?
And how many questions can I ask in one reply?
27
Yes. Really. If you do tell your visitors, they will start generating false clicks in an attempt to "help" the webmaster. That's forbidden.
59
People get paid for advertisements! Isn't this common knowledge? Is Adwords based on keeping 90% of the population in the dark on money transactions? This is insane.
0
I believe this is true but it still does not compute. What do people think ads are for if not to make money for the webmaster? Just seems like common sense.
-1
Anyone with a bit of knowledge knows this what the ads do; he was just being honest.
-2
You are not allowed to suggest in any way that your users click on ads on your website. Saying "I make money via clicks on ads" may equate to "click my ads so I can make some money wink"
Yes, it is obvious he makes money from the ads, but suggesting that he is paid per click and not per pageview or some other metric gives information to readers/viewers to help game the system. From a business sense it doesn't make sense for google to go around slapping wrists and investigating all the millions of sites on the internet. If something looks fraudulent and is in violation of the (absurdly broad) adsense terms removing it makes the most sense.
28
but it's OBVIOUS <- obvious, common sense
Sometimes I don't understand how the brain works. It's like Steam asking for your age for a 18+ game when it's obvious you can fill in anything. I mean, how dumb do you have to be?
0
It strictly states that NO attention be drawn to the ads. Meaning, no special graphics with arrows pointing at them, mentioning them as an encouragement to click, in anyway. This is gaming the system. I would think someone making that much per year from commissions, adsense, and the like, would be familiar with the rules.
Also, i'm not sure it all adds up anyway. At the rate he was earning he should have had contact with some sort of rep at Adsense. Hell, I'm not that big and at one point I had a rep as well. These types of things can be worked out, but point being he broke the rules. It also seems shitty of him in his article to bury this fact about 3/4 of the way down.
17
Can you show me where it "strictly states" that in the AdSense TOS?
1
isn't it obvious he makes money from adsense?
A lot of things are so obvious that you will not come to think about them unless somebody points them out explicitly...
3
Five. The internet allows exactly five questions per reply. You, clarkster, have reached your limit for this reply.
Sincerely,
The internet.
3
Are you sure? Completely? What would happen if this limit were exceeded? Don't you think we're about to find out? Are you scared? What if...è̑ͧ̌aͨl̘̝̙̃ͤ͂̾̆ ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ ISͮ̂҉̯͈͕̹̘̱ TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ NO CARRIER
1
I'm not so sure the average person understands ad clicks. I've made some money from ad clicks and my friends who I explain this to seem oblivious to how internet ads work. Experiment: ask members of your family how google make money.
3
Everyone knows about ads but when he mentions it in a post loyal readers will start clicking like crazy in order to support him.
2
Yea. I am pretty sure I have seen Reddit blog posts that talk about clicking on the ads to help them out. That is how this works. He was doing google a favor.
0
No he wasn't. People can see the ads themselves, they know what they are. Telling people it would be nice if they turned off AdBlock helps Google. Telling people explicitly that they get paid every time someone clicks an ad is only good for a few bucks in the short term, but in the long term it'll end up hurting Google because at the mention of this the loyal subscribers to a web site will OF COURSE take it into account and start clicking more than they would normally, more often than not on stuff they either don't have an interest in or just barely do.
Ultimately this is bad for the advertisers, which is bad for Google, which is bad for the publishers. No one wins, but the one that loses most (in terms of monetary value, not % of income) is Google, and they aren't going to be keen on that just because some poor bloke running a sailing web site gets to make a little more money in the time being for his family.
13
False clicks do nothing but harm Google as they devalue the advertising service. The advertiser does not want to pay for people to visit for this reason, it is unlikely they will benefit from the conversion.
4
Not really. As advertiser, when I see click ad to help out, I question the quality of the clicks I am paying for. I read the very long (somewhat verbose article) and it did bother me that he was "encouraging" clicks for the sake of clicks.
However, I think Google should at the very least take down his film to be fair. If they are going to continue to use his film, then pay him less or at least what they think is the appropriate amount, instead of completely cutting him off.
1
I've never seen a blog post stating click on the ads. I have seen Reddit encourage people to turn off their ad blockers.
0
I still think it is not fair for google to intercept earnings for unrelated products in a closed system like youtube. Clearly the income he has generated there is legit.
There seems to be a need for some scrutiny by google to avoid making an unfair forfeiture. It is certainly unethical for them to intercept money generated by his youtube video and to continue to place ads on his intellectual property without compensation.
14
Clearly the income he has generated there is legit.
He says he doesn't have a case but contracts will often be interpreted against real circumstances by the courts. If he can prove that Google doesn't really think he's doing anything illegitimate, regardless of the exact terms of the contract, then he might very well win. In effect you can break a contract's rules while not breaking the spirit it was made in because the courts understand that contracts are written defensively and entered in to optimistically. No contract is truly air-tight because of this.
Google is still running ads in his videos, this would suggest they don't really think there is fraud, either.
3
this would suggest they don't really think there is fraud, either.
Not sure that that's the case. If they thought he was committing click fraud, the motivation for the click fraud would go away as soon as his account was pulled. Though I'm not sure how the hell youtube's advertising model works, really.
2
Google is still running ads in his videos, this would suggest they don't really think there is fraud, either
Except Google is still running ads in his videos but not paying him royalties for them. Which suggests to me that they may or may not think there is fraud, but are happy to collect more money that they don't have to pay back out again?
1
As someone who pays google top dollar to host ad's, I appreciate them looking out for this kind of bullshit. In some of my target markets, bidding on certain key phrases fetches 2-3 dollars EACH per click.
9
bidding on certain key phrases fetches 2-3 dollars EACH per click.
Roughly.... without details... what markets?
1
Here's a snapshot of a few phrases that get me in the 2-6 position. The market is recycling machinery.
2
Your business model requires mass ignorance on the very basics of how the most common online advertising system works?
This may well be the case, I am actually wondering.
-3
That's not what he said. But it's a fact that when you tell your subscribers that you make money from the ads to the left they're going to click them out of a sense of loyalty.
Have you ever run a website?
3
Its a matter of creating conversions. Example: I run an online store. I pay for each click that is displayed on relevant web pages. If that click leads the person to the checkout page and completes a purchase, that's a conversion. When I look at my stats, and I see 500 clicks @ $2.00 per click, and only 10 conversions, my advertising dollar is better spent elsewhere, and google gets cut out of the budget. Google hates when people encourage their users to click on content they are probably not interested in, because ultimately it makes their advertising less valuable.
2
[deleted]
-1
No, it doesn't, and no he isn't. The article is filled with hyperbole and misinformation, starting with the idea that he was "fired" by Google.
And this:
I would reply that I would prefer them to only click on adverts they were interested in.
is "Click Fraud", clearly against the terms of service, and a point they make very clear when you sign up, not to mention anywhere else that discusses the AdSense program.
47
Downvotes for calling bullshit on emotional nonsense like this are like precious little gems to me. Each one sparkles with the light of how willfully ignorant some people are when the facts contradict the narrative they'd like to believe.
In this case, that narrative is "Google is big mean corporation... business bad, sense of entitlement good".
13
You should visit r/politics sometime. Whoa nelly!
3
Haha, I prefer to mostly lurk in r/economics, where numbers and evidence tend to matter a lot more than ideology.
If only we were capable of governing ourselves through principles of empiricism... hell, we don't even teach critical thinking skills in public school.
2
He's explicitly telling people he would prefer they NOT engage in click fraud.
2
No, he's telling people to click on ads You do not tell people to click on ads, whether it's ones they like or not.
You simply do not reference clicking to your visitors whatsoever. And when you do, things like this tend to happen. This is something well-known to anyone who uses AdSense, a clear part of the Terms of Service, and not some conspiracy by Google to keep this guy from sailing around on his boat making crappy documentaries.
Google would absolutely love to have as much content on their AdSense network as possible. But they also have an obligation to the ad purchasers (and their shareholders) to be proactive in dealing with click fraud, because otherwise they wouldn't have any advertisers. AdWords/AdSense makes up a huge portion of Google's revenue and was their primary source of it for a long time (I'm not sure if that's still the case).
Google has no obligation to allow its ads to be displayed on anyone's content, and this person was under no contract with Google to do so. He's just whining, and looking for as many shoulders as possible on which to cry with a sob story that's largely his own damn fault.
2
You've dropped the context, his full quote is:
I did get the odd subscriber sending me an email saying that he had clicked loads of adverts. This is called demon clicking. I would reply that I would prefer them to only click on adverts they were interested in.
He was replying to someone who had emailed him telling him they were behaving improperly, and he was simply telling them he would prefer they behave properly.
4
This unsympathetic attitude seems to be common. Shame.
2
[deleted]
1
He's responding to users who offer to 'help' him by clicking all the ads on his site by telling them to only click on the ads they're genuinely interested in. Isn't he trying to prevent 'click fraud'?
0
He might feel this is the case, but it's not. You don't instruct, cajole, encourage, imply, or even reference the act of clicking on the ads to the users.
It might not make sense to someone who's unfamiliar with advertising on the Internet, but click fraud is a huge problem and has a direct impact on the viability of Google as a company. That's not exaggeration at all, either. Should the market come to distrust AdWords as a means of delivering ads to targeted audiences, Google itself may very well cease doing business.
10
So what should his reply have been? Since the subscriber is the one who brought it up - not respond? Say I am not allowed by contract to discuss any aspect of certain things on my site?
1
[deleted]
1
How is him asking his fans to stop clicking ads they have no interest in click fraud?
0
That's not what he did. He told people to "click on ads they were interested in".
7
He also said
As part of the deal, and as a way of involving the sailors, I tell them about the revenue for the project which all comes from the website. The more the website earns the more sailing I can do, the more films they see.
which was probably seen as encouragement to commit click fraud.
3
In response to them telling him they were clicking on all the ads he told them to try and only click the ads they had actual interest in. They were committing click fraud, he tried to stop it.
0
Agreed. This is something many people should know about.
11
This is nothing new, Google banned thousands of Adwords users last year. This is people that were spending 10s of millions or more collectively. Google operate like a heartless machine.
This happened more than a year ago, so Im having problems finding a good source for it.
11
So they banned advertisers who were running scammy pages that were blatantly against terms. What's the problem?
2
The problem is that they made a new rule and retro applied it to thousands of people with no warning.
1
He makes it seem that way... but he clearly violated TOS.
I'm sorry for him in that he didn't actively violate them, but considering he basically makes a living from it, you'd think he'd read the agreement and abide by it.
4
I dunno man, he agreed to a contract. Getting the shaft would be if Google broke that contract.
3
Well Google have pulled all the money from both his sailing and Youtube advertising. Even if he is technically guilty of click fraud on his sailing site I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of his Youtube click were legitimate. I'd also be willing to bet that the money pulled isn't going back to the advertisers.
1
Even if he is technically guilty of click fraud on his sailing site I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of his Youtube click were legitimate.
The contract doesn't say "We get to close your account if you're guilty on both", or "we keep only that which was taking against the terms of service". It just says they can close it at any time, for whatever reason, without giving a reason, and keep all the money. That's the deal these two parties cut with one and other.
I bet it is going back to the advertisers. I'd be massively surprised if Google were just pocketing it. They don't need to fuck around with that kind of thing (which would probably be fraud) for the sake of a couple of hundred dollars here and there.
1
If the money is going back to the advertisers then Google will need to be investigating all click activity on his accounts. I'm sure google wouldn't be giving back all the money from clicks on all his videos. The fact that there are still adverts on the trucking videos suggest that Google is aware that legitimate clicks are happening on this video.
Google has pulled all earnings from this guy, the majority not click fraud. The guy is being financially punished for breaking the terms of contract, some thing which is illegal in the UK without taking someone to court.
There is a lot of this story we are only hearing from one side, and that's part of the problem. Google use automated systems to check click counts etc and base the legitimacy of the clicks on that. When appealed all that probably happens is the algorithm is checked manually and if the same click counts are seen then the decision stands, they won;t delve any deeper into it than that.
1
Come on now, you don't want to be 'evil' do you? =P
2
Ah!
Good point! Google never said if it was them or us which weren't to be evil!
1
No he's completely in the wrong. He told his viewers to click on the ads and they did so with no intention of buying. Google is protecting the advertisers.
1
on his web site, not on his YouTube properties. Pretty sure everyone knows how the internet works he did not tell viewers to click (directly) this wasn't an attempt at fraud. Just my opinion.
0
It's all one account. The terms specifically say that instance of click-fraud will result in the account being shut down. They don't differentiate between different sources from the same account.
1
I know that it's fun to accuse the big business of stomping on the little guy, but if you read the article, he implies that he encouraged his customers to click links to increase his revenue so he can post more videos. Hence, why his customers would brag in the comments about "demon clicking". So Google rightfully terminated his adsense because his users were abusing the system at his behest.
1
well damn him then... still a dick move to tie his youtube account to his web site. Oh well he will just need to start over.
1
Oh, but everyone loves google because they make the best advertising... i mean linux distribution.. i mean search. Right. We cant live without their search.
-2
Full disclosure: I'm a Googler so likely biased. But I'd like to clear up some what appears to be confusion here. Note that all of this is my opinion only. I don't speak for Google.
Google took his money.
No, Google didn't. Google gave it back to the advertisers who paid money to have their advertisements run on his pages and then failed to see the conversion rate they expected.
Taking back the guy's money (before Christmas!) is evil!
Sure, it sucks for the guy. But at the other end of the rope, there's a company that got a nice refund right before Christmas to compensate for a bunch of ads they bought that didn't generate the revenue they expected. If this guy's account hadn't been cancelled, there's some sailing company who could have written an equivalent story about how Google shafted them by taking their advertising money and not generating any revenue in return.
I don't know who's right here, but I know that just hearing one person's story, thoroughly laced with appeals to emotion, isn't the best way to find the truth.
Google should have a human he can talk to about this.
Humans are expensive, much more expensive than automated algorithms. If Google had a comprehensive staff of people you could appeal to (which would be huge at the scale of AdWords), that wouldn't come free. It would be overhead that would come directly out of the money paid to advertisers. It's like the difference between eTrade and a more personally managed financial company. It's Costco versus a boutique shop. You get a lower quality of service, but less overhead too. I think most people understand this.
What's weird is that this rests on the assumption that somehow actual human arbitrators would do a better job here. I think the iPhone app approval process has been a good lesson that putting humans in the middle of the pipeline doesn't necessarily make things better or fairer.
Advertisers work for Google.
There are three parties at work here: Google, the people showing ads, and the people buying ads. The author here seems to think that Google is ad company and the people showing ads are like freelancers for Google. I don't think Google sees it that way.
From Google's perspective, the ad buyers and advertisers are working directly with each other. Google's job is to be the marketplace itself. It's mission is to be as fair and economical as possible so that both parties want to conduct their business in that marketplace. Policing, for better or worse, is a required part of keeping illegitimate people from harming the function of the market. At the scale Google works at, that policing can't hope to be perfect.
Nonetheless, Google has a very strong incentive to make it as fair and accurate as possible: failing to do so will drive away people. While Google is huge, it doesn't have a monopoly. It would be trivially easy for people to jump ship to another advertising system if it performed better. When people say, "Google sucks, but I can't ditch AdWords because it pays the best", I have to wonder what their definition of "sucks" is. Offering a better product to keep customers isn't some kind of nefarious monopolistic practice. It's... uh... a good product.
49
Your company pulls in well over 10 billion in profit each year and will probably be at 20 billion in a few more. Hire some people and stop having a shitty rep for customer service.
19
I think that the companies making 10 billion in profit per year are pretty well equipped to make decisions for themselves.
3
It's the appeal to emotion that really turned me off. I saw a lot of places where he created false analogies, downplayed his own mistakes, etc. Maybe he has a case, maybe he doesn't, but that sort of thing makes me distrust his entire argument. If those are the holes in it that I can see, where are the ones that I can't?
I agree that it's a little silly to imply that he's a freelancer for Google.
3
So google promises a garunteed rate of return to their advertisers? And if that rate is not met, they RETURN the money to the advertisers? Should GQ magazine return the money to Rolex because Rolex isn't selling based on those ads?
One could argue that the instant the user suggested folks click on ads, he gave up his right to the money. But the guy did have a sizeable amount of income from Youtube. The algorithim surely could have done the math from his Youtube presence, and deducted those earnings from the money they were going to confiscate.
You also fail to realize that he had his Google ads displaying website relevant content, whereas his Youtube ads were randomized, probably based on user history.
3
If Google had a comprehensive staff of people you could appeal to (which would be huge at the scale of AdWords),
Awesome! More jobs for Americas beleaguered economy.
that wouldn't come free. It would be overhead that would come directly out of the money paid to advertisers.
Oh right, profit margins are more important than people.
2
Well... yes? Is that surprising to anyone? In the midst of the "beleaguered economy" it's not exactly common to see companies who founded their profitability on having highly efficient automated processes forgo that efficiency and provide a worse product just out of a desire to create more jobs for the public.
7
Why should they hire people ? Their process works.
This guy knows what he did wrong, what benefit would having a person there do anyone ?
1
No, Google didn't. Google gave it back to the advertisers who paid money to have their advertisements run on his pages and then failed to see the conversion rate they expected.
No, it was his money, He did his part of the job and did not get paid for it. What would the world look like if people could just refuse to pay somebody for job well done just because it didn't perfectly meet their expectation.
He showed the adverts, now pay him.
2
The contract he signed says otherwise.
4
No, he put the adverts and did not get paid for that. That they doe not want to continue paying him is fine but just revoking the money they owe him is another thing.
-1
This doesn't make any more sense if you keep repeating it. Firstly, you don't get paid for just having the ads on your site in a pay per click system, you get paid for sending traffic to the site that advertises. But there are strict rules about not telling people to click on ads to generate income for the site or page they are on. It's not google's money, the advertisers get it back for invalid clicks.
2
The 'contract' was written by bottom-feeding lawyers to attempt to make it acceptable to steal from him.
HE didn't agree to give advertisers money back, or that he had done anything wrong. GOOGLE agreed to give advertisers money back; and should be solely liable for providing those funds.
Frankly google have to stop stealing from people (which is usually the bit that's most evil in their behaviour) and start funding a truly independent appeals body for instances like this.
Google just isn't trustworthy.
-2
He agreed to follow a certain set of rules. Nobody forced him to do it, and he has other options.
He broke those rules, and he received the punishment outlined ahead of time. I fail to see how Google has done anything wrong.
Advertisers use AdSense to deliver targeted ads to people interested in their products and services. If people are interested in the advertised product, they click on the ad and get some more information. This guy knew people were clicking on the links just to run up his check. He should have put a stop to it and he didn't.
Now, Google won't work with him anymore and frankly I don't blame them.
4
No, he put the adverts and did not get paid for that. That they does not want to continue paying him is fine but just revoking the money they owe him is another thing.
-2
Except that he broke the contract by encouraging (implicitly, perhaps) his customers to click ads to give him money. He specifically agreed not to do that, so he wasn't really "doing his part of the job."
3
No, he put the adverts and did not get paid for that. That they does not want to continue paying him is fine but just revoking the money they owe him is another thing.
-1
ditto
0
Yes humans are expensive, so why not let this guy pay $500 to have someone thouroughly review his case?
Why not first give him a warning and a second chance before shutting down his account?
The answer is simple: Few enough people have problems, so there is no big revolt against Google. If these problems only affect very few people and would cost money to fix, royally screwing these people makes perfect sense. There is simply no incentive for Google to spend any resources on this since most people are happy. In a sense, Google's not to blame. The people using Google while not requiring a more sensible TOS are to blame. By taking a few cents more from all parties, Google could easily hire the manpower to handle this issue. But it makes more economical sense not to do so.
What sucks about Google (or PayPal, or Apple) is not their products, which are all excellent, but the fact that you may one day end up in a situation where you're completely screwed for life because you're dependent on Googles products. Until that happens, Google is the best. If it happens, Google dominates so many areas of online marketing that you might just have to close up shop and do something else with your life.
You might not like that Google is in this position, but that's the case. Please don't think otherwise until you've been at the other end of the table and seen it for yourself.
Saying you have a choice is sort of like Microsoft trying to use desktop Linux adoption to argue that they didn't have a monopoly with Windows.
2
At least you have admitted your conflict of interest. There are literally hundreds of your coworkers/contractees who have posted in this story who have not. That's dishonest and deceitful, and not worthy of google's "Do No Evil" motto or even everyday good conduct. Shame.
I'm sure everyone would appreciate it if you'd send out a little email to your group instructing them to identify their conflicts, namely that they work for google/adsense/etc.
Thanks in advance.
2
send out a little email to your group
My group? I don't have a group. I just work at Google. I'm not on ads.
2
Then send out a general email, or ask HR to send one out.
1
Yeah, all those: he tried to game the system, cheater lost, broke tos plain and simple... with all 'redditors' having experience with adsense and/or making living/BIG bucks from it because google is love... So obvious. Keep mentioning big big big bucks, never mention being handled by a robot, dismiss because of typos...
1
Exactly. "Score a point" even if you can't win on the actual issue. It's so antithetical to the entire meaning of the web it makes me sick to realize google is so no-holds-barred about doing it. Don't they have a clearly written code of conduct aka employee handbook that they are violating? That would suck for them to get a pink slip that says "our algorithm identified you as violating the Emp. Hndbk. but we can't tell you how due to the fabulous inscrutability. You're fired effective immediately, gtfo in 0 seconds."
2
And the thread magically disappeared from not only the main frontpage but even from reddit.com/r/wtf/... with 2000 points, over 5000 upvotes and a 1000 comments. ffs
2
Oh Noes!! Someone who makes sense!!
1
And this is why I use AdSense.
AdSense has a percieved value, thats the whole point. I could use radio or newspapers if I wanted to blast my advertising dollar across the cosmos. I want laser guided ads, and I don't want people to be tricked into clicking them.
I want my ads served to people who are interested in my products and will click through the link to see what I am offering. Thats exactly what I am paying for.
1
I can't wait for some real competition to Google to appear. Of course there is Baidu in China and Bing/Yahoo, but they fail to be the real competition on a global scale. As of now, Google has officially taken the "evil corporation" place instead of Microsoft. Its actually worse since Microsoft only cared about taking your money, while Google also wants to take your soul (as in, know everything about you and affect your thinking process).
1
[deleted]
0
i know ill get downvoted to hell for saying this but I agree with google here. Companies and small businesses pay good money for a relevant click. Im sure people clicked ads just to help a sailor out with no interest in the link or very little. Although I thnk they maybe should have warned him first, I knew this is a no no with adsense without looking at their agreement. It makes sense.
43
i know ill get downvoted to hell for saying this but I agree with google here.
your downvotes are coming from this line
30
Agreed, I fucking hate it when people say that, or "Don't downvote me but..." or anything else similar in nature. Its pretty much the only time I ever bother to downvote people too.
19
Jesus fucking christ , I hate when people say they hate when people say "i know ill get downvoted..." stop whining and trying to police the internet.
-2
You only hate it because you say it, and you're most likely a karma whore.
I'm not trying to police the internet, I hate it because it annoys the fuck out of me, saying "I know I'll get downvoted for this" adds absolutely no value to your comment, all it does is makes you sound like a whiny bitch who only posts comments for karma. Potential karma gain or loss should in no way effect your decison on posting a comment, because guess what NO ONE FUCKING CARES, all karma is, is an e-penis boost, but the best part? most people will never know your total karma count unless they click on your profile, and as soon as they close that tab they will have already forgotten what it was, it means nothing and it does nothing.
4
I agree on the website side, but why did they confiscate money from the YouTube videos?
21
According to google, both his share and google's share were refunded to the advertisers as a show of good faith (to the advertisers)
7
They probably have a policy to refund the advertiser for fraudulent clicks. It makes sense. They want to make the advertisers happy, because they're the ones that pay Google.
7
so all clicks were fraudulent?
1
The money came from the fraudulent clicks. Youtube video money is from adsense.
-3
There were no fraudulent clicks on the youtube videos - the sailing people didn't go to the trucking youtube videos that make most of the money.
6
I can't speak for the rest of the internet, but I was never disillusioned into thinking that the adds on a website are for my enjoyment. I am totally aware that adds are there to support the site. If I already wanted a product I would just search for it myself. I look at adds and click on them (if they are remotely relevant to me) in order to support whatever site.
I do agree though, they should have just warned him and told him how to resolve the situation.
2
First of all, they are "ads" not "adds". Just wanted to point that out for future reference.
Second, your personal motivations are not necessarily representative of everyone, let alone the majority. Most people don't think in terms of "supporting the content provider" they just happen to click an ad if it catches their interest.
1
You violated the reddit TOS by trying to manipulate your comment karma, your account has now been terminated.
0
Just wait until I submit this to google!
2
I don't understand why his videos are still up on youtube after getting the shaft. Can't he pull them?
Maybe he'll see this and respond.
37
If he pulls them a moves to another video hosting site, he looses that reputation of 13,000,000 views. I can understand why he wouldn't want to pull them.
22
He could make them unlisted/private until Google gets their act together.
53
This makes the most sense.
6
You should contact him and suggest this.
1
He could replace the videos with an explanation of why he is moving and a link to where he is moving too.
If what he is really concerned about is the money he was getting paid and not the "Internet famous fun bills" then it looks like the best option for him is to move to another service because I do not think google is going to back down.
2
[deleted]
1
So hide all the vids and publish a new one with the explanation?
1
I think he wrote that he could not even log in so how would he delete them?
0
He couldn't log into his ad sense account. He should still be able to log into everything else.
3
You can only have a youtube partner account if you have an adsense account. I am under the assumption this happened recently(losing adsense), usually a few days pass then you lose your partnership.
1
I hope someone from Google reads this and re-enables his AdSense account. Don't be evil.
37
Don't be evil.
Haha, man I forgot that was even their official motto.
28
It's do know evil Do no evil.
7
It is not their official motto.
I find it funny that the last line of this article says "The Google slogan is “Don’t Be Evil”. You could not make it up." when it actually is made up.
It was apparently suggested once at a meeting, but that's all.
-2
[deleted]
19
Huh... so many of those results contradict each other.
First result says it's an informal motto, third says it was dropped in 2009, but I choose to believe this one!
4
the can DO evil and not BE evil, right?
1
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/04/google_quietly.php
Third result on your google page.
EDIT: Nevermind.
-2
They have it up on posters in their offices.
1
It's still in their Code of Conduct:
1
Not a snowball's chance. Also, while this seems unfair, he violated their terms of service. It is a tragic and unfortunate situation, but he told his subscribers to visit the ads in order to get him money, not to check out a product he endorsed. If I bought google ads for my company and they were displayed on his website, and I saw that he was encouraging users to click to get him money, and I didn't see any boost in sales, I would be pissed and I would cancel my ads and possibly demand my money back for breach of contract.
13
it is neither tragic nor unfortunate. he tried to game the system and got booted as a result.
23
I was trying to seem sympathetic, so those who empathize with him didn't immediately dismiss my comment. I also do feel bad for him, I think he may actually just not "get it."
3
i don't disagree with you, but i can't bring myself to feel bad for him.
it's his own inability or unwillingness to read and understand the ToS that landed him in this spot and putting together a giant BAWWW about how it's google's fault that he can't buy little Timmy the pony he always wanted for xmas doesn't make me sympathetic to his cause.
a humble, respectful "i screwed up real good, can anyone help?" would have gone over better with me than "OMG GOOGLE RUINED CHRISTMAS AND RAPED MY WIFE!!!11"
5
I didn't gather from that article that this man encouraged any of his viewer base to "demon click" as he called it. Where did he knowingly violate the ToS? He told people to not click ads they weren't interested in. Google's fucked...
1
How is this evil? Is it now google's responsibility to subsidize insincere click throughs on ads, so long as the person running the business really needs the money?
10
90% of the money is from the trucking videos (which they are still hosting and advertising on). The took this money back and all the while are still collecting more money off of his work.
Evil is taking someone else's rightfully earned money, because they dont want to bother to separate between what was earned honestly, and what was earned using insincere click throughs.
Evil is continuing to host and profit off of someones work which you cut your business ties with.
2
He's not paying for the hosting, is he ?
He's got a symbiotic relationship with Google, they host his traffic at no cost to him. There are other places for him to host his videos, and other advertising companies he can use for ads.
5
They're not evil. He told his subscribers to click the links and they did so without buying. Why should Google charge the advertisers for those clicks?
1
If my experience is to be trusted, Google puts a lot less energy in refunding the advertisers who have been defrauded.
27
In Adwords you can add certain websites to a blocked website list, meaning your ads will not appear on that website. It would've been an easy fix to stop your ads from appearing on a single website that promoted click fraud.
2
It's not a good design if Adwords expects the hundreds of websites that are can viably display on an Adsense webpage to individually opt out of that single webpage if they feel they're being shafted.
I own a lot of Adwords campaigns and I prefer to let Adwords throttle my ads away from websites that have suspicious activity.
As nicely as this guy writes, the bottom line is that we don't know what kind of invalid activity he was really sending and we don't know the appropriate data.
1
Actually, Google seems to not give a shit about the advertisers or the publishers, unless they are above a certain threshold of money changing hands. Below that threshold, if an advertiser or a publisher generates ANY action that requires any kind of human intervention, it is easier to just ignore them and take as much of their money as they can, because there are essentially an infinite number of them and they don't produce enough revenue for google to care.
2
And that's a good thing. Adwords users pay per click as they happen. Adsense users passively make money if their visitors click Adwords users' ads.
I'd rather Google put more effort in to refunding me as an advertiser than "refunding" the Adsense publisher with my money.
-1
You said it's a good thing and then went on to say how you'd rather it not happen. Are you confused?
GloriousDawn was the one advertising. He got very little of his money back.
2
Haha, I didn't see the "less" in Dawn's post until after I'd posted it. Fuck it, I thought, for I'm posting on Reddit live. I downvoted myself.
Dawn's link that I originally didn't click because my selective reading played easily into my point is pretty foul, especially considering adult content is directly against Adsense TOS.
I run a lot of volume through Adwords and have always had no problem getting Google to look into my issues, so it's troubling to hear about that experience.
The content network almost always has higher clickthrough rate and bounce rate than search impressions. Even if I'm pushing a daily budget of $1,000 into Adwords, I don't turn on the content network unless I'm approaching a volume limit in search or I've done specific, customized testing.
1
Sounds like what happened sucks for the author, but given google's track record on these things, I have good hope that this problem will be corrected.
That being said, I don't like the notion that he was 'Fired' by an algorithm. I'm glad he has found a way to make an income on youtube clicks, but it's not the same as having a job. As such, you don't get the job security that goes with it. Internet income is risky by nature and it makes sense to diversify.
The algorithm that cut his income is the same one that makes ventures like adsense possible. If google had to employ a person (many many people) to go through movie by movie and check things like copyright infringement, and other violations of TOS, then youtube would basically not be able to function. As such I don't think he should have reasonable expectation of talking to a person, or having a the protections that an actual job would have.
Look at it this way. He's not really working for Google, he's working for the advertisers on his site (Google is the company that found the advertisers, and takes a large cut). The advertisers are not happy, and are not getting enough money from his site (lots of clicks, no buys). They have a contract, which he did not read, which says they don't need to pay if that happens (this is to prevent click fraud). They have chosen to exercise this right. That's one of the risks of basing your income on advertisers.
I should also note that his videos all advertise other sites in them. It looks like the domains might be down and as such the host has replaced the pages with pages of advertisements. This might be a violation of TOS, I don't know I haven't read the contract.
EDIT:
yes, I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers
That's pretty cut and dry click fraud.
23
I don't think he should have reasonable expectation of talking to a person, or having a the protections that an actual job would have
Really? At no point should someone be able to speak with a human? Especially when money is involved?
Regardless of whether or not google was correct in terminating his account, you have to admit, you would feel extraordinarily powerless if you were in a similar situation.
Sometimes it's nice to talk to people.
7
He is powerless, so it is not necessarily inappropriate that he feels that way.
He broke the rules. Rules which were outlined he said that he read and understood. He is receiving the punishment that Google said he would receive if he broke the rules.
None of this is at all surprising. He was told what he could not do, and what would happen if he did. How can he be so shocked when he did what he was told not to do and then they did what they promised they would.
3
This is a great point. Of course the situation sucks, and I would not like to be in the position of expecting thousands of dollars that I'm not receiving over the holidays. That said, as you point out he wasn't really "fired," and I don't think Google's actions here are "evil."
About the worst I'd say is that they're unsympathetic, and it's probably true that they didn't focus much human attention on this particular guy's case. But to provide that as evidence of their betraying the "Don't be evil" motto is a bit much. His story just doesn't give any indication that Google is being knowingly malicious.
1
They stole £3,700 from him, that's pretty evil.
1
Not quite. Adwords, the counterpart to Adsense, only works because advertisers know that the money they are paying is buying non-fraudulant clicks on their ads. Google returns the money to the advertisers who paid for the ads.
3
How about if they canceled his service, removed 3,700 from his account, and continued to put ads on his video pages without recourse or explanation after entering into an agreement that began by getting him to agree with a horrifically byzantine contract of which there a negligible chance that most of the signers can fully understand?
-1
I fully acknowledge that the difference here is mostly a semantic one, but they didn't really steal. They didn't pay him £3,700 that he thought he was going to get. That's not what stealing means. I understand your sentiment, but words mean things.
In this case, he thought he was going to get that money because that was Google's half of the agreement: he provides content to go next to ads, and they hook him up with advertisers that will pay him for the opportunity. He didn't understand, or realize, or accept, that his half of the deal also entailed adhering to and fostering a certain code of conduct. Maybe they should've been clearer about what they expected, but I also don't think they misrepresented themselves.
0
I don't know. I don't think the youtube TOS allows them to embed ads in your videos without your permission, and take all the revenue generated by those ads, does it? And without access to adsense, apparently he can't remove the embedded ads, and without access to a human being at google he can't complain about it.
It may not be knowingly malicious, but it certainly does seem to be set up so that they essentially automatically generate a revenue stream from other people's work even after any agreement to do so is past, and it's a larger stream than when they have the active agreement.
Assuming this is true, I'm sure that they would remove it if they were sued. They're just relying on the fact that most people won't think it's worth it.
Sounds evil to me, at least to a first-order approximation.
1
This might be a violation of TOS, I don't know I haven't read the contract.
It sounds like the contract is a bit arcane. It's far too easy for a large company to create themselves a rock-solid contract and force the little guys to adhere to it if they want to play ball. No individual has the power to go up against the company; a class-action suit would be required to tackle it, and those are hard to organize.
People accuse this society of being overly litigious. In a certain sense, I disagree - people don't go after large companies nearly often enough.
1
Choose another ad provider then.
1
Sure, but that doesn't help the people that have already been screwed and doesn't necessarily prevent a new provider from providing you with a similarly arcane contract. The free market can reward good companies as people leave bad ones in exchange for good ones, but a free market relies on equitable laws and contracts to form its foundation.
An unenforced law is no law at all.
1
but that doesn't help the people that have already been screwed
In cases like this, they should have read the contract to begin with. It's common knowledge and common sense that telling your users to click on ads is fraud. Making a living off something you don't understand or don't bother to read the terms of is just dumb.
and doesn't necessarily prevent a new provider from providing you with a similarly arcane contract.
If enough users would bother to read their contracts, they wouldn't sign up for contracts like this. Companies would be forced to change their policies. Either way you look at it, it's the Webmasters fault.
1
But the thing is, Adsense publishers are funded by Adwords advertisers. What makes Adsense the best entry-level, no-track-record-needed platform is because click costs are kept so low and invalid clicks are so vehemently shut down.
Google's loose agreement with Adsense publishers is what allows anyone to enter and exit for whatever reasons Google decides will keep it most attractive the Adwords advertisers (which are also often "little guys").
Google's contract isn't arcane. It's very specific. He didn't read it, or he'd also know that he was violating his agreement with Google when he mentioned his Click Through Rate in his article.
1
Which gets a warning, especially for one of their biggest accounts.
1
So if I hate someone on youtube, all I need to do is demonclick to ruin their life?
22
Remember to send them saying what you did and how much you love their stuff.
3
They could look through their AdSense, see that there's a spike in activity that's unusual, and report it to Google preemptively. You could catch someone who wasn't vigilant about monitoring their AdSense (or greedy enough to let it go), but if it's a major source of their income like with this guy, they're partly to blame.
1
For every click, you'd steal a few cents from a rotating menagerie of advertisements. Each time, your IP address is logged and your 1 second stay is taken note of. Consecutive clicks might steal some cents from different Adwords users, but they all go through the same Adsense funnel.
Your clicks will diminish in value in an effort to keep the Adwords platform trustworthy.
1
So, using TOR and a reloader, I can destroy someone's revenue? Jawsome.
1
You'll probably have to do more to really trick Google's pattern tracking and invalid activity detection algorithms (or any script kiddie could destroy all of his Adwords competition), but there's only so much Google can do until it starts invalidating false positives.
1
I am sorry. I cannot read this article and take the guy seriously. There are more errors in the writing than I can accept out of a top youtube journalist
21
Also, he deeply buried the meat of the story.
27
3/4 of it sounded like a long winded resume.
18
Giggity.
5
Because he knew he was at fault.
2
I suppose that if he'd led with, "I didn't read the Terms of Service, and got shut down," it wouldn't have had the same grab.
1
you were more interested in a google algorithm shutting down an adsense account than a story about a guy producing multiple types of videos and making money on them using new-age internet ad services?
2
I was interested in what the actual communications were. But yes.
1
I stopped at fiancés instead of finances.
16
Chisitmas made me laugh.
2
I did too, freelance journalist who doesn't proofread?
2
He's distraught after his breakup with adsense.
1
The whole thing smacked of angry rant.
I liked that one of his subscribers a lawyer said that the contract was expensive as opposed to expansive or extensive.
1
You've obviously never been involved in having an EULA or similar agreement written and reviewed before.
'Expensive' is the exact word he meant.
2
I thought this was a British English thing like "programmes."
1
[deleted]
6
Sure it does. His youtube comments are in the 95th percentile already, give him some time.
1
To be fair, if you watch his Trucks of the Canadian North video (or whatever it's called) it is extremely well done - it has high production values and his voiceover is perfect. It seems this guy is suited to being a video-journalist (of a certain kind), not a writer.
2
Maybe his "family fiancés" were distracting him as he wrote it.
1
I have no sympathy for this guy. He tried to game the system and lost. Something google specifically tells you, you will lose you account over.
These two quotes says it all..
"I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers"
You're not suppose to tell people to click adverts. It's against the terms of service.
"I allow my subscribers to leave comments on the films. If one of them mentioned clicking on adverts to show their appreciation – well it’s a nice gesture, but I would edit their posting to remove the mention. The advertising revenue started to climb along with the number of page impressions and the number of subscribers."
So he knew what he was doing was wrong and tried to hide it. Google found out what he was doing because his advert actvity wasn't normal.
The guy is trying to con money out of google. The people clicking his links weren't legit and he tries to make out that google is evil.. wut..
Edit: This guy isn't trying to con money out of google. He's stealing it from google's advertisers by telling people to click adverts they have no intention of looking at.
19
Agreed. But it wasn't him conning money out of Google; it was the advertisers he was conning money from. Google doesn't seem too evil here, since they decided to not take the money back but instead return it to the advertisers.
3
"I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers"
I'm guessing this is the problem. He may have "told" them but maybe he "asked" them which is in violation of the terms of service.
All the rest of this "fired by a google algorithm" crap is hyperbole.
18
Exactly. You cannot tell your visitors to click on ads. Even if you say "only click on relevant ads." It just doesn't work that way.
7
The problem is that if your visitors are savvy they can try to "help" you by clicking on the ads even if you don't tell or ask them to, and then you can still get the sack from Adsense.
1
New FTC rules require bloggers to disclose their sources of income. He'd be in violation of the federal FTC Act if he didn't state that he receives money from people clicking on the ads.
1
People do that all the time at google/adsense and across the web. They get warned, especially if it's a heavy hitter like this guy that is bringing them tons of business. That's why this is a story at all. Try again.
1
He may have "told" them but maybe he "asked" them
So your whole argument here is based on him lying- accusing him of such with not a grain of evidence? UPVOTE!
0
tl;dr
Old man makes trucker movies for YouTube. Then tells his users to click the ads so he gets paid more (something Google tells you not to do in it's huge-ass legal contract). Naturally Google notices this and cancels his account. He's broke.
What should he do? Delete his old account; create another account in his wife's name; reupload vids and this time don't tell people to click the ads.
Can we get this shit off the frontpage now?
18
[deleted]
-1
Google does use algorithms to gather data, but in the end it was a human that decided to ban him.
1
fiancés
ಠ_ಠ
Other than that, good read.
15
[deleted]
1
I will confirm this. I ran a popular site that went from nowhere to top 1000 in the world for a few months only to have google send that same form letter outlined on this guys page. They stole over $10,000 legit dollars from me that time.
Fast forward some years and I ran a popular app on Android, inserted their code, generated a few grand again only to have that same fucking email come and money stolen yet again. Keep in mind, this is Google's code running on Google's operating system, yet I believe the reason it was stolen this time was due to people clicking (or tapping rather) on one part of their screen but the operating system would register as being tapped on another part which eventually means people would wind up clicking an ad when in fact they were not actually doing so. Not my problem, I'm using your fucking code all around. Fuck google. Pay attention to the news and you'll see the tide is shifting away from them in popularity. People are wising up to their bullshit games. As much as I dislike facebook and their privacy shenanigans, I giggle with glee seeing them cutting Google off from accessing what goes on behind closed walls....
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What site? What Ap?
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That's the problem right there.
This is the bottom line, he was either ignorant or got greedy.
When you put ads on a site you get public service announcements until Google's bot has downloaded a snapshot of the page. This is apparently for the purpose of targeting but I bet it also keeps a copy for investigators to review if there's suspicious behaviour. His comments encouraging people to click were most likely in Google's cache for investigators to see, and they take a hard stance on this shit.
A couple of years back a friend of mine put ads on his busy blog, Google disabled his Adsense account because of the huge spike in revenue. After a couple of days a human investigated his case and the account was enabled again.
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That is pretty much the first commandment of Adsense. Thou shall not encourage clicks.
The second commandment is "Thou shall not click on your own ads."
EDIT: I have no idea where that typo came from. Total brain fart. Need more caffeine. Thanks guys.
"Thall"? Is this some unholy buggery between "thou" and "y'all", or some obscure word I don't know?
Even if you want to ban a certain ad from showing up on your site you can't click on your ad. There are tools out there to determine what a link is so you can ban it without actually clicking on it.
This guy unfortunately didn't realize that at some point, if you get enough traffic, you get moved over to the CPM model, which means you get paid every time 1000 ad impressions are made, regardless if anyone actually clicks on those ads. I have a site where anybody can play chess against anybody else. My click through rate is pretty pathetic but I'm not worried about that. My goal is to get to the point where I'm getting at least a million hits a month. At that point, whether or not someone actually clicked on an ad shouldn't matter.
*Thou
Are you from the midwest? Did you grow up in church?
Where I'm from, people often say "Thou" in a way that sounds like "Thall".
I've always wondered if you can click on your own ads if you're signed into google. They should make it impossible for the click to count.
It's all there in the TOS
Google specifically tells all Adsense users that encouraging your visitors to click your ads, in any way, will result in a permanent ban from Adsense.
The only thing you can do is place your ads well, choose their color scheme, and hope that people click on them.
In short, this guy was a dumbass and getting banned from Adsense was 100% his fault.
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I agree. His pity card doesn't exactly work when you pit it against a savvy community..
TIL that when rapidly reading the word "clicks" it visually looks like "dicks" and gives an odd meaning to your sentence.
It's worse than that, if you don't beg for clicks and I click on one of your AdSense links because I think it looks interesting but then decide after looking at the site I don't want to buy what they are selling, then you're in violation of the AdSense terms.
problem is, sometimes your users will click on ads because they think it's good for you and get you banned, even if you never encouraged this activity
I'm banned from adsense and the only thing I ever said that could have encouraged people to click was something along the lines of "We're going to test some text advertising to help with our server costs"
I had around 2% CTR (which I don't consider THAT much, especially since I didn't have advertising everywhere, only on guest pages, anyone who was logged in wouldn't see advertising)
so yeah... fuck adsense, I ended up switching to some noname text ad provider which paid a lot less (went from $4000~ to maybe $1000 a month) which was enough to cover costs anyway (bless you, grafix.nl)
I've been banned from many video/song contests because of overzealous fans who also happen to know how to create automatic voting scripts. They don't realize how much they're hurting. That iPod touch should have been mine :(
Actually, if you read the entire piece, he says that when approached by subscribers clicking ads like crazy-- apparently this is called "demon clicking"-- he told them only to click on ads they felt were relevant to them. He also claims that anytime a comment showed up talking about demon clicking, he removed or edited the comment so as not to encourage the other commenters to follow suit.
It seems that the real problem-- according to Mr. Winter, anyway-- is that Google's fine print is extremely elaborate, including a clause that says if a reader clicks on an ad and does not purchase the product being advertised, then the site owner is in breach of the contract. He says in the article that he was never given a specific reason why he was let go by AdSense-- even though AdSense still makes revenue by putting ads up on his YouTube videos-- but he suspects that it's this insane fine print that did him in.
I read the entire piece, why do you think people clicked the ads like crazy? I'll hazard a guess: because he encouraged them to click them.
Google will also nail your page ranking too, so this guy has gotten hit twice, once for breaking their rules (And losing 3.7k as punishment) and again in future revenue because you no longer are searchable via google. An of course, the salt on the wound is, that his videos are still generating income for youtube, but not for him. It's lame. He screwed up, but it's still lame. Why not confiscate his account, tell him not to do it again, but we want to keep doing business and start anew?
It's an asshole thing for google to do, and it sucks that a guy got fired by a robutt before christmas, it's very "evil" and impersonal.
Really? I didn't think PageRank worked like that, if you interfere in the rankings for any reason other than spam filtering then you undermine the democratic voting process and encourage other search engines to replace Google.
Maybe pagerank and googles page ranking are two different things, but they will do both.
Present your evidence this guy did anything wrong or admit you've posted libel. Adsense is an advertising company, that they have lied and committed fraud here is far more plausible. Brad in account management gets a bigger bonus for seizing the ~$3501 of someone else's money.
Libel.
This encourages people to click on the adverts, it resulted in a CTR which is, in my experience ten times higher than what is normal (0.6% is normal). If this is the case he's making their sailing ads worth 10 times less.
I bet they also made 3.5k on that two months of ad revenue, so let's weigh up that 3.5k today vs 100k over the next five years. That's not good business sense, unless of course this behaviour is likely to cost them 100k over five years. Like, for example the risk of devaluing their ads.
You have no evidence -- this is all hearsay and speculation, and it's clearly not grounds for termination -- just a warning, like they do for the rest of their big adsense customers, as many such customers have commented here from their own experiences. Sorry, you cannot justify this action however you try to spin it.
Do you have any conflict of interest in this discussion? Let's close it out by you disclosing that. If you're going to lie, make it good and creative.
Pray tell, how do you propose targeting in a system which uses the content of the page for targeting without having the content of the page. I'm sure Google would buy this fabulous mind-reader from you :)
I think one of the more douchebag things to do is start a sentence off with "Pray Tell", it just sounds so condescending.
I think one of the more douchebag things to do is start a sentence off with "I think one of the more douchebag things to do is start a sentence off with..."
Ah hell, there I go proving you right :)
He probably just means showing PSAs rather than random ads until the content can be analyzed.
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Well, it should already be in their cache along with similar pages from the site. Unless of course there's a need for a separate cache system used purely for the purpose of auditing.
Maybe that was against the TOS, but really isn't it pretty obvious that clicking on advertisements may assist anyones site.
It affects conversions when people click with no intention of buying.
So you could really fuck a website you dont like then....
Technically. I know that if someone visits my site, clicks on 400 ads, and then leaves, I'm supposed to report that to Google by filing an invalid clicks report. If I don't, they can take action against me. It's stupid, but I guess they have to protect both sides here.
Usually those clicks will be recognized as click fraud, and you will loose the equivalent revenue. But still keep your adsense account.
It's when you tell your visitors that you will benefit if they click your ads, that you are intentionally violating the TOS and you will get sacked.
You can and people do. In particular Casey Serin had that happen to him. Don't like a particular website: send a bunch of fake clicks and kill their ad sense account.
And you also fuck the web site on the other end who pay for the clicks and who is probably some small business with limited budget. The only one who always win is Google because they get their share no matter if it's a legit click or not. But even then, Google is wise enough to know that if they let people abuse the system then nobody will want to buy clicks so they need to keep an eye on the problem.
But if you tell a bunch of sailors that you get a bit of ad revenue if they click on an ad, which is selling stuff they're interested in, is that so bad? I know I'm splitting hairs, but I see a difference in intent between "please click on my ads" and "hey, be sure to check out the ads - they're relevant, and I get a little something when you do"
In fact, I would argue that the latter might in fact improve sales. (Not necessarily conversions, but actual sales because you're driving traffic to the advertiser's site)
In all sincerity, is it necessarily bad if the conversion rate drops, but it's because you're driving traffic and the actual number of conversions (and therefore revenue) goes up?
First rule of Adsense is: Don't mention the ads.
Encouraging people to click is an unfair practice. Businesses either pay more for their adverts, or all other boat sites get less revenue because they aren't encouraging people to click their ads.
Google have to do something to prevent it from becoming an arms race, they want people to put ads on their sites because it's worthwhile, they want advertisers to buy ads because they make money when people visit the site. The scarcity of clicks is a good thing for everyone.
As a person who pays to have ads shown, I pay per click. If your visitors open a bunch of my ads in different tabs and close them, I pay a few bucks and have 0 people actually look at my page. Since I'm the one paying money to the guy in this situation, it makes sense that my needs will be valued over his. Read the ToS and don't participate on sites you don't agree with!
Yes, it is so bad. Google has been pretty unambiguous with this. You do not encourage people to click your ads, those clicks must be 100% voluntary, and the idea of the visitor.
As soon as you make the ads into 'charity buttons' where people can click and magically make you money, their actual interest in the ads goes through the floor, and advertisers make no money.
Generally, advertisers can 'challenge' the traffic quality they've seen (kind of like a chargeback on a CC), and if your site repeatedly results in 'chargebacks' for the ad server, you will get dropped to lower quality feed, or have your feed revoked entirely.
I wonder if the decision would have gone the other way if he worded it more like "buy from my sponsors"
I agree. That is the sentiment I took from the article. They are taking advantage of this still relatively new form of advertising and it seems the agreement is more of a list of demands.
The real trouble, at least to me, is if you want to make any money with paid advertisements then adsense is one of your few options.
Edit: That's not to say that there is not room for fraud to happen, and google has an obligation to the advertisers as well to try and prevent this.
Yes it is bad, because it's next to impossible to tell if they're going there because they want to buy something, or if they want you to make money.
Arguably, if they actually wanted to buy something, they would have clicked on the Ad anyway, so you telling them to wouldn't increase sales.
It's basically click fraud by definition.
Yes, you are perfectly right -- if they are clicking ads and buying stuff that is net positive for everyone involed (Google, Advertiser, User, and Blog Author).
But distinguishing this is the hard part. The vast (VAST) majority of "please click my ads, they support me" cases involve no good traffic (no conversions, no further or inspired intent to convert). It's quite difficult -- and probably not worth Google's time -- to try to distinguish between the two cases. Thus, there is a rule that you do not ask your users to click on your ads.
Yeah, if I said "Please take a look at my advertisers, they pay my bills" that would be completely different from "please click my ads, it pays my bills".
As small fanbases on websites where they're aware money is tight for the owner are wont to do. This isn't the first time fans have thought they were helping out, only to get the owner's AdSense account banned because they spend an hour every day clicking ads for their favorite small website.
It is obvious that the ads are there for a reason. The problem occurs when you start telling your visitors "Hey, you can click on this ad here and I'll earn money." Advertisers don't like that. Heck, if I was paying for an ad, I would not want that to be happening.
Sounds like semantics to me, what if I was to tell my visitors "If you like my site please purchase this product here; ill get a percentage" that sounds like the same thing as "If you like my site please place you eyeballs on this ad; ill get a percentage" Going from eyeballs in head to money out of pocket is the ad's job. Why would you not want as many eyeballs as possible on your ad?
But what if people were actually buying the items? Who gives a damn if the ads are being pointed out if it results in higher than normal buying rates?
You can NOT incite people to click on links to generate revenue for you. The ads are there to sell a product, for every person you tell to click on the link that has no interest in buying such item (they just do it because they want to help you make $) is taking money out of the pocket of advertisers. It's as douchey as asking everyone you know to go around town and steal change from the take a penny leave a penny things at gas stations and bring it to you.
Except he was pointing out that the ads were targeted. A whole bunch of us ignore ads completely - by calling attention to them he may have been driving traffic. I don't think we have enough data to know if he just drove a bunch of empty clicks or if he actually drove conversions, but it's something worth knowing.
I don't think it's that bad for a podcast or tv show to say, "Please support our sponsors who make this content possible."
If they weren't interested in buying, they would not have clicked. Unless you're talking about a volume of clicks that would amount to a DOS attack, there's no justification behind saying this is "taking money out of the pocket of advertisers". The advertisers already spent that money. It's a blatantly anti-end-user sentiment you have there.
That is generally true, but is also the exact thing that isn't true in this case.
It doesn't matter if the advertisers spent money now or later, traffic that Google knows isn't a truly intentioned human is not the product they are selling, they claim to be selling something much more valuable.
Advertisers or advertiser agencies that see lots of non-converting traffic coming from a particular source will complain and request refunds, rightfully. And in this case, Google did claim that the withheld money was returned to the advertisers.
No, that's precisely what's not true in this case, and that's why Google reacted.
Did you not read the article? He was basically asking users to click on ads with out interest in buying them to help support him.
Perhaps you are assuming that the advertisers paid a flat fee simply to have their ads displayed? That's not the way most internet advertising works, and certainly not the way google's works.
The advertisers pay when their ads are clicked, and then that money is shared between google and the publisher. So any time someone clicked purely to make that happen, they were quite literally taking money from the advertisers to give it to this guy.
And even though in the short term google was also benefitting from this, it's more important to them to make sure that advertisers can trust that they are being billed fairly for real interest. So they put a halt to it, and gave all the money (their share and the publisher's) back to the advertisers who had been billed.
Happy Reddit Birthday!
Demon clicking is a black hat tactic of generating rev, and by mentioning the numbers, it gave a concrete instead of abstract idea of income. Some people spam click, and because of it, he lost his rev source.
So be it, there are plenty of ad companies out there. I would have taken the videos off Google the instant the account was closed.
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It is also pretty obvious that you will increase the click rate if you beg your supporters for clicks.
Yep. I've seen many, many people fall foul of this one.
I feel foul of it a good 6 years ago now, however it was a bit of a blessing in disguise. I removed ads off my blog, changed the focus from "Get lots of traffic who will click my ads" to "Just write for the fun of it" and now I'm doing a reasonable trade as a freelance programmer.
Having said that, I never recommend Adsense to clients.
what do you recommend now?
Just remember that Adsense is paying you for people clicking away from your website. Most people don't realize this "conflict of interest", and it's not always compatible with your website.
That said, it's almost always better to sign private advertisers if you have the traffic to attract any. Most smaller websites can even make more than they would with Adsense by selling text links on their website. Google doesn't like this, but they don't know any better if they look natural.
In general, it's just a bad idea to place all of your eggs in the Adsense basket. If one of your websites violates Adsense and gets frozen, all of your websites stop generating revenue.
Normally I try to make a case for not having any ads at all citing that most users will block them & as mentioned by warpcowboy it's a conflict of interest. Instead I try to encourage them to monetize "premium" services, then worst case scenario they are dealing with PayPal.
However, if a client was doing reviews or something, I would recommend Amazon Associates (If you sell a book, you get like £2 and they don't mind you pushing users their way). That way you making life nicer for users while making a few extra £££.
Interesting that you recommend it to clients now. When you were initially dropped were you angry like the person in the link?
EDIT: I'm dopped up on cold meds (hurray for the Holidays), and misread the above comment. My mistake.
Um...he doesn't recommend it now...
Fox News Doesn't seem to care much about that sorta thing.
Having spent millions on Adwords/Adsense, this is spot on. Users who click with no intention of buying to create revenue for the publisher is the definition of click fraud. I certainly feel bad for this blogger and at the same time I do appreciate what Google is doing.
Click fraud cost advertisers billions a year. While there is no intention to deceive in this case, the algorithm is working as designed. The blogger probably has a high click through rate from the same IPs given the ardent subscriber base. They click a lot and don't buy anything. To be fair to Google, this is not evil or David vs Goliath. It is against the ToS and if I was advertising on this guy's videos I would feel like I was getting ripped off.
edit:Clarification. Users not asked.
Apparently I am the only one that read the entire article. He never said to click the ads without intent to buy for the sake of him making $$$. He acknowledge that he did make money from the ads, but more so directed his viewers to click links appropriate for the demographic that they were interested in (which, honestly, seems in the best interest of the advertisers). He mentioned that he removed comments from people who were recommending to click ads just for the sake of clicking ads.
Personally, I don't see anything wrong with what he did. But since he did discuss the ads and told people to take notice of them, I could see how this broke TOS. I do think that under closer review, though, Google could see that it was no harm, no foul and they should reactivate his AdSense account. He learned his 'lesson' (first rule of AdSense is, don't talk about ads, apparently) and 99% of his users' ad clicking seems to be completely legit, assuming his account of what happened is true.
However, it's fucked that his work is still on Youtube and potentially generating revenue for Google. If he isn't being paid, the ads should have been IMMEDIATELY removed because he is no longer being compensated for content he has provided. That would be like a TV show writer breaking some random stupid rule during the creation of a new TV show, and then no longer getting royalties for his older TV show on syndication even though that older show is still being broadcast with commercials. It's fucked up and Google needs to fix this. I just went to one of his truck videos and saw an ad on there and wanted to do a Liu Kang bicycle kick through my monitor.
I don't work for Google and I'm not here to defend them. I just here to provide context and POVs from all sides. A few things.
With that said, there are always false positives in any situation and hopefully the appeal lead to a manual review which evidently lead to the same conclusion. To me, the blog is some what one sided. I don't like to provide a verdict in the court of public opinion without looking at all the details, I suggest you do the same.
I agree that he should take down the videos, if they are not providing any benefit to his other website.
I am naive and I've learned a lot from the comments here today. I don't have a website. Because I am naive I can understand how a creative person can be done in by the details as this gent was.
Google is big and rich enough (!) to present a preliminary communication warning that his account is being reviewed, and why.
Put the site back into a position of mutual reward for all three parties, creator, Google, advertisers.
Their own system, algorithms, moved this creative person up into a position of financial reward. A flaw would have to be that Google and the advertisers had been satisfied with the value of his site for a long time but when the tipping point came to cut him off Google takes the hard line that he has been stealing from the program and the advertisers. Which is it, Google?
It would be in everyone's interest, surely, to notify him with strong language and have staff available to take a call. Google can afford it and if I were an advertiser I would have equal parts satisfaction and dismay with the impersonal methods Google employs.
Before anyone scoffs at having staff available for everyone with an adsense account, the internet at large sucks shit, Reddit and similar sites have always had a community battle against these shit sites.
However it would be helpful if Google makes a bit of effort to help certain creative sites understand that they have crossed a line before blowing the creator's head off with a shotgun. Again, they can afford to take a bit of staff to sort this out better than they are.
Can you point out where he asked the users to click the ads?
(And also what OP quoted). He then expands upon this for several paragraphs about how he told them to be responsible and only click on stuff they were interested in etc, but at the the end of the day he essentially asked for more click-throughs. Sucks for him to be banned and all but he was pretty naive when he put out his in-not-so-many-words plea for clickage.
None of which is really explicitly asking users to click on ads. Perhaps I'm being a little naive as well, but assuming there isn't any case precedent, and if Google didn't have such highly paid lawyers, I could actually see him winning in court.
Re-reading, he is not explicit in asking users. But in two sections he does mention that users do click to support him. Regardless of the source of the incitement, it is still click fraud if you are clicking to support the site with no intention of buying. If the users bought something via the ads then they would be truly supporting the site.
Users TOLD him that they click ads to support him. Perhaps you ought reread again, because he explicitly tells them NOT to click ads unless they're actually interested.
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I'd like to clarify something here. Occasional spikes in click activity are not enough to get you banned from Google, it's the ongoing unusual behavior that will flag an account, especially if it's coming from the same IP addresses.
I have Adsense on all of my sites and have never had to look at my logs or file anything with Google, so I think this portion is getting overblown. This is considering that I've had days where $100+ is coming into my Adsense account and then long spells where the average is $10-$15 per day.
If the same users click on the ads on a consistent basis it is click fraud. Advertisers on Adsense are paying a CPC, not a CPM, so they get charged for each of those, which in turn diminishes the value of using Google Adwords to an advertiser. Translation: This guy got exactly what he deserved by trying to game the system, even if it wasn't particularly malicious and even if he was somewhat ignorant to how Adsense works.
Present your evidence this guy was committing fraud of any kind or stop posting libel.
Libel.
I think that was his evidence ಠ_ಠ
He presented no evidence, -__-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud
"...when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link."
As I said above, it doesn't seem like the guy was doing this maliciously, but whatever way you slice it Google's algorithm flagged it as against TOS, and a further manual investigation by Google showed the same, i.e., his users were clicking on ads without intent to purchase and he played a role in it.
As for the accusation of libel, may I remind you of this:
You can be fired without a reason too, that doesn't make it right. This is still evil, and wrong, and your continued attempts at deflection show that you know this. Shame. "Do no evil" huh?
Googles policy directly contradicts the FTC regulations for internet marketers. The new FTC laws state that you MUST EXPLICITLY disclose if you profit from any advertisements on your site.
Of course if you ask Google about this, they will not give you any answers. Google has screwed me over more times then I care to remember. Google doesn't care about marketers, and the new MayDay updates make it next to impossible for small companies to make a decent living online. They are very focused on Large Corporations and give heavy bias to them.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you referring to Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising?
If so, that... has nothing to do with Google. The main point of that guide, for bloggers mainly, is this:
That has, well, nothing to do with what we're talking about, and is pretty much irrelevant to Google. That's why they don't mention it – because you've completely misstated it. In fact, you have no idea what you're talking about. Please stop lying to everybody in this thread.
Edit: You also don't know anything about the "Mayday" update was. That update was designed to help bring deeply nested pages on big sites to the front page, since they were previously ignored erroneously due to their deep nesting. If your pages were dropped because of Mayday, it's because those other sites had better content than you all along, and you are now where you belong.
He also fundamentally fails to understand that having his readers enter Amazon.com through his site before purchasing the goods they were planning on purchasing from the site anyway doesn't actually make Amazon money, but costs them money. As someone who earns income from Adsense, I don't feel any pity for the guy. He broke the rules, plain and simple.
Yeah, when he said he gives them magazine subscriptions for buying big-ticket items on Amazon through his site, my TOS Violation alarms started going off.
Yep. When I first put Adsense on a site about 7 years ago, I mentioned in an update something along the lines that users could click on ads they were interested in. Within a day I got an email from Google telling me I could not say that, and that I needed to remove it.
It seems that perhaps they no longer have humans checking on new sites, and instead rely on automated antifraud algorithms. Of course, by the time those showed fraud for this person's site, there were thousands of dollars worth of potentially bad clickthroughs that Google had to cancel.
Is this not one of the most common sorts of revenue models for internet advertising out there? It's not like he was revealing some stunning secret.
Yes, but the problem lies in telling your subscribers that, and effectively encouraging them to click without buying.
Believe it or not, many internet users do not actually know that there is a transfer of money when an advertisement is clicked. Try explaining this to 10 random people in a conversation, and at least half of them will respond that they had no idea that that is the case.
Source: I own a website that uses Adsense and have explained this to many people.
How is this any different than on TV when they say: "Please stay tuned from a message from our sponsors - they are the one's that keep the magic going!"
?
TV ads are not measured by immediate conversions into sales, but more often are about brand awareness or making consumers aware of special new products and such. Ads on the web are targeted towards immediate conversions into sales, and not nearly as much for brand awareness.
TV and radio are not pay per click, so it doesn't cost those advertisers any additional money for those additional impressions.
It's different because ad payout is measured in clicks as opposed to just measured by a guess on the number of eyes on the television ad and the sales it generates.
A comparable analogy would be if the television programs said "Please order a product from our advertisers but then call up your bank and cancel the charges."
Because an agreement between an advertiser and a tv station is different from web ads? It explicitly says in Google's TOS that it's not allowed. If he didn't agree with it, he shouldn't have signed up for AdSense. If he didn't read it, it's his own fault.
What about the larger Youtubers, like KassemG for example. He is sponsored by Netflix, and says that any people who sign up for it through his link make him money.
Do Google get a cut of this for hosting his videos? I dont think so, but without Youtube he would not make any money at all so what about that?
Yep.
This is also certainly not true.
It most certainly is true. The fact that the advertiser wasn't able to convert the click-through is not the fault of the content provider.
Perhaps I or you are confused, but, after re-reading AdSense's TOS, I can find no mention of this claim. If your subscribers are clicking on adverts but not buying (this is what I am particularly focusing on), you are not at fault and are certainly not in breach of your contract. If you could show me in the TOS where it explicitly states that you are in breach of contact if your subscribers are not buying (aka converting click-throughs), I will concede.
Google does mention that they can terminate your contract if you do not achieve a sufficient number of valid clicks on ads or impressions but that's not the same thing and it makes sense. But that's not what the OP was stating. If your site isn't generating ad clicks or impressions then why advertise with you? In fact, there is no mention of purchasing or buying anywhere in the TOS.
Came here to quote that exact line, and make the same observation.
"upvote this to the front page and..."
Dude is a troll.
Ding! Ding! Ding! That's against the rules and everybody who uses AdSense, especially people like us who depend on AdSense funds to make a living know this. This will get you kicked out of the program. Claiming ignorance is no excuse, we all know this against the rules. And for good reason, telling people to click on your ads for money isn't fair to the advertisers as the people clicking don't really care about the content at that point. He got greedy, he cheated, he broke the terms of service then he paid the price.
Yes, that's where I stopped reading.
When I saw the super-lyrical intro and the following wall of text my first thought was that he's trying to hide a needle in all that hay, thanks for confirming.
I was reading this and went, "so why was he fired? I don't know why..." then got to this line, thought, "oh, okay. That's in the terms." and closed the article.
Google is pretty smart. Their view has been that your content is what is supposed to attract viewers - not bots, begging, or tricking people. It takes a pretty harsh stance against it on its search engine too.
I'm glad I didn't have to be the guy to say this. People click links. Thats worth money. Any encouragement is just screwing over advertisers. Google's most important thing is making advertisers believe in what they're selling them. They are just "clicks" after all. And Google reports them. Its like being a freelancer. Your boss better believe the hours you're billing them are real. You made them look bad encouraging it.
To anyone else who encourages it or that has gotten comments/emails that claim they clicked links. Let Google know by person, change ways and you may not fall victim to an algorithm.
I worked at aquantive ( ad serving company just like googles double click ) and i can tell you that the minimal amount of extra clicks that were generated should never cause ad sense to be cancelled.
This is because any tool that can detect false clicks can also remove false clicks from the customers bill. This happens all the time. There is specific code that will look for spam bots and other irregularities and remove them from the bill. In fact customers dispute their bills all the time and actual number of clicks with their own custom anti-spam tools. There is pratically 0 fee except for a little bit of traffic.
Sure some of those will be missed but we are talking about very little actual money here.
It also depends on the customers bill rate ( CPC cost per click or CPM cost per 1000 views, or cost per transaction - actual sale on site ). Not all customers pay per click.
The way ad sense is banning should be illegal from all of the horror stories i have heard and instead of stealing the money they should instead not allow ads to be served on sites that are manipulating the rules.
Asking for users to visit sites should not voilate the rules and my guess is they are more likely to buy. Only spam bots should be illegal and those are easily caught by anti-spam technology built into the ad serving software.
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I agree that he stepped over a line by (unintentionally?), encouraging ad clicks. I wonder, however, if there is something else at play here...
The guy is running a magazine for self-described cheap sailing nerds. I would imagine that a lot of boating/sailing gear is quite pricey, and dudes that are willing to regularly watch 30 min sailing videos will probably spend substantial amounts of time looking at and researching new equipment...
Is it possible that he has a passionate user base that spends more time dreaming and window-shopping than buying? That would explain the high click percentage and the low conversion rate... Maybe that would explain him getting flagged by Google's systems without wide-spread click fraud?
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