Google blocks account, won't pay over $4000 in revenue!

[matt_bodis]

I am pissed at Google and the Google Adsense team. They have closed my accounts and will not issue me a total of over $4000 in ad revenue.

One day I am running a few mini sites, along with my brother. And I have 1 account for my self under my name, 1 account for my LLC under the LLC name, and my brother has a third. So I put up a mini site under the LLC account and it was doing fine. Then a few weeks pass and I can't login, Google says there was click fraud. So I say okay, but it couldn't have been me, it must've been a visitor that kept clicking the same ad. So they say that they will look into it. A few days later I get a response from them and they basically say: Nope, can't open your account, you violated TOS.

And I said what did I violate? And they reply: "Terms of Service". And I said, "Yes I know I violated TOS, but what specifically?". No response since then.

3 days pass, my brother can't login under his account. He contacts Adsense team. They say that it was closed because it was releated to me and that I had click fraud.

(Now how in the world can his name "Andrzej Wegrzyn" be related to my LLC business - a business is not a person therefore impossible to be related to him!!! And on top of that, he isn't a member of the LLC either).

This happened like 2 weeks ago. Today I open my email, February 21, 2 days before payments are issued for last month, and guess what? They closed my regular account under my name. They waited until 2 days before payments are issued.

And on top of this, I never clicked one of my own ads.


Any legal thing I can start here to get my money back?? Any legal notice I can send them that can make them revert the account bans? Anybody? Help appreciated!

 

[NewYorkBum]

take a look at http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help/topics , i am pretty sure that you will find somebody from adsense team over there to help you out.

 

[Damion]

Well, you don't have any legal position to put forward to claim the revenue reported in your account since it's TOS policy which you agreed to, that should your account be closed the reported revenue will not be issued to you in these circumstances.

So on that point there is nothing you can do unfortunately.

The reason for your brother to be banned is because you two are related and therefor both are banned. The thing is people used to get banned and get a family member to open an account and to continue their click fraud.

This is so common that this course of action is become somewhat standard procedure. Sucks but that is their policy.
What also may be the cause is you logged into your AS account with your brothers IP and the link between the both of you has been made that way.

Here is an article what you can do to reinstate yourself, it's not bulletproof but it helped alot of people though.

Adsense Reinstatement Guide

Also install click tracking software so you can show log evidence if you get reinstated again. That can be of great help to you.

Hope this will be of help to the both of you - Good luck Matt!

 

[matt_bodis]

I'll just keep emailing them everyday until they re-instate it. Thanks for the tips! :D

 

[Damion]

Keep this part in mind as well

Don’t Threaten Legal Action. This is a biggie because as soon as you say “I am going to sue you”, they pass your account off to the legal department who file it away awaiting your lawsuit. So unless you have already sent the paperwork, don’t even mention the word lawsuit

 

[Michelle]

Sorry to hear this :td:

I have heard of a few members google have closed accounts on, seems they are very quick at times to do this ...

I hope you get your $ back and get re-instated asap

Good luck

 

[Epic]

Yes, Google banned me too for no apparent reason.

There isn't really much you can do. They refuse to even look and see the the invalid clicks were not generated by you.

 

[rsek]

I got banned a while ago to.
Got some mails sent, received 2 back. since then nothing...
Imo they should look carefully into who clicked the ads. instead of banning without knowing who clicked it..
They should look at IP's orso.

 

[Damion]

Don't give up continuing your case, if you haven't been clicking on your own ads or someone else that may be using your computer then you're innocent.
Keep sending them emails and use the above posted link as a guide.

Should you be reinstated make sure to install click tracking software to keep up with the click activity and you can log IP addresses yourself and should an incident occur you have proof that you are not responsible for the invalid clicks in question.

 

[vinodkv]

why google is banning peoples, they are promoting google, and without any reason, thats not good google, there is lots of option for peoples

 

[Fka200]

I get really worried about "click bombs" with adsense... to the point where I worry if I'm going to receive my payments... since you never really know whats going on with your adsense ads if you have high traffic website. I think they should have a built in "click fraud" detector... where it'll automatically shut down the ads after 3-4 clicks from the same IP for a certain period of time, just like AdLogger, except some of us cannot use adlogger so we're SOL. Getting really frustrated since I would love to have about 15-20 automated sites up right now, but I always let Adsense control me... so I limit it to 2-3... oh well.

 

[Mike]

Yep, add med to the list of banned account holders. No apparent reason, just out of the blue google decided that i violated the ToS. Upon several emails and asking what/why/how, i received an answer that they'll look into it. Yeah, when?
I'm not sure which direction google is taking, but the recent demonstration of greed that is being played out on the back of "the little man" is a bit too obvious.
Since i'm not going to mess with the giant, i might as well surrender to their mercy and accept any, not matter how crooked, decision they make.

its not like i could retire on adsense revenue, but it's a nice add on to pay domains with....

So what's next i wonder?

 

[kev]

i got banned for apparent "click fraud" recently although i never clicked any...i sent an email to google asking why this happened and they said a visitor was clicking on my ads repeatedly. i asked them what the IP address of this person was so i could block them but google said they couldnt do that

i keep emailing them but they never reply.... :td:

 

[Damion]

Look into installing click tracking software or other type of method to track which IP clicks what ad and send them an email once again.

Stating your case that you where banned from the program and you received a reply once from Google mentioning it was a visitor not YOU who made the invalid clicks.
And that you have now taken precautions to monitor ad clicks and that you will everything you can to prevent malicious clicks.

Whenever you see a sudden spike in revenue and CTR mentioning this to the Adsense support team and that it is something not from you but another source and that you are worried about this.

Also should you have installed click tracking software you can mention that you know the offending IP and you are blocking it entirely from your domain.

Showing you're as much as concerned about invalid clicks is in your favour.

 

[rsek]

i asked them what the IP address of this person was so i could block them but google said they couldnt do that
:

lol.. so lame
:td:

 

[Damion]

Also Kev, if you still have that email it works in your favour as it is an admission from Google knowing that YOU aren't responsible for the invalid clicks but perhaps a competitor or just someone who has it in for you.

Eitherway if it is formulated as you described i would keep emailing them.
That email is very compelling evidence that is in your favour!

 

[Ronald Regging]

I'm always worried about this, especially if creating multiple sites. You could have a malicious user on one site take down your entire network of revenue. It's a bit ridiculous really how this works. Google definitely needs to implement measures to fight this on their end, not just to identify it, but to stop it from happening as much as possible. Like others have said, if they unusual click patterns from a specific IP, Google should just no longer count these clicks and possibly take away the funds already generated by these clicks. Banning an account for violating TOS, when the person themselves had absolutely nothing to do with it is ridiculous.

 

[kev]

Also Kev, if you still have that email it works in your favour as it is an admission from Google knowing that YOU aren't responsible for the invalid clicks but perhaps a competitor or just someone who has it in for you.

Eitherway if it is formulated as you described i would keep emailing them.
That email is very compelling evidence that is in your favour!

ill keep pestering them and see how i get on...its really frustrating that my account got deleted for something that is not my fault :td:

 

[Keynes]

The main problem here is that they have too firm a monopoly on the publisher PPC market -- with the entry of full YPN, along with some other competitiors, we should see lots of options. Sure, Google has click fraud and click-quality issues, but they really need to filter more carefully.

 

[whitebark]

don't they normally send a warning first?

MSN and Yahoo cannot open up their programs to everyone fast enough. Undoubtedly they would get swamped with applicants.