It's a scam... Adsense is using an arbitrary gauge to ban people with no reasons after the fact. I read this all over the Internet. Banned and no response. No Reason given.
Think about it... Google STILL GETS PAID for the ads that were viewed regardless of whether or not they paid you. It's alot like the Oil Companies running the cost of gas to the moon "just beacause".
Like the Oil Cos, Adsense doesn't have an official person of office that makes this call and it seems arbitrary at best.
Here's some odd and interesting questions...
How many of you have your own site booked as your home page?
How many people do their own design work and repeatedly load their pages while designing to ensure the site is looking good and working correctly?
How many people tell their friends, families and co-workers about their new sites (sometime while being in their physical presense)?
How many people, after having seen their own sites for whatever (and often many) reasons, do they spy an ad that is of interest... TO THEM?
I'm trying to make my site better... I see an ad pop up on my site while working on it or sharing it... and it shows me a great SEO site or info on how to list my site in a directory for free. I'm NOT supposed to click the ad? Even when I go there and BUY something?
I have done this. I found a SEO company that I absoultely love. Found it through a link on my adsense ads on my own site. Clicked it... bought it... love it.
Now, two things here... 1 - I will most probably be banned for clicking my own ad and admitting it here publically... and 2 - I'm sure that the advertiser that I have now spent well over 100 bucks with is NOT CONCERNED about the fact I clicked my own ad.
Now, I know that the issue here is people running their own ads to the moon just to make a buck. So, because of the looser abusers, the rest of us have to suffer?
Here's a plan Mr. Google... Place an exception to a user to use his OWN ADS without pay. Simple... then, we site builders can then use our very best resource... a site we built and know how it runs and exactly where the resources WE want to use actually ARE.
If you ask me, it would be better for the advertisers. After all, who looks at a site more closely, including the ads placed there, more often than the SITE OWNER?
I think that the fact that Google has absolute power absoultely is a huge potential risk. If you ask me, if there is click fraud to be found, it is perhaps partially within Google/Adsnese itself through banning (and keeping) the money that good advertisers are entitled to.
I know that I am guilty of at least a half dozen self-clicked ads from my various sites and 45 plus pages. These clicks have always resulted in my choosing either to buy or not to buy a product, or signing up for a service at which I continue to develope and grow my site. Kinda folds back into itself, eh?
Anyway, assuming that Adsense is the evil ogre that I keep reading they are, my site is going to get banned doing exactly what the Adsense program is in the business to do... SELL PRODUCTS, GOODS and SERVICES.
The more I read the more frustrated I get. There has... HAS... to be some sanity on all of this.
One other thing... I continually read that people are being banned for infractions are NOT against their TOS... but has been determined to be BAD by adsense.
There has to be acountability on their part as well.
GoPC