Another round of monday questions:
Hi Jeremy,
Recently I’ve been slapped with a click adjustment from Adsense for
invalid clicks.As I’ve spent literally thousands of my own money to advertise
my sites on other PPC networks, I’m worrying myself sick over
the possible outcome of the adjustment. Will I end up oweing
them money???I’ve done everything aboveboard, complying strictly to their TOS
and putting my own money into the business.As of writing this email, Adsense is still calculating the amount to be
deducted from my account.
I have heard of this before but I have never seen anyone have to owe AdSense money. Maybe if anyone else has ran into this first hand they might be able to comment?
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow. That’s scary. How frequently does Google come back w/ these “fraud detected” claims? Can you challenge/appeal these rulings or are we at their mercy?
I have never heard of AdSense taking money from someone. If they thought you were that shay they probably would have banned your accout outright *unless* you make serious money for them aside from the activity they have identified as invalid.
I was under the impression that Google filtered the fraudulent clicks prior to reporting the payout. I suppose the only way this emailer’s situation could occur is if Google found something fraudulent in, say April, and then audited historical information to see if they saw the same pattern they didn’t filter out before. I don’t see any reason why his/her account can’t go negative though.
Me neither, when they ban they usually don’t pay out anything right?
i heard some info that google still will pay those remain earning inside your adsense acc. after your acc. banned by google…
I once was using goclick to drive traffic for adsense arbitrage. Google owed me $84,000, put my account on hold, and were investigating click fraud in my account. It took 2 months of me totally sweating it out before it was resolved. Needless to say I’ve never used goclick for anything again.
man that sucks. I havent ever heard of anyone having to pay google but i have heard of them not paying out. hopefully it will be a slight adjustment… but i guess if it is to large and you can prove it wasnt fradulent you have a case for your cause.
I hate adsense. WITH A MIGHTY PASSION. I use bidvertiser, its a pain in the butt adsense you can follow it so well but sometimes people click 3-4 links.
When I am searching I’ll pull up every single page on a website to disect for the information. And then thats called link fraud NO ITS CALLED GOOD RESEARCH but it happens and adsense sucks :\
Just to be safe, I’d make sure this was not a phishing email. It sounds somewhat suspicious.
Back in November, someone posted on WebmasterWorld that he received an e-mail from Google saying that they would be reversing $200,000 (!) in AdSense revenue and taking that amount out of his future AdSense payments. So maybe that’s how they deal with the amount “owed”.
(Search for “200k of fraud activity” if you want to read that WMW thread.)
Just to throw my 2 cents in about this. I’m not sure if anyone remembers a while ago that “Google cracks down on click fraud” articles all over the internet and the papers, and the massive websites ban for it. One of my (now dead) businesses was banned because of this, and I lost all of the money that was in my account, and I have not been able to get an account since. I keep getting rejected time after time, no matter what website I submit.
I only hope they don’t take all of yours like they did mine. I wasn’t too upset, it was around $15-$20 bucks since I just started – but it was the concept. Good luck to you, my friend.
Just read any popular webmaster forum people all the time are getting click fraud e-mails, banned, etc.
Correct, no payout at all.
It’s may not be the website’s that’s getting turned down, it may be you if you are using the same contact or payment details.
That’s an excellent point…
once you’re banned, you’re banned for good. if you use your name or ssn or whatever, they’ll link it and deny you.
they don’t ban people who are legit though…right?
I don’t think it’s phishing. I got the same email, though I can’t say I was that surprised since I paid for some traffic. They claimed they were investigating the issue and I guess they still could be. There was a very slight adjustment, something around $10 off of $120 for the month.
That’s a good point! Who was the advertiser that got fleeced despite Google’s assurances about “invalid click filters?” Everyone who does AdWords knows to budget 30% for fraud…
Was it goclick, or was it a huge increase in clicks and traffic? Did you go from nothing to $84,000? (nice payday BTW…)
Naw, they payout still. I had a friend who was banned for click fraud and still got their full payment from that month a few weeks later.
I did PPC with GoClick and tracked referrals. They are absolutely crappy. I had to complain about referrals from Warez pages. It is obvious that Google will frown with that kind of traffic.
It’s my experience with a certain set of keywords. I can’t say that all the GoClick traffic is crap.
I dont like adsense at all, they ban people who dont invalid click and leave the people who do with big sites
It sounds like this person simply had some invalid clicks uncovered by the .02% “reactively identified” by the Adsense team. There is a great post about this on the Adsense blog here:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/02/invalid-clicks-googles-overall-numbers.html
i cant wait till ypn gets their dam targeting down so we can all bitch about them…
I saw a similar post at webmasterworld in the adsense forum about a guy that owed adsense due to click fraud. I thought it was ridiculous. You know the advertisers didn’t see all (or any) of that refund!
I also believe google adsense “fraud detection” mainly depends on its URL tracking.
I read that some university-based forums, which showed google adsense banners, have been banned because the major number of clicks was from the same (university-) server. Maybe in the case above happened something similar.
That just makes you think. You never know when adsense might decide to slap you, and take all of your earnings for no apparent reason.
Completely at their mercy.
I had a friend a while ago who did some “Black Hat” Arbitrage.
They ended up banning his Adsense account, and cancelling his cheques – not just the ones which were “in the mail” but also the ones which had cleared into his bank account weeks earlier.
That hurt bad!
screw adsense, don’t use them
Any more news on this?
any funny business there buddy?
they sent me a fraudulent adclick notice…I posted in a forum and the kids just rushed my site clicking on the all the ads…maybe I should of introduced myself before promoting my site a rookie mistake it was a year or so ago.
I guess I would be in a position to comment once I climb up the adsense earnings ladder
I’ve never had any issues…knock on wood. All my traffic is organic with very few PPC ads..just a little bit of yahoo
I got this today in my payments page
Payments Adjustment – Other
Sep 30 Earnings (Sep 1 – Sep 30) – details $869.36
Balance at end of September [?] $869.36
October 2007
Oct 31 Earnings (Oct 1 – Oct 31) – details ($6.13)
Oct 31 Earnings (Oct 1 – Oct 31) – details $6.13
Does that mean i lost over 800$ pluss what ive earned in oct.. or does it mean they just going to deduct the $6.13 ?
Thank for the tips…