Today I got Banned from Google Adsense
As I read my new mails today I noticed one from Google Adsense. I opened it and, tada, they banned me from their program ;-(
The reasons for the ban
My first thought was: “What have I done illegally?”. I read the whole mail and they stated that I have generated some illegal clicks/impressions from advertisements that show up on my blog. So they had to ban me from my account, because “click fraud” is against their terms of service.
My next thought was: “I know where those illegal clicks/impressions come from. Linkreferral!”.
Yes that´s right. Linkreferral is a traffic exchange program I joined at the end of October. It generates traffic for my blog if I visit other members site and review them. All in all a really nice and free way for driving traffic to your site/blog. But those programs are against the TOS of Google Adsense! Only “natural” clicks will count legally, but no “sponsored” clicks.
What I will do against this
My answer is that simple: nothing. I won´t do anything against this ban because of the following reasons:
- At this time traffic is much more important to me than the money earned from Google Adsense. I get around 20 unique visitors each day from Linkreferral and some of them even have a deeper look at my blog. This is by far more important, because building a fellow readership will bring me more benefits for the future.
- Google Adsense brought me nearly nothing so far, only around $0.30 since starting this blog. I think there are definitely better advertising systems especially for blogs like Blogvertise and that kind. So I´ll keep an eye on new advertising programs like contextual ads or text link ads.
- I have more space for my blog posts. This will be helpful to my readers, in fact, advertisements can really be annoying sometimes.
So this is my opinion about this ban from Google Adsense. I personally want to promote Linkreferral and traffic exchanges in general anyway, they can bring you a fast start up amount on daily visits to your sites and blogs. But I´ll also warn all my readers who have integrated Google Adsense on their own blogs, be careful with those traffic exchange programs, you may risk a ban from Adsense!
Best regards!
Querblogger
Hello Querblogger. You too got banned at Google ? Probably that today was a special day: the day of banning a bunch of bloggers. I got banned too. I don’t know why, but this makes me laugh..really. And to be honest with you, I don’t really believe that LinkReferral is guilty for us getting banned. But as you said, I’ll not gonna start crying and tearing my hair off because I got banned. It’s not the end of the world and Adsense isn’t the only way to make money with a blog.
Even though Google doesn’t allow us to use traffic exchange programs to promote our blogs, it is the only ad network that will ban you for invalid clicks or impressions, without disclosing why they did it.
Bidvertiser, AdBrite and the rest of the ad networks haven’t gave us any warnings ( and I do use them since I’ve started my blog ). This doesn’t mean that they aren’t reliable, but they don’t have this extremely strict rules (maybe Google’s rules are just too extreme ).
Anyways, I said that this is the first and last time I’ll ever gonna use Adsense on my blog:)
Cheers,
Midwest
http://www.myppcadvertising.co.cc
Comment by Midwest — November 9, 2007 @ 4:14 pm
Hi Midwest,
I´m really happy to hear that there are other people who got banned too. You´re right, I can´t really believe that this ban happend only because of using Linkreferral, but for the moment I can´t explain it in any other way. The funny thing was, that I had some thoughts about removing adsense from my blog some days ago, now this problem has cleared by itself
Ciao!
Comment by Querblogger — November 9, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
Hey Querblogger,
I was thinking of removing Adsense ads too, and as you said, now the problem clarified itself. I’ve already implemented other contextual ads on my blog ( those from Entireweb - http://www.entireweb.com/speedyads ) and already earned about 23 cents:)
I don’t know why Google would think that LinkReferral is a bad way to get traffic to your site..because it’s not..it’s not an autosurf website, but rather a traffic directory:) So, we get banned because we’ve listed our blogs at LinkReferral, but we wouldn’t get banned if we’d list the blogs at an usual web directory…
Heck, there’s no differences. Both are traffic directories, but Google thinks that LinkReferral is the only one breaking their rules..Makes no sense to me:)
Regards,
Midwest
Comment by Midwest — November 10, 2007 @ 8:13 am
Thanks for the link Midwest. It seems Google shows its real “powers” last days. You may have heard of all those Pagerank penalizations on different blogs that sell text links (Problogger.net, Johncow.com,…)?
Comment by Querblogger — November 11, 2007 @ 11:19 am
Hi Again,
I also don’t think it was due to Link Refferal…though it could be, who knows.
But anyway…the program I am in right now says that Adsense is not really as great as it appears to be anyhow…
Also, I have gotten next to nothing from them…just a few cents, like you.
So don’t worry too much about that.
Warm Regards,
Sunny
Comment by Sunny — November 13, 2007 @ 10:10 am
Hi sunny,
I´ve heard it over and over again, Google Adsense doesn´t seem to do very well for some kind of blogs. Sure if you´re on a niche topic where most of your visitors come from search engines, it´s very likely that you´ll make some bucks from Adsense.
And yes, I defnitely don´t worry about that!
Thanks for your comment sunny!
Comment by Querblogger — November 13, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
I too got banned. Google is the threat to advertisers by banning accounts. They just dont work to work with small website or blog owners. I believe Google plays favorites with those so-called internet gurus who get lots of traffic. They felt I was a threat to the advertisers as well. What if off-line companies refused you a product or service because you may be a threat to the manufacturers? Sooner or later , people would stop doing business with them which is what will happen to Adsense. Anyway,Iam not crying over spilled milk.
http://get-paid-guide.com
Comment by roddma — November 21, 2007 @ 5:19 pm
Hi roddma!
At the moment I´m very disappointed with Google. It isn´t only because I got banned from Adsense like you and some other bloggers I know from. As my friend Midwest writes in his last post, Google´s now also hunting down PayPerPost users, there Pagerank dropped to zero (read his post for more information –>http://myppcadvertising.blogspot.com/2007/11/whats-google-up-to.html)
It keeps me wondering what comes next? It seems Google is showing its muscles and penalizes all their fellow users, the wrong way in my opinion…
But it´s also a hard fact, that you can´t live without Google at the moment, because they send you traffic to your sites or blogs. If they drop your Pagerank, you´ll likely loose a great portion of daily traffic and therefore all the money you would earn from blogging.
Let´s see what comes next…
Thanks for your comment roddma!
Regards,
Querblogger
Comment by Querblogger — November 21, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
too bad…any other ads to introduct XD
Comment by Game2pCEO — April 5, 2008 @ 12:35 am
Internet Tools For Your Blog: The Linkreferral Concept
Now my take on LInkreferral,lol..as I do believe other opionions are welcome and can be of benefit as opposed to this one by it’s site owner,omg! ha!!
linkreferral sucks! I made no money and wasted my time, in the two years I was there and the members are mean and give bad reviews and act like kids in the forum,ugh! To top it off the site owner asks for money for credit on the referrals he get from having his link on our sites,outrageous! Most affiliate programs pay you for that priviledge. Contrary to what he claims, one needs money from targeted not untargeted traffic as that is who buys our products and utilizes our services. Aimless hits only increase perhaps page rank but even that is no measure of a site’s genuine popularity as evidenced by it’s daily fluctuation. There is even some who have been penalized by Adsense for having linkreferral affiliation as is coercing the public to visit one’s sites unnaturally! You be the judge tho,visit linkreferral and see what you think! As contrary to it’s site’s owner’s opinion of me, I don’t slander people’s sites! He on the other hand offers a slanted view of linkreferral by writng articles on the hubpages,squidoo,social marketing sites like bloglog and blogspot, all singing his praises and erases comments that disagree with him! That is not accurate reporting which shows both sides of the story. He is like Oprah who only invited Obama and not McCain!MLM’s, surveys and most affiliate programs claim to induce traffic and offer fast easy money but..we all know that the only real money out there is from a JOB where unfortuantely you need to work,spend time at and don’t make alot after taxes! Anything on the net is a fluke and added creme to one’s pudding but no promise of a regular check. Sorry, but I speak the truth.
The only good way I know of how to get traffic is by commenting in forums and on web sites and blogs like this one and exchanging links with reputable web sites and other blogs! Google wants quality backlinks not junk and that is all linkexchanges and viral programs like linkreferral offer. Who wants someone visiting for 5 seconds?! I’ll take a buyer any day over that and if you too want this you will be best served by avoiding Linkreferral and oher link exchanges as they quite simply SUCK!
-Artzstuf
http://freewebs.com/annspets4
Comment by ann reilly — October 11, 2008 @ 5:01 pm
…but you still were a Linkreferral member for two years? I mean, if you didn’t like their service, why didn’t you just leave them earlier? I personally have removed Linkreferral as an extra traffic source long time ago since I know the traffic isn’t targeted.
Comment by Querblogger — October 12, 2008 @ 2:35 pm