Apparently I’m not alone in this. A quick search on Yahoo turned up all of these quotes from different people on just 3 blogs which momentarily focused on the problem of click-fraud. Check out the excerpts below from 21 people just like me! Some of them lost thousands of dollars, some have very high traffic sites, some have very low traffic sites, but all have one common theme: we’ve all been screwed by Google with no proof and no recourse.

Several people indicated that other sites they run or tried to set up later were also banned because they were set up by a person with a similar or identical name.

One person was even shut down because he dared to click on an ad, consider a product, then click on the same ad to buy the product in question from the same advertiser later in the same day! Google considers that click fraud! Hello!!!!! Is there anyone in there, or are they all mindless money-sucking robots disguised as humans?

The three blog articles for your reading pleasure are:
in Russell Beattie’s blog
in the WebmasterWorld blog
in the MarketingNewz blog

Thanks for your continued support,

Kurt Inman
Free RSS Resources

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“I returned from holiday yesterday to an e-mail telling me there had been fraudulent clicks on my account. I presume that they think I am clicking on my own ads (they wouldn’t tell me the exact reason) which as I have been on a farm (middle of nowhere) for the last three weeks that would have been difficult.”

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“A strange twist is that my brother who has a site on a totally different topic, different area of expertise etc, has had his account terminated also-reason is because he knows me. No I am not kidding-’Google AdSense account was found to be related to an account previously disabled for invalid click activity’”

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“With an automated reply. I’ve lost count of the amount of people who simply got dropped for no real reason. You only get an automated reply, I’m told. I’ve gone to Bidclix and dropped Adsense simply due to the pathetic people who can’t seem to run adsense period.”

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“It appears my right of appeal consists of - you’re guilty and we are not going to tell you of what or how we know-just accept it and get lost”

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“Instead of banning the publisher why not just ban the clicks? Compare IP address and only count unique clicks per visitor (24hour cookie). The banner ad networks figured this out years ago. It really isn’t an issue with them anymore. ”

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“I actually just can’t understand why anyone would be so stupid as to try and cheat Google and thats why it annoys me that they think I am guilty. I am sure they do have good software that would check the most blatant attempted fraud/sters and kick them out anyway. My main worry is that some schoolkids/well meaning fool has just sat all day clicking away and they think it is me. Surley though that would show up as an IP address though,which clearly isn’t mine as I always access my adsense account from the same IP addy.”

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“Still don’t know why I was cut off because they won’t tell me and that is the thing which really bothers me. If they said something like, there have been x% of your clicks from the same IP address, or x% of your clicks were all to the same advertiser, or x% of your clicks were on advertisers that weren’t really appropriate to your site or … etc, etc. Then I could understand. However they hide behind the “we have sophisticated software that has caught you out” arguement.”

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How will Click Fraud impact us as honest publishers? It is really yet to be seen - however one could speculate that there will be a number of flow on effects including: […]

* risk for publishers? - I have spoken with one or two Adsense publishers in the past few weeks who say that they have been innocent victims of click fraud occurring on their sites. Whilst I have no way of verifying their stories - they claim that Google has banned them from Adsense for reasons of suspicious activity on their accounts (ie clicking on their own ads). They argue that they did not do this and that someone else (possibly advertisers like the one’s mentioned in the article above) was responsible for the abnormalities in clicks on their ads. Once again I have no way of knowing if they are just making excuses for their own stupidity or if they are innocent victims of the fraudulent activities of others - however I see that this might become an increasing problem for publishers.

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“Update: Erik asked for clarification, and got this slap in the face in return:

As you know, Google treats instances of invalid click activity very seriously. Due to the proprietary nature of our algorithm, we cannot disclose any details about how our monitoring technology works or what specifics we found on your account. However, we can assure you that we have again reviewed your situation thoroughly and accurately, and could re-confirm that your account violated our program’s Terms and Conditions.

Have you *ever* heard such bullshit in your life? They aren’t going to tell him what the problem was and we’re just supposed to believe them? Erik didn’t do anything wrong - he didn’t need to with his traffic - yet Google has pronounced him guilty of fraud without proof or justification. Amazing.”

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“Yeah, the exact same thing happened to our site. Got one cheque for the first month, and then when it came time to pay the second in comes this the (form) email from Google.

I was a little hesitant about the whole thing when I read the vague and all-encompassing nature of the fine print, but we figured it was worth a go. After all, Google is a reputable company that would not sully its reputation with questionable business practices. Or so we thought.

I’m now longer of that opinion after Google pulled the plug on us owing over $1000. They claim that their customers were refunded for our “fraudulent” clicks, but I have no way to verify that. I certainly remain unconvinced of it. ”

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“I was also booted from Google for “inappropriate clicks” after an unusually high traffic day. I’m pretty sure my site was spidered (perhaps by Google - hah!) which caused my ad clicks to spike. When I pointed out that I had no way to control such a thing, the Google rep said they would not disclose their evidence, but that they have a proprietary system in place to detect abuse. When I suggested that they simply discount the clicks they think are fraudulent and let me stay in the system, the rep said they had a duty to protect their advertisers. I wish they cared as much about protecting their reputation and good will among the web folk who give them something to index.

The saddest part is knowing that I could boot anyone off their ad system by pointing a spider at their site. I thought Google was more clueful than that. Very disappointing.”

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“I had that problem. Someone was using a bot or something on my site, and Google recorded a huge number of clicks - so cut me off. I wrote back saying that I understood why they had removed my account, but could I be started afresh or from the amount from before the clicks happened. The answer? “Your site no longer fits our criteria”. It was identical.”

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“Good to see I’m not the only one although I might have been the first. The worst part about it was conversation with the “support team”. Never once did they sign a name to their emails. First emails where clearly written by robots, the later ones by nameless humans. Very Kafkaesque, and ultimately the answer was basically we kicked you off, we can’t tell you how you violated the terms of service, but we’ll rewrite them so that its clear for later customers. Great. One of the most dehumanizing experiences of my life.”

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“I thought I would add my little story. I saw an ad on the site for something I was interested in. Clicked it & visited their site. Later that day, I saw the same ad, decided to buy something, clicked it again. Made a purchase from the company in the ad. Got the adsense boot, apparently for click manipulation. But, er…. If I make a purchase from the company, I don’t see how I was doing anything fraudulent.”

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“The next day, Google sent me an email about “fraudulent clicks”, yet it was specific in saying that they were generated by a robot or program. I replied saying that I know exactly where the clicks came from (a friend), and he confessed that they were manual, and to please reinstate my account, even if you deduct that day’s earnings. I even got the guy himself to write to Google and explain exactly what he did! They replied with that standard form letter about “we have re-reviewed your case” and they were positive it was automated.”

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“I get 500,000 clicks a month, and having been with adsense 6 months, just got an email - account disabled for invalid clicks “again”. I was on holiday actually on a boat so can prove it wasn’t me - but what do they care? Wish I had enough cashflow to challenge their processes – it must be possible to stop/detect spam like clicks - block the ip addresses? just don’t count them (they do this anyway) so what’s the big deal? If they don’t count them then why kick u off - sounds like there is a hidden agenda to me. GRRR! Well there goes $1000….”

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“I got the email as well. I’d only used AdSense (or, as I like to call it, Google NonSense) for a couple of weeks when it shut me down for no good reason. Funny thing is, they shut me down after about a week of almost no clicks. I know this because the link to my website was taken down so /no one could even go there/. There was an occasional click but we all know what happens when the Google spider comes.”

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“I received the letter a day after my payment was approved. The worst thing is that I asked them to hold my earnings on December 2004 for the previous month November, because I won’t be on my house to receive the check for the holidays. I lose my previous November earnings and December earnings and now my January earnings. I noticed an increase of search clicks on the last few days of my account. I answered to the mail they sent me and I don’t have received a response yet. After reading this I know that it’s worthless to try to talk with these people.”

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“crap I just disabled a friends account accidently by searching for terms that happened to be going for a hundrend bucks per click and clicking them, he never even asked me to do it so did everything legit, thats bs, I feel bad, thought at the most they would just not give him money for those clicks, now hes banned for life and lost a bunch of cash. How can google do this? so this means i could write a distributed bot that clicks on google ads and cripples Google’s entire revenue system? i wont but jeez they leave themselves wide open for attack, suprised nobody did it yet.

I’d say watch out for using google search or you are open for attack, I know now that one person can take out anybody’s google account in a couple minutes searching for choice terms, then clicking on the affiliate links that come up. It is rediculous, and I notice these posts are from 2003, it’s 2005 and just as bad, they are doing nothing.”

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“Get real, google’s system has a bug here! holding about $3000 of our money and closing our account because some spammer might have clicked on our ads? how stupid is that?

If we ever wanted to conduct that kind of business we would do it 18 months ago when we started adsense… how hard is it to understand this?”

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“I was very concerned that Google cancelled me right before my first check. Not only did they keep all of that money for themselves, but they wasted my time and got free advertising on my site.

That is just not right.

Additionaly, I had 4 other sites and now they are claiming all of them are banned. We didn’t click on our own ads so I wanted more information. I asked them what was the problem maybe we can fix it and work it out.

This is what they told me:
Hello, Thank you for your email regarding the action taken on your account.

We understand that you wish to receive specific information regarding the invalid clicks we observed on your account. Unfortunately, due to the proprietary nature of our algorithm, we cannot disclose any details about how our monitoring technology works or what specifics we found on your account.

As you know, Google treats instances of invalid click activity very seriously. By disabling your account according to our policy on this matter, we feel that we have taken the necessary measures to protect our advertisers and to ensure that invalid clicks will not continue to occur on your site.

Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further participation in Google AdSense. We appreciate your understanding.

Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team

Basically, they take no argument and don’t even want to work it out. I really hope there is a alternative service to them. They do pay well, but there is no point if they are going to keep the money for themselves.

If anyone was going to fraud them, then they wouldn’t just click on their own ads. They would come up with a better way then that. Nobody is that dumb. This is just a trick to keep the advertisers happy and thinking they are not getting invalid clicks.”