Google reinstates my AdSense account on appeal
The blogosphere is full of horror stories of Google canceling peoples AdSense accounts with no explanation, and no more than an email claiming ‘fraudulent’ activity. So, when I got the dreaded email, I was pretty sure it was the end of my AdSense earnings. To give some background, I write or contribute to several blogs. All those blogs are either not monetized at all or done so using a source other than AdSense. I use AdSense exclusively to monetize my feedburner feeds (like for this blog). The blog whose account was suspended was my UnRoadWarrior.com blog. It is on Airline Miles are has only a few hundred subscribers on feedburner. So, AdSense is not a significant source of income for me; but money is money.
Anyways, I decided to file the appeal via the link they sent me. I was extremely detailed in my response. I had my Google Analytics page open as I responded and gave figures and stats right from Analytics and pointed it out as the source in my appeal. The thing I had going for me is that over 50% of my traffic, according to Google Analytics, comes from Google search (I have PR4 page rank). I actually have no paid traffic source at all. The argument I made in my appeal was that you, Google are sending me most of my traffic; you cannot then penalize for what those people do.
To my surprise, my AdSense account is back up. I got no email or notification from Google telling me that. I can just see that the ads are back and I can log in to my AdSense account. So, it worked!
My suggestion to anyone else in a similar situation:
- File the appeal. The worst that can happen is that your account will remain cancelled
- Be very detailed in your response. Use any metrics you have, especially if you use Google Analytics
- Be honest about what you know and do not know of your audience. I know nothing about demographics or where m y readers read my blog from (office or home…)
It helps if you have a lot of traffic and the clock thru to your ads is low. If you get 5 people to come to your site and four clicks, you are in trouble.
My guess is that the original cancellation comes from an automated system that uses some pattern recognition to spot fraud. When you appeal, a human reads your response and looks at logs, etc. In my case they judged in my favor. YMMV.
Read my other posts on my StartUp efforts:
