My Adsense Account Just Got Banned (Disabled) – Whaaaat?

By James W - September, 15th 2012

That’s right, after couple of years working with Google and Adsense, this Saturday morning I got the message that my account has been disabled. I found out when I tried to check my adsense earnings and boom, all I got was this message from the image you can see below.

I guess you never know when the big G is going to ditch you after years of working hard and trying to give best value for their advertisers. And the best part is that I never did anything to get my account disabled. I always followed the rules and wrote the unique content so that my visitors can enjoy the value and so my earnings can get better.  I send the Appeal in hope to get my account back, I know that many never did get their accounts back. It’s just like in the MIB movie, they neuralyzed you and you can forget about your account.

How Spammers Probably Got Me banned?

But there is one thing that probably got me banned, and this wasn’t my fault. Couple of weeks ago I noticed that someone is trying to break into my blog, different IP addresses always sending some kind of attacks .

I didn’t know why, this attacks probably also spam clicked me, (many people call this spam clicking) that’s when someone clicks adsense ads on purpose, and I still don’t know how to check if someone is spam clicking me.

Why would someone do this, beats me, probably because they want to harm other people, or they’re jealous maybe, who knows. Maybe there is an option to check this spam clicking out. But I didn’t tried to hard to find it, because I believed that Google will be able to recognize those spammers and IP addresses and to do something about it.

At the end I  was able to stop those IP spams by banning them from accessing my blog forever.

“Google Adsense Disabled” Email that I Got!

In my Google email I got the message that my account is disabled and the link to the list of the top reasons for account closure for me to review.
Second link was for me to submit Invalid Activity Appeal so I can hopefully get my account back. Basically it’s a long form of questions that you need to fill out in order for them to review your account and see why did you get banned and is there a reason why this happened.

I will not post the email screenshot just in case not to break any rules, thanks for understanding.

Invalid Activity Appeal Form and My Answers

After you receive first email that I described above, you will need to click the second link from the email, that will lead you to the Invalid Activity Appeal Form.

Now in this form you will need to give honest opinion and answers on questions about your account getting banned and more. If you got spam clicked like I did, send them the IP addresses of the spammers. I fortunately saved all those IP addresses and send them in this form.

I used wordpress plugin for banning IPs completely, that’s how I was able to save those IP addresses that I sent to Google, here is the link to the plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-ban/, use this plugin and protect your website.

If you clicked your own ads few times by accident, write that down too, don’t hide anything.  That’s my story, I never thought that those couple of IP attacks could do this, make sure you protect your website.

Anyway, here are my answers in the form, I will wait for Google’s answer and update you on progress, thank you for reading this till the end.

I didn’t include some of the information because of the privacy and other things.

15_AlreadyAppealed: no
16_OtherAccount: no
18_WebAudience: Just me
19_UserGeography: United States, India, Germany,Russia, Ukraine, United
Kingdom, Indonesia, China, Philippines
20_UserAccessMode: home DSL lines
21_ScrapedContent: No, I write unique and fresh content. I don’t copy from
other sites.
22_ContentSources: My site content source is my experience, expertise and
information I collected over the years on my own.
23_NumAdmins: Myself only, I’m the owner,publisher, editor and every other
possible role.
24_UpdateFrequency: Couple days a week, 6 to 7.
26_UsePayTo: no
27_TrafficSources: I use social media sites like pinterest, stumbleupon,
twitter, facebook. And I promote a lot using the blog commenting.
28_AdvertiserValue: Because I built that traffic from the scratch using
unique content writing. Useful articles and information, and promoting my
blogs on social media sites. My traffic is targeted and my visitors know
what they look for. That’s why my traffic  is valuable to Google
Advertisers.
29_UserIncentive: Visitors could have reasons to increase my earnings
probably because I built community around my name and blog. And I recently
optimized most of my ad banners to show text links instead of image or
rich media ads.
30_ViolatedTerms: My site have never violated the Adsense program
policies.
31_InvalidActivity: Over the years I did clicked ads by accident few times
while I was optimizing them and making them to fit my blog.
32_SuspiciousData: In the last week or two I did get started to noticing
suspicious IP addresses trying to break in to back end of my WordPress
blog. And I believe they sent me some kind of fake traffic to disable my
blog and hosting.

I have recorded some of the IP addresses, here is the list:

146.0.79.23
46.118.122.205
91.224.160.135
96.31.86.184
83.37.13.187
37.53.133.67
88.224.154.79
109.162.15.239
37.53.131.66
74.62.205.194
82.231.122.124
46.105.62.36

 UPDATE  September 18th 2012

I just got the email from Google Adsense telling me this:

Hello,

Thank you for your appeal. We appreciate the additional information you’ve
provided, as well as your continued interest in the AdSense program.
However, after thoroughly re-reviewing your account data and taking your
feedback into consideration, our specialists have confirmed that we’re
unable to reinstate your AdSense account.

Please know that, once we’ve reached a decision on your appeal, further
appeals may not be considered, and you might not receive any further
communication from us. Note that AdSense publishers whose accounts are
disabled for violations of our Terms and Conditions are not eligible for
further participation in AdSense. For this reason, you may not open new
accounts.

Also, accounts disabled for invalid click activity will receive no further
payment nor any reissue of previous payment. Your outstanding balance and
Google’s share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the
affected advertisers. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

We understand that you may want more information about your account
activity. However, because we have a need to protect our proprietary
detection systems, we’re unable to provide our publishers with any details
about their account activity.

 

Now the thing is that I cashed in my last adsense check just 7 days before my adsense check got disabled, and this is  so strange to me. Like every human beings, there is something inside us, some voice that is telling us to doubt in some things.

So I stared doubting that maybe Adsense just cuts off small adsense publishers, after we get our piece of cake, they look for even one small mistake that will happen to our account so they can have the reason just to cut us off.

That’s it people, no more Adsense for me, I had good earnings with it, but honestly I’m not worried a bit, because from the start I have followed the rule of ” Do Not Put All Eggs in One Basket” and I have different sources of income for my blog.  And so should you do, create reviews, promote products, advertise companies, create your own products. Sometimes write for the producers of the products more, instead for consumers.

Don’t relay only on adsense income only, diversify your sources of revenue and after something similar happens to you, you will be bale to continue your online business without any problems. I know when one door closes another opens.

And honestly, I’m relieved a lot, I don’t need to care for big G looking over my shoulders constantly any more, their low paying adsense program is just not worth it. Even after years of commitment to them, they will ditch you even if you don’t do anything. Enjoy your life and have multiple source of income, thanks for reading.

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