$150 per day account got banned today!

[stelweb]

The title says it all. I have appealed but you know how that goes, right? I got this message - " poses a risk of invalid activity".

Does anybody know what that means? Does that mean my site has failed manual review? When the manual review guy gets turned off by my site, is this the message that gets sent out? If anyone has experience with this, please help. Thank you so much in advance.

P.S. I have just one site with unique content. Many articles have been written by dedicated writers and they are not spun content. Links are not real good, though. Mostly manually built forum profiles, directory and comment links.

[bestrevenueshare]

Are you talking about AdSense?

[stelweb]

yes, i am talking about an adsense account.

[Clyde]

Share the site or at least the theme you used.

[rahildeziner]

You must share the site to get good answer

[Anna Howard]

Well what all i can say is Tough luck... happens often with most of the people....

[markowe]

Sorry to hear it - yet another reason to be wary about basing a living off Adsense.

...and now cue the sage on duty here who will say, BS, you WERE breaking the TOS in some way, you must have known it was coming, and you deny it and say your site was kosher (well, apart from the backlinks) and so it goes round in circles and we never really get to figure out why someone got banned.

I do find it a bit worrying if, as you say, you only had one site - the story of late seems to have been people with gazillions of MFAs getting hit, which I can understand. I can't see why the backlinks are something the Adsense people would care about - they surely leave that stuff to the search guys. Unless you were getting a significant amount of low quality traffic through those backlinks and it wasn't converting.

Sigh, I guess we'll never know. Got any plans now?

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Anna Howard

Well what all i can say is Tough luck... happens often with most of the people....

Because most of the people follow the easy money herd, & can't be bothered by a simple TOS (show me the money, not the rules).

I've had an active Adsense account for 5 years & never a single problem (never). Want to know my secret to keeping my Adsense account? Follow the TOS.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by Anna Howard

Well what all i can say is Tough luck... happens often with most of the people....

LOL!!!!!!!

Problem is, instead of waiting to get banned, you should have joined the
WF a long, long time ago. Then maybe you would still have your adsense
account.

Your traffic sucked. Period. Who knows what kinds of clicking they
were doing, if you get my drift. They take no prisoners with "invalid"
activity if it continues unabated.

And of course you just make google even more militant. Which makes
it hard for the rest.

Note to others: It's not too late. Come back from the Dark Side.

Are we a broken record:

Originally Posted by yukon

Because most of the people follow the easy money herd, & can't be bothered by a simple TOS (show me the money, not the rules).

Paul

[markowe]

Hmm, P.S. $150 a day is a lot from one site. For a typical site with, say 8-10% CTR and $0.50-0.80 clicks we're talking 40-50,000 targeted visitors per month, 1500 a day (very ball-park figures) - pretty good going. Unless you had an abnormally high CTR of course...

[idreesfarooq]

One thing I would say, if you are under the TOS radar of Google Adsense, there is no issue at all. There is something suspicious going on your site that makes your Adsense Account Banned. Share your site with us for a proper analysis.

[JamesGw]

It sounds like they think you were clicking your own links. I dunno man.

[johnben1444]

Sorry to hear about that, why don't you join other networks like YPN.

[Jeremy Banks]

Originally Posted by stelweb

I got this message - " poses a risk of invalid activity".
.

Either you were clicking on ads, you were paying people to click on ads, or your ads were displayed in a way that would encourage invalid click activity

If your ads looked too much like the links on the page, or the ads were pop-ups etc you could get banned

[moneyten]

Sorry to hear that man. Adsense income doesnt seem to be a long term strategy.

[webn]

Sorry to hear.
I think I need to memorize Google TOS first then
I will go to make adsense sites.

[mesmerist]

Originally Posted by stelweb

If anyone has experience with this, please help. Thank you so much in advance.

How can the people here help if they can't review your site? Certainly we need to see the site to see the many factors before we can give you some opinion or analysis.

[ApocalypseXL]

150 USD/day ? Wow then something was really rotten in your website for the to shut it down . Let me guess .... you bought traffic .

[cooler1]

Could you have got click bombed? Most people here seem to say its your fault, but plenty of people have been victims to click bombing.

There was an Adsense scam here on the WF about 9 months ago. Someone setup a service which was supposed to send targetted traffic to your site to increase adsense revenue, but they were sending invalid clicks.

All they needed was the website URL to send this traffic. So even if you follow the adsense tos 100% there is nothing stopping someone sending dodgy traffic to your adsense site.

[timpears]

Sorry to hear of your trouble. Hope you didn't have all your eggs in the one basket, and can recover. If you plan to do this again, you need to find out what you did that was wrong or against the TOS. They don't shut you down for nothing, but many times we don't understand the TOS well enough to know what we were doing was wrong.

Good luck.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by timpears

Sorry to hear of your trouble. Hope you didn't have all your eggs in the one basket, and can recover. If you plan to do this again, you need to find out what you did that was wrong or against the TOS. They don't shut you down for nothing, but many times we don't understand the TOS well enough to know what we were doing was wrong.

Good luck.

Ahhhhhhhhhh Tim. You are such a nice guy. No reason though, to tell him
try again. If only it were that easy.

Paul

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by markowe

Hmm, P.S. $150 a day is a lot from one site. For a typical site with, say 8-10% CTR and $0.50-0.80 clicks we're talking 40-50,000 targeted visitors per month, 1500 a day (very ball-park figures) - pretty good going. Unless you had an abnormally high CTR of course...

So 8-10% CTR isn't an abnormally high? I always thought my 1.5- 2% CTR was out of this world.

[RayW]

Just apply to another ad network (Adbrite, Clicksor, etc). There aren't any that are as good as adsense, but at least you'll be making some money.

[atomasini]

As bad as losing an Adsense account is, it's not the end of the world. It would be much worse to be removed from the SERPs.

If you have the traffic, you can try other similar programs, CPA, list building, etc.

[36burrows]

Well I'm sorry to hear that man, I would try to appeal you never know if you make a good case and be respectful.

Otherwise, start putting up affiliate links and CPA offers to replace the lost income.

Good luck!

[John Moore]

Your problem is you were taking away $150 per day from google without returning them $300, if they were making money from you they would have kept you, however their algorithm/human cubicle monkey determined you were costing them money.

[owenlee]

They would review where the traffic is coming to your sites..so it would be good if you could explain and find out the source of the traffic that you think pose a threat to you..show them the proof and say sorry and would report them earlier in future..if you not sure what goes wrong then it would be tough for you to appeal...

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by John Moore

Your problem is you were taking away $150 per day from google without returning them $300, if they were making money from you they would have kept you, however their algorithm/human cubicle monkey determined you were costing them money.

You do realize that Google made $2.34 billion in the first Q2011 from Adsense alone right? So saying that the site owner was NOT making them any money is pretty off base.

-- Jeff

[stelweb]

guys, i do not know why you are coming to conclusions like buying traffic, clicking my own ads. I have been with adsense for 2.5 years and i am not dumb. Do you think i do not even know that one should not click their ads?

As for specifics, i really cannot give out my URL. It was one authority site and took me 20 months to develop. Good content [ i was not buying " unique content "; i paid my writer 6 cents per word and the articles were worth it. Of course, 6 cents is not too much but it is so much better than what the MFA guys do ] ; links were comment links; As for the theme,it was not an adsense theme but the theme was not really attractive. It was basic and i had no logo. I was holding off in changing the theme just because i was afraid that changing the web site theme might disturb the rankings. Can you believe that? But that is who i am .

I swear that,

1. I never dreamed of buying traffic,
2. I never will ever dream of clicking my own adsense ads,
3. I was not asking people to click my ads.
4. Traffic was 5 percent direct and most of rest is search.

Plus i see noone has answered my question. If anyone has experience with manual review and what message they send out if it fails, it will real helpful. Thanks a lot in advance.

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by markowe

Sorry to hear it - yet another reason to be wary about basing a living off Adsense.

...and now cue the sage on duty here who will say, BS, you WERE breaking the TOS in some way, you must have known it was coming, and you deny it and say your site was kosher (well, apart from the backlinks) and so it goes round in circles and we never really get to figure out why someone got banned.

I do find it a bit worrying if, as you say, you only had one site - the story of late seems to have been people with gazillions of MFAs getting hit, which I can understand. I can't see why the backlinks are something the Adsense people would care about - they surely leave that stuff to the search guys. Unless you were getting a significant amount of low quality traffic through those backlinks and it wasn't converting.

Sigh, I guess we'll never know. Got any plans now?

I believe adsense cares about the backlinks. In order to be on adsense, you must also comply with web master policies. So if the links are not good, i think that will break the rules. At least, that is my opinion.

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Banks

Either you were clicking on ads, you were paying people to click on ads, or your ads were displayed in a way that would encourage invalid click activity

If your ads looked too much like the links on the page, or the ads were pop-ups etc you could get banned

from the research i have done in the past few hours, invalid click activity and invalid activity are very different.

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by yukon

Because most of the people follow the easy money herd, & can't be bothered by a simple TOS (show me the money, not the rules).

I've had an active Adsense account for 5 years & never a single problem (never). Want to know my secret to keeping my Adsense account? Follow the TOS.

i guess you are right. Like i had mentioned, my links were mostly manual comment links and this definitely was not compliant with the web master policies. If the site is not compliant with the webmaster policies, it would mean it is not compliant with adsense policies, too. Thank you for your input.

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Ahhhhhhhhhh Tim. You are such a nice guy. No reason though, to tell him
try again. If only it were that easy.

Paul

yeah. It is pretty demoralizing to get so close to a good revenue with one authority site and then lose everything. But i have no other choice. I will again make an authority site with good content [ just like the last time ] but this time, there will no manually built comment links. Just merit-based links, natural links and a few directory links. I hope Google will be okay with the free directory links.

[RayW]

Originally Posted by stelweb

yeah. It is pretty demoralizing to get so close to a good revenue with one authority site and then lose everything. But i have no other choice. I will again make an authority site with good content [ just like the last time ] but this time, there will no manually built comment links. Just merit-based links, natural links and a few directory links. I hope Google will be okay with the free directory links.

Why not just monetize with something other than adsense?...

[markowe]

Originally Posted by That Guy

So 8-10% CTR isn't an abnormally high? I always thought my 1.5- 2% CTR was out of this world.

ha, well, we are not supposed to discuss our CTR, according to Adsense TOS, but I think if you are creating highly keyword-targetted sites primarily to monetise with Adsense (not to say MFA) then you ought to be looking at that ball-park because the ads are well-targetted. In fact with the right optimisation you can get much higher CTR but I don't like to risk it.

If you have some general blog or something then sure, low single figures are to be expected.

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by raxr

Why not just monetize with something other than adsense?...

I have already started doing that but it is only bringing in about 25 percent of what i made before. Plus since i am using Infolinks, i am really not comfortable with that. Having ads all over content i believe is not okay with the web master policies and i am real afraid this will cause my rankings to plummet. I wish there was some other network that had as many advertisers as adsense. And i need a contextual one.

[RayW]

Originally Posted by stelweb

I have already started doing that but it is only bringing in about 25 percent of what i made before. Plus since i am using Infolinks, i am really not comfortable with that. Having ads all over content i believe is not okay with the web master policies and i am real afraid this will cause my rankings to plummet. I wish there was some other network that had as many advertisers as adsense. And i need a contextual one.

Try Adbrite for contextual ads. Also, put some clickbank affiliate links, cpa offers, and maybe something from commission junction.

[mesmerist]

May I know what makes you think the 'manually built comment links' is probably the problem? I'm interested to know because I have a lot of those kind of backlinks

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by mesmerist

May I know what makes you think the 'manually built comment links' is probably the problem? I'm interested to know because I have a lot of those kind of backlinks

i clearly mentioned the reason above, mesmerist. In order to be on adsense, you also have to comply with the webmaster policies. It is clearly stated on adsense site. But if you are a small fish, there will be no problem. When it is time for growing to become a bigger fish, there are chances one will get the boot.

[Joseph Then]

Originally Posted by stelweb

guys, i do not know why you are coming to conclusions like buying traffic, clicking my own ads. I have been with adsense for 2.5 years and i am not dumb. Do you think i do not even know that one should not click their ads?

As for specifics, i really cannot give out my URL. It was one authority site and took me 20 months to develop. Good content [ i was not buying " unique content "; i paid my writer 6 cents per word and the articles were worth it. Of course, 6 cents is not too much but it is so much better than what the MFA guys do ] ; links were comment links; As for the theme,it was not an adsense theme but the theme was not really attractive. It was basic and i had no logo. I was holding off in changing the theme just because i was afraid that changing the web site theme might disturb the rankings. Can you believe that? But that is who i am .

I swear that,

1. I never dreamed of buying traffic,
2. I never will ever dream of clicking my own adsense ads,
3. I was not asking people to click my ads.
4. Traffic was 5 percent direct and most of rest is search.

Plus i see noone has answered my question. If anyone has experience with manual review and what message they send out if it fails, it will real helpful. Thanks a lot in advance.

Something must have happen which you have missed out in the TOS, and Google caught that.

Before you ask Google for clarifications, it's better to find out (or guess) exactly what is it that went wrong.

Have you check the following Adsense links:
https://www.google.com/adsense/suppo...y?answer=48182
https://www.google.com/adsense/terms

And to make it easier for you, someone summarizes them:
Google AdSense Terms of Service Summary at WikiSummaries, free book summaries

I have met and talked to Google Adsense people about banning of accounts. They will NEVER, EVER like to close people's account unless you break the TOS.

So, check your website against the TOS.

Or, if you want, PM me and I will check your site (If you trust me).

[stelweb]

I am really interested in sending you the URL but i do not have 50 posts. Is there any other way to do that?

And i have clearly mentioned i have comment links and i believe that breaks the TOS. Isn't that right, Joseph? Really happy about getting help from an experienced member. Thanks.

[StoneWilson]

Originally Posted by stelweb

I have already started doing that but it is only bringing in about 25 percent of what i made before. Plus since i am using Infolinks, i am really not comfortable with that. Having ads all over content i believe is not okay with the web master policies and i am real afraid this will cause my rankings to plummet. I wish there was some other network that had as many advertisers as adsense. And i need a contextual one.

Adbrite might be a good choice, but you need to set up it appropriately first.

[mesmerist]

I didn't know blog commenting links break the TOS, I must have missed that part and I've used blog commenting for backlinks! Glad I read this thread!

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by mesmerist

I didn't know blog commenting links break the TOS, I must have missed that part and I've used blog commenting for backlinks! Glad I read this thread!

I am glad this is helping someone out there.

But remember these things:

1. If you do not hit the big time with adsense, you have no problems,
2. If you are a small fish making a couple thousand [ like 1000 to 2000 ], i believe you will not get the boot,
3. If you do reach the big time, first of all, have a good design with a pro logo. Even if your links are crap, a good design gives a very good impression to the manual reviewer
4. But a good design is no guarantee that your account will not get the boot. If the links are manual comment links, there are high chances it is time to say bye to adsense,

[mesmerist]

Originally Posted by stelweb

I am glad this is helping someone out there.

But remember these things:

1. If you do not hit the big time with adsense, you have no problems,
2. If you are a small fish making a couple thousand [ like 1000 to 2000 ], i believe you will not get the boot,
3. If you do reach the big time, first of all, have a good design with a pro logo. Even if your links are crap, a good design gives a very good impression to the manual reviewer
4. But a good design is no guarantee that your account will get the boot. If the links are manual comment links, there are high chances it is time to say bye to adsense.

Those are very helpful tips. Thanks stelweb!

[Oranges]

Originally Posted by stelweb

I am really interested in sending you the URL but i do not have 50 posts. Is there any other way to do that?

And i have clearly mentioned i have comment links and i believe that breaks the TOS. Isn't that right, Joseph? Really happy about getting help from an experienced member. Thanks.

You really think you can rank a website without building backlinks (Be it comment links, profiles, blogposts, Home page links, Blogroll, PR release, Web 2.0 pages, Article directories, social bookmarks etc etc etc...) to it these days (I'm referring competitive niches and keywords)? Make a new website (with all Google Adsnese And Webmaster TOS in mind and by following all the rules and blah blah!) and just keep it as it is, and wait for backlinks to come naturally (As google says backlinks should come naturally). That will never happen, because webmasters who link back to your websites, can do that, only when they can find those websites on top serps LOL. And without backlinks you can not rank a website, forget about waiting for people to find you naturally and link to your SUPER DUPER HIGH QUALITY CONTENT WEBSITE.

Unfortunately, theoritically it sounds good to not to create backlinks, because you'll get banned, BUT DO WE HAVE ANY OTHER OPTION, CHOICE OR ALTERNATIVE?

Reason For Ban: May be your clicks and visitors were not converting for those advertisers. In that case they mention something similar to "While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers.Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account."

SUGGESTION: Forget adsense, and move on to affiliate marketing and CPA.

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by Oranges

You really think you can rank a website without building backlinks to it these days (I'm referring competitive niches and keywords)? Make a new website (with all Google Adsnese And Webmaster TOS in mind and by following all the rules and blah blah!) and just keep it as it is, and wait for backlinks to come naturally (As google says backlinks should come naturally). That will never happen, because webmasters who link back to your websites, can do that, only when they can find those websites on top serps LOL. And without backlinks you can not rank a website, forget about waiting for people to find you naturally and link to your SUPER DUPER HIGH QUALITY CONTENT WEBSITE.

Unfortunately, theoritically it sounds good to not to create backlinks, because you'll get banned, BUT DO WE HAVE ANY OTHER OPTION, CHOICE OR ALTERNATIVE?

SUGGESTION: Forget adsense, and move on to affiliate marketing and CPA.

Yeah i know. Maybe you are right.
Adsense+crap links=road to depression
affiliate+crap links=not really "road to depression"

But still, since i am investing thousands into getting professional content [ not articles written by pro writers but pros in the niche ], i think i will also think of investing thousands in to getting merit based links. There are a few SEO companies out there who do that. It is costly but worth it.They help get merit based links.

I am very sure my clicks are converting. My competitors still have adsense and that means i would get conversions too because i get traffic from the same kw phrases they get. At least the ones that make money. Besides, i got the " poses a risk of invalid activity " , not the other ones.

[Oranges]

Originally Posted by stelweb

Yeah i know. Maybe you are right.
Adsense+crap links=road to depression
affiliate+crap links=not really "road to depression"

But still, since i am investing thousands into getting professional content [ not articles written by pro writers but pros in the niche ], i think i will also think of investing thousands in to getting merit based links. There are a few SEO companies out there who do that. It is costly but worth it.They help get merit based links.

...and what are those merit based links that those so called "SEO" companies provides? Layered links? 2-3 Tiered links? Links from private blog networks? Links from sites like BMR, UAW, SEOLinkVine? Paid links and blogposts by buying them from individual webmasters? Guest posts? They are all not allowed according to Google's webmaster policies. There is no end to it, you gotta be dodgy to move fast, else waiting for natural links to come and boost you is a waste of time and efforts.

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by Oranges

...and what are those merit based links that those so called "SEO" companies provides? Layered links? 2-3 tires links? Links from private blog networks? Links from sites like BMR, UAW, SEOLinkVine? Paid links and blogposts by buying them from individual webmasters? Guest posts? They are all not allowed according to Google's webmaster policies. There is no end to it, you gotta be dodgy to move fast, else waiting for natural links to come and boost you is a waste of time and efforts.

No Oranges, you are wrong. I am talking about links that are obtained when a company shoots an e-mail out to some web site and lets them know about some site. This usually gets a link [ if the content is fantastic , not the typical so-called " unique content "] from the " Resources page " where the co-citation is real good. A high quality co-citation would mean excellent rankings down the line. Since no money exchanged but just an e-mail sent out, G will not have a problem with that.

[dagaul101]

It's always unfortunate, they are no guidelines as to what type of sites they deem to pose a risk of invalid activit so we never know, the best you can do is appeal and see how it goes