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Adsense - Has my domain been flagged?

by stevebeans
25 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have been having issues with yellow squares showing in place of my ads a few times, but it seems to only be getting worse, and now my site feels like someone at Disney is moderating it.

For awhile, I admit, my blog posts had bad language. I didn't swear like a trucker, but I was liberal allowing one slip out here and there. Nothing major, nothing bad, but enough where every so often I'd get the annoying 'yellow square' thing.

Well, now it seems I'm on Disney watch because a post I did yesterday was very tame except for one part where it said "well i would go online find out facts about abortion, adoption, and parnting. Read all those facts to her and help her find the path for her. then do a pros and cons" ... could the word abortion be triggering it now? Is my site flagged where any remotely negative thing I say triggers the family filter?

I submitted a ticket to google and they suggested I fill out the 'noporn appeal' but then scared me and said ...

"Please also be aware that if, when reviewing your site, our policy team does find adult content or policy violations, it is possible that policy action will be taken on your account."

Should I do it anyway? I'm 95% sure my site is good. There is no nudity, very few swears, but I don't want them seeing something like an image and saying "well you didn't link to your source! that's copyright" and ban me.

Thoughts?
#adsense #domain #flagged
  • Profile picture of the author mgreener
    Hi,

    Read the TOS and review your site with that in mind before you request their review. You will know whether or not it is in violation.

    People have been banned for less, so take it seriously or just move on to something easier.
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  • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
    I was thinking of switching ad networks, can you recommend any I should look at?

    I looked at their TOS, and my site really passes the content guidelines with ease. It says 'excessive profanity', but I wouldn't consider saying "s*it" once every 2-3 posts excessive.

    So right now my biggest concern is the DMCA. I blog about people from a TV show, and whenever a story is about them, I take a picture from their twitter or FB account and post it. I generally don't post (picture source) unless I take a photo from a different site.

    Like you said, they ban people for less. So if I have a backup in place, I will probably just submit the form and hope I don't get someone reviewing my site who is having a bad day.
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  • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
    Sorry for the bump, does anyone have any suggestions what I should do?
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  • Profile picture of the author Ckrismoney
    No I have a site about abortions and my adsense has been good. Google has ads for that. My site is prolife but the ads vary. Abortion is my biggest keyword according to Google webmaster tools.
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  • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
    Weird, can anyone take a look at see why the ads are appearing yellow? Is there something I'm missing with stop words here?


    I just don't see it.
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  • Profile picture of the author thehobbster
    Yes, there are things called "stop words" that can affect whether or not your ads are displayed. I encountered this. The adsense algorithm blacklisted me when it misinterpreted my content, and I had a real Google employee white list me. Read my little story here: Adsense Stop Words Fiasco | Trickle Cheddar
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  • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
    Excellent post. How did you contact the google rep? I am apprehensive about filling out a noporn form, I'd rather explain my situation better. The form has 3 fields, with no comment box.

    I'd rather get this taken care of now before they flag my entire account as some type of blacklist
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  • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
    I found the troubleshoot thing and they also told me to contact them. I sent a message explaining my situation and hopefully I hear back from them soon.

    Thanks for the replies everyone!
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  • Profile picture of the author stephenwaldo
    Well, my advice would be to just go ahead and fill out the form as best you can, and then hope for the best. There's not that much else you can do since at this point it's very likely you're correct about being blacklisted. That means that their system is automatically going to prohibit ads until you do something about it or a significant amount of time has passed.

    If you're really that nervous about contacting them, then perhaps it would be better to just move on to a different site and not worry about your AdSense account's integrity.

    Otherwise, there are other ways to monetize informational content. Off the top of my head you could try Adbrite or other similar networks, or promoting CPA offers...I thought perhaps an Insurance offer could have some relevance, but I'm nowhere near an expert on the subject.
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  • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
    Well, they replied with something generic.... Our system has filters in place blah blah blah. Our records show the crawler may have picked up the following keywords:

    accident car-accident news killed car-crash crash accidents death

    The good news is I visited your site and the ads are back blah blah blah....

    -------------

    Well, the ads aren't back. They're showing on the main page, but nothing has changed. Every post that didn't show ads still aren't showing ads, including the link earlier in the thread. I replied to the e-mail I received (it went to adsense-support@google.com), and gave them a few links where the ads are still not showing.

    Was replying to the right thing to do, or should I open a new ticket? I'm not sure how adsense handles their ticket system. The last ticket I had with them came from adsense-noreply, so I figured this new one was safe to reply to.

    Ugh. Very frustrating.
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  • Profile picture of the author JeanneLynn
    I just visited your site. The adsense is showing up as plain yellow boxes for me too.

    Why would Google not serve ads to sites about car crashes? Don't news sites talk about that everyday? What if you were writing about a famous person who died in a car crash?

    I hope that you get this resolved soon.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    No offense but the domain name sounds like a porn site.
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  • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
    Yea in hindsight the domain name was probably a poor choice. I mean the show is about Teen Mom but the junkies part is meh.

    Anyway, any suggestions how to handle the support? Was the reply good, or should I have just submitted a new ticket? I don't want to sit on my hands for days waiting for a reply that will never come.

    Thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author IM Ash
    I don't think this has anything to do with been blacklisted! Your site just does not trigger ads on certain pages, simple as that! The yellow squares is a result of your theme and nothing else... you will have to go into the code and adjust the colors.
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  • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
    Hmmm, my theme? Why would it show on only certain pages if I'm using the same theme throughout? Not that I'm disagreeing with your assessment, as it would make sense why pages with 0 sensitive content are not showing.

    There also have been some pages where only 1 ad is showing while the other two are yellow. So perhaps you're on to something. Maybe my code is messed up somewhere?
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  • Profile picture of the author IM Ash
    I'm a bit busy now but I will reply later today or 2moro to show you what to change in your theme's stylesheet!

    Added:

    Just did a quick search and found a solution. Ensure that you back-up your files before you alter the "ins" tag in your stylesheet. Here is the link:

    Remove Yellow Background On Google AdSense Ads | Web Developer Team

    That person suggests that you delete the entire tag, but instead of deleting it you can just change the color to #ffffff
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by IM Ash View Post

      I'm a bit busy now but I will reply later today or 2moro to show you what to change in your theme's stylesheet!

      Added:

      Just did a quick search and found a solution. Ensure that you back-up your files before you alter the "ins" tag in your stylesheet. Here is the link:

      Remove Yellow Background On Google AdSense Ads | Web Developer Team

      That person suggests that you delete the entire tag, but instead of deleting it you can just change the color to #ffffff
      Lol, changing the color of text to white is for human eyes & low quality even for bl@ck hat standards.

      Google can & will still read text on a page regardless of the text color.

      If OP does that (text-color) & they get a manual Adsense review that looks at the cache, you'll be lucky If you don't get flagged for keyword stuffing.

      Good luck with that.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        haven't you asked this before? The whole thing sounds
        familiar.

        I'm not going to revisit the site, but if memory serves me,
        I told you the whole thing, from top to bottom is
        a walking adsense violation. You decided to not listen,
        as you are not listening now.

        What more do you expect?

        I also said to never divulge your site here. I never report
        shinola to google. It just puts pressure on everybody. It's
        stupid, really, to report anything to google. But people here
        can be very vigilant, read: vigilante.

        The thing about other REAL ad networks, is that they have
        the exact same TOS as google.

        Paul
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        • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
          Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

          haven't you asked this before? The whole thing sounds
          familiar.

          I'm not going to revisit the site, but if memory serves me,
          I told you the whole thing, from top to bottom is
          a walking adsense violation. You decided to not listen,
          as you are not listening now.

          What more do you expect?

          I also said to never divulge your site here. I never report
          shinola to google. It just puts pressure on everybody. It's
          stupid, really, to report anything to google. But people here
          can be very vigilant, read: vigilante.

          The thing about other REAL ad networks, is that they have
          the exact same TOS as google.

          Paul
          I don't recall you mentioning people reporting sites on here, but you're right that I probably shouldn't have linked it to begin with. I edited it out.

          One thing you mentioned before was that I had too many ads, and to remove them all and replace them one by one. I did that, and still didn't work. I don't know where else the site could be an adsense violation. I searched their TOS and it seemed fine.

          Sorry if I sound dumb about the whole thing. I'm going to try changing the css to see if that helps things.
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      • Profile picture of the author IM Ash
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        Lol, changing the color of text to white is for human eyes & low quality even for bl@ck hat standards.

        Google can & will still read text on a page regardless of the text color.

        If OP does that (text-color) & they get a manual Adsense review that looks at the cache, you'll be lucky If you don't get flagged for keyword stuffing.

        Good luck with that.
        You do not know what you are talking about!

        The color been changed is the background color within the "ins attribute" which has nothing to do with text color.

        That color in the OPs stylesheet is currently yellow and that is why the yellow squares are showing up.

        Do you really think yellow squares come up on an Adsense site when it is flagged? Or do you think this occurs when a domain sounds like it is related to porn... Lol!

        To The OP: if your ads are placed in an area that has a white (#ffffff) background then change the background color in the ins tag to #ffffff or you can change it to whatever your site's background color is, else; delete the ins tag completely. This is the solution to eradicate the yellow squares!
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  • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
    After reading that link, it appears that wasn't the issue I was trying to fix. I did get rid of the yellow in the ads, but that wasn't the issue. The issue is them not appearing at all
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    • Profile picture of the author IM Ash
      Originally Posted by stevebeans View Post

      After reading that link, it appears that wasn't the issue I was trying to fix. I did get rid of the yellow in the ads, but that wasn't the issue. The issue is them not appearing at all
      You said:

      Originally Posted by stevebeans View Post

      I have been having issues with yellow squares showing in place of my ads a few times, but it seems to only be getting worse, and now my site feels like someone at Disney is moderating it.
      Yellow squares was part of the issue! :rolleyes:
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  • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
    Haha, yea, I guess you're right.

    Anyway, I changed that code, so now there are no squares, and on the page I linked earlier, it's now showing a top banner but no side squares. I guess that's a good thing? I don't understand why it would only show one. Maybe the code is messed up somewhere and it's reading more than the 3 ads
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  • Profile picture of the author IM Ash
    I jumped into your site's code and I only see the code for 300x250 ads with your publisher ID, I do not see the code for the top banner ad. How are you placing that ad there? I do see a code there but your pub-id isn't in it! Are you using a plugin or something, because it seems a little suspect to me?

    You should also enable image and text ads so that there is a greater pool of ads that can be triggered.

    BTW: I see all 3 ads on your site but I am getting interest-based ads which means your content isn't triggering any related ads on the homepage.
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  • Profile picture of the author stevebeans
    Oh right, I forgot recently that I made adsense a backup ad to another I was trying out. That's probably why you didn't see the pub ID in the top one.

    Hmm, content is not triggering? Interesting. I may scrap all the ads and try again putting new ads up one by one, a new one a day and see if anything changes. I'll also go through my code and see if I notice any issues there.
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