Google AdSense Leak

by 19 replies
22
Guys are you aware of this ? I am not sure if its true !

Part 1 : Google AdSense Leak - Pastebin.com
Part 2 : Google AdSense Leak - Part 2 - Pastebin.com

News :
1. Google rebuffs anonymous accusation of AdSense fraud - CNET
2. AdSense leaker rebuts Google's denial, claims to hold proof | ZDNet
#search engine optimization #adense #adsense #ban #expose #google #leak #profit #sites
  • I didn't read it all but it seems pretty unlikely that a company the size of Google would be banning people who are close to their first payout to save a few bucks.

    As I said, didn't read all of it so I'm not sure if there was anything more damning but I would not pay much attention to this.
    • [1] reply
    • Have you forgotten Enron, BCCI, Madoff" etc.? Big companies are made up of common people.
      There are plenty of corrupt people in any large organization. I would say it is possible, especially after i look at how my adsense earnings have declined since 2004 while my traffic has increased and quantity of advertisers has also risen since adsense started.. What he writes matches very well with what i have experienced with adsense.. I have had many accounts and it is odd how everytime an account reaches $5k per month it somehow gets banned. It was never the case before 2009.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • It doesn't make financial sense to do this. Why kill the cow when you can milk it everyday, i.e. getting paid from the publisher to host your ads and further your brand (Adsense).

    It probably does occur before payouts because this is when things tend to get analzyed. Your boss checks if you finished the work (if not hourly, checks with managers, and affiliates make sure the traffic and conversions are legitamate). Same is most likely true for Google Adsense. Fly by night bs sites that enduce fake clicks are probably the victims here, otherwise it doesn't make sense to withold 1 months payment (threshold easily met by larger publishers) then make it XXX per month for life from a client (publishing partner).
    • [2] replies
    • I agree with what you wrote. However it is easy to assume that all accounts get banned because of fraudulent clicks until it happens to you. Also, I think 80% of google's adsense income comes from just a few big publishers. In addition, like any other IM scammer, google might know that there are 100 other publishers who want to get in for every 20 they kick out .
      I for one will be following this story with interest until the guy is perhaps outed as a joker.
    • I read the whole article very carefully, because during the 10 years I'm a webmaster I've heard at least two dozen of stories from fellow webmasters who said they got banned for no apparent reason. And what is also very annoying with the way Google handles these bans is the fact that you don't get to know why exactly your site have been banned and that there's no way to get your account back.

      I mean with most other services you get told what was wrong and most of the times you can try to fix it, in order to regain access - well unless you did something totally illegal. But let's take click-abuse as an example. I can go to somebodies website and just start to mass click on his banners. I know in 9 out of 10 cases Google is going to detect that it wasn't the webmaster who caused these clicks, but somebody else, but I'm pretty sure in one case they might make a mistake and ban your account forever, even tho you have been a good publisher who did nothing wrong.

      While I agree that it's no smart business move to randomly mass ban accounts that reach a certain payout limit, there are factors when it _might_ be useful. Some of these ideas have been posted on Hacker News. Matt Cutts Googles Head of Webspam posted in that thread as well - telling everybody Google did nothing wrong (what a surprise). But like I said there are cases where it can be beneficial for Google to ban accounts.
      That being said, I'm pretty sure the whole Google Adsense leak post on Pastbin is fake - BUT the reactions show that Google is doing something wrong with customer care when it comes to how the handle their publisher - people who should be of high value to the company, as they're the reason why Google is banking 3-4bn profit each quarter.

      They should really re-consider their take on how to handle accounts in questions and rather hire a few more people to work with the publisher in order to be able to give them access to their accounts again.
      • [1] reply
  • I calling BS on this one. It reads more like a disgruntled ex-publisher than an ex-googler.
  • While no one can establish the substance of the letter but one thing remains common and true about Google adsense: they ban you when you are about to receive a payout.

    All the people i have personally interviewed got banned a few days to their payout, that's a big red flag.
    • [2] replies
    • Here's bigger red flag. Start finding successful people to interview.

      The logic is just not there, nor any business sense.

      They refund money to their paying customers. Where's the logic?

      They ban you because they have to make refunds.
      It gains them nothing, except letting their paying customers know
      they are looking out for them. They make no profit off of your
      misdeeds, even though people are under the delusion of
      such fantasies.

      The lot of you have no clue how adsense works, nor google's
      advertising empire.

      How about another thing they do: They can lower the price of
      ads on your site to up a paying customer's ROI. This is caused
      by the owner of the site not getting buying-minded clickers.
      Part of being smart-priced.

      Google bends over backwards not to ban you. You have to
      actually work at it.

      Paul
      • [1] reply
    • Banned
      And what does that proof?

      Exactly as Paul said, you interviewed the wrong people.

      Besides that if you invited people who were banned for your interviews then it's only logical they get banned a few days prior to their pay day as it takes time to verify results. I also deliver my reports a few days before the TAT or sometimes on the dead line.

      I used to advertise witth Adwords and at least once I've got money back from these type of frauds, in other words they don't put it in their own pocket.
  • Seems fake. Pay attention to the terms he uses. Compare it with the terms Adsense uses. Probably an adsense publisher that got the business end of the ban hammer.
  • The leak is short on proof, but it sure matches the experience we had in 2012, which left us with a real distrust of Google. I'm going to follow this with interest and, if it turns out bad for Google, more than a bit of schadenfreude.
  • This author is anonymous, but it correlates with everything I have experienced back in the days..

    Google AdSense Leak - Pastebin.com

    Very revealing details. I would think VERY Hard Twice before stacking a living off of Google Adsense..
    • [1] reply
    • You need to read the rest of this thread! Its BS.
  • There was a huge increase in bans after 2009. Even some VERY big adsense publishers got banned including people who joined Adsense when it first launched.

    2009 was also just 1 year after the stock market crash and stocks were trading at very low prices. Lots of angry shareholders for Google to please and they probably need a quick and easy way to boost revenue without attracting more advertisers.

    I believe this 100% because my adsense revenue went from $500 per month to barely $20 in a couple of months with similar traffic. Now my clicks are for pennies in the financial niche. Unbelievable.

    Adsense is good for starters, but when you get more traffic reach out to private advertisers and sell your own products.
  • What can I say -- anonymous post, conspiracy theory, and a purported "follow-up" that does nothing to validate the conspiracy (except to those who wish to believe it.)

    The policy of disabling accounts just before payout occurs for two reasons. For small accounts, there isn't any reason to bother checking until the $100 or equivalent threshold is reached -- for larger accounts, there are often fishy things with the traffic and these are caught by the bots as the payout process approaches.

    The other side of the story is that Google is fighting organized click fraud rings who seek to operate under the radar.

    Are there some unjustified disablings? Probably -- the law of large numbers suggests that would be the case. But virtually every "innocent" disabled publisher I've looked into has had some skeletons under the closet -- and I'm not working with any private information that Google might be accumulating. I've seen plenty of disabled publishers come to the threads on the help forum, complain they've been disabled unjustly, and then uncovered smoking gun evidence of -- guilt. (Like open and visible exhortations to "help" by clicking the ads, on the published websites or videos.)

    The disabling process is brutal, impersonal and not very much fun. I've been through it and thankfully survived. But this isn't a grand conspiracy to defraud publishers -- look, Google is spending a small fortune tracking down old accounts with small balances, to pay them out -- because it needs to under state escheat laws (requiring unclaimed personal property, including incomplete accounts, be returned to the individual or be paid into state government accounts.)

    Anyone who builds a business primarily on AdSense is a fool, nevertheless, because no one should rely on a single client for more than a modest fraction of business revenue. But the program isn't some giant scam --although plenty of scammers live outside, on its edge.

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