Friday 6 March 2009

Adsense Account Disabled? He sued Google

A lot of adsense publishers or I should say ex adsense publishers complain in the forums about having their accounts banned because they 'pose a significant risk to Adwords advertisers'
And the standard responses are

  • Sorry mate find another way to monetize your sites
  • It is impossible to get your account back
  • It is impossible to get moneys owed paid i.e the balance in the adsense account
  • And similar answers

So it is with interest that I read this post at the Huffington post

The long and short of it is Aaron Greenspans bought a domain that was already getting traffic. Probably from backlinks built by previous owners. They proceeded to put put adsense ads on the domain with good results

And then ..bang.. the adsense account was banned

Now we often assume that when people have their adsense accounts banned it is because they are involved in some sort of black hat SEO. But these guys searched themselves and found they were not doing anything wrong. No black hat, no fraudulent clicks nothing.

So unlike the advice given to people in similar situation in the forums, they decided to chase this down

After several emails and phone calls and all what not, they decided to sue Google adsense for the money left in the adsense account, over $700. Which is not peanuts by any standard

The outcome? They won. The outstanding amount plus court costs were awarded

So a little glimmer of hope for those who have been banned by the adsense program and feel they have worked within the terms of service

What do you think?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I get kick out from google adsense and I dont know why. And I have few hundred dollars in my account but its impossible for me to get it.

ami said...

Hi Jason. I think the first place to start is get in touch with your local Google representative. You could try writing an email but you will probably get a generic email. Get on the phone

R V said...

It is very rare to get your account back when banned by adsense and even more rare to sue adsense and win the suite.

ami said...

Absolutely true Vinay but Aaron's experience points to the fact that a ever so rarely getting banned from Google can be contested

Mkcoy said...

It interests me that on the Google TOS page it says not to contact them if you feel you are doing anything wrong and if you are Google will notify you of this. Well I feel that banning people without notification or being asked to amend what they are doing wrong first is pretty out of order. Sure Adsense is Googles town but hey we are the people that live in it!

ami said...

Agree with you mate. But it's there game and they call the shots. Who knows which of us will be next. There is always the option of other methods of website or blog monetization like adbrite, kontera, affiliate links.

stew1972 said...

Arrge!,
Google left me hanging with 3900.00 in the account. So pissed off! Just wanted to vent a little. Wasn't even close to my best month.

stew1972 said...

Also wanted to let you guys know how to get another account with ease. First get new IP, second get new main web site, third start an LLC related to new site, forth open a new banking account under the LLC, and finally open new buisness account. With that said open new buisness account with every new web site.
Just some food for thought.