I have suspicions that Google AdSense may be a racket. I had been using it on several of my higher traffics sites (such as my gaming clan site and my old classnotes). Well, just as soon as I started approaching $100 (when they will actually pay me) they sent me a nasty letter:

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including
but not limited to clicks generated by:

- a publisher on his own web pages
- a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads
- automated clicking programs or any other deceptive software
- a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the
layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason

Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms
and Conditions and program polices, which can be viewed at:

https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_US
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US

Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further
participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment. The
earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected
advertisers.

Well, first of all, I did not do any of the things they say here. I have no scripts or software that inflates clicks on my sites (Drupal, which I use on several sites, has a cron job that runs, but does not generate any HTML and certainly not the Google AdSense Javascript). I personally haven't encouraged people to click on my links (if anything, I've appologized for using obtrusive ads). Additionally, I've not altered their code in any way, I've just taken the code as it came from their code generation system (really, there's no need to alter it for layout or design, they have a very versatile tool for generating the Adsense code).

So this is how they work? You give them advertising on your site(s) and just before they pay you they disable your account without appeals or even any indication why your account is disabled (just this vague list that I know I didn't violate). Hey thanks for the free advertising, now fuck you, Mr. AdSense User!

This makes me wonder the following things:

• 1: How often does this occur? How often does Google suddenly rescind their deal with users just before they are about to get paid?
• 2: Did they really refund the money? I get a lot of traffic on my sites, and I've been monitoring my AdSense results daily. I know my sites have generated a lot of traffic and probably many sales for the advertisers. Has Google really refunded them the money, or are they just effectively cutting me out of the deal.
• 3: What alternatives to Google AdSense are there? AdSense was/is nice because it doesn't look too bad integrated with your website. It isn't some nasty horrible pop-up ad, or piece of flash-shit that is going to detract from the content of your site. Hell, it even was context based and would generate ads that your viewers might be interested in.

Well... in the end all I can say is this is bullshit. I've done nothing to violate Google's AdSense "Terms and Conditions". I've not done anything wrong. In fact, after putting the ads on my site I just ignored them (hell, I even disabled their display in my personal browser, so I very rarely even saw them except when looking at the site from someone else's computer.) If this is how Google treats their AdSense users, then their customers need to know about it.

I have sent them a request for specific information about what they think I've done. We'll see if they even reply to me.

2005 Nov 16 (Wed), 14:28 More bullshit

I have been Googling (hah, the irony) for people who have had similar things happen, and it looks like this happens far more often than you might know. It seems like a lot of people have been banned or disabled without any specific reasons or warning. In fact, I found this:

How To Get Banned From Google Adsense In Just 2 Clicks

This is the only thing I can think that may have happened... and even this isn't really against their Terms & Conditions. Let me explain...

See, there's this thing called "NAT". NAT allows you to have many internal computers which all have the same IP address to the outside world. This means if I am using a system inside of my work, or at a Starbucks wifi, or at a public library, or even on certain ISPs, I will have the same IP address as many, many, many other people. If some of those other people just so happen to be users on my sites (for example, if they played in my gaming clan) they will have the same IP as me.

So, if I log in from one of these NAT systems to my AdSense account to check on the current totals, and they browse the sites and potentially even click on the ads, BOOM! According to Google's idiotically designed software, I have just violated their Terms & Conditions. Wonderful, no?

What's that you say? Wouldn't it be smarter to just ignore the clicks from those IPs? Probably... but it seems that Google's shite code that runs behind the scenes at AdSense wasn't designed that way... It seems that the developers overlooked one of the most fucking common ways people browse the fucking web!

They haven't replied to my request for information as to what they think I did wrong, so I don't know if my theory here is correct... But I bet it is.

Well, fuck them, I'll take my traffic elsewhere...

2005 Nov 30 (Wed), 13:49 Sam, World's Ugliest Dog, Dead

...No relation....

And, for posterity (since I don't trust that "10news.com" adheres to the same stuff I do), here is Sam, the World's Ugliest Dog.... who is now dead...

(Feeds of my website probably wont get that image, I'm sorry, can't be helped)

First of all... who determines that this was, in fact, the World's Ugliest Dog. As far as I know, there is no metric for such things. I mean, there is absolutely no denying that this was a truly gruesome beast... but there are certainly other oddities in the running.

Second of all... this is news? I can certainly think of other topics far more interesting and important.