Saturday, December 6, 2008

Google Adsense : Just A SCAM


It's one of the biggest money-making opportunities advertised on the internet, yet it's also one of the biggest money-making scams in internet history.
Google AdSense is one of the most widely-advertised ways that webmasters can make money from their websites. The concept behind it is relatively simple. Google displays an advertisement on your website and you earn money when someone clicks it. The amount of money earned per click depends on the popularity of the site being advertised on the advertisement. Sounds like a foolproof way to make money, doesn’t it? Well, as I’m about to explain, the fine print says it all.

Google has their backs covered in more ways than one. What you would think is a truly legitimate way to make money, is in fact, one of the biggest scams that the world has ever seen. Let me explain my experience with the program and how it turned me, a true AdSense believer, into a person who will now tell everyone he meets not to sign up under the AdSense program.

I was just like you. I owned an animé website and loved spending time working on it. Then I heard about AdSense. I thought to myself, “What a great idea! I can work on my site and earn money at the same time!” So I signed up. That was on July 14, 2008. To my surprise, within 2 months, I had $10.00 in my AdSense account. Keep in mind that my site was relatively small - only about 150 pages. I went through their phone verification, home address verification, sent in my tax forms and selected my type of payment method - cheque, standard delivery (otherwise, Google charges you a whopping $30.00 for express delivery). This, of course, was all asked of me once I reached the $10.00 account balance.

Another two months went by and by the end of October, I was literally jumping up and down in my computer chair, seeing my AdSense balance finally exceed the $100 minimum payout amount. I was going to surprise my dad when I received the cheque in the mail. It was November 6, 2008 when I got the email from Google. Apparently, they had suspended my account due to “invalid clicks” on my advertisements. I was shocked out of disbelief! Not once had I clicked on my own ads, nor did I ever ask anyone to click on my ads! But they had suspended my account nonetheless. In the email, however, it stated that I could appeal their ruling. I did so, filling out an online information appeal form and sending it to Google. I explained that there was no way for me to determine who clicked on my ads and that I would do my best to ensure that this incident didn’t happen again (actually, the only thing I could do was inform my site’s community by posting a news entry explicitly stating to not abuse the ad-click process). It was nearly three weeks later that I got an email response.

“Hello,

We're currently in the process of reviewing your account with the additional information that you've provided. Please understand, however, that there is no guarantee that your account will be reinstated into AdSense. As a reminder, Google does reserve the right to disable an account at any time, as stated in the AdSense Terms and Conditions (http://www.google.com/adsense/terms).

Thank you for your patience.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team”

It then took another two weeks before they responded to my appeal.

“Hello,

Thanks for providing us with additional information. However, after thoroughly reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into consideration, we've re-confirmed that your account poses a significant risk to our advertisers. For this reason, we're unable to reinstate your account. Thank you for your understanding. As a reminder, if you have any questions about your account or the actions we've taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by visiting https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team”

Needless to say, I was steaming mad. And the worst part about this all is that it states in the AdSense Terms of Service (TOS) that Google has the right to suspend any account without prior notification or explanation, and refund all of the earnings in that account to the respective advertisers. Talk about unfair. What about all the money I obtained through “valid” advertisement clicks that has been returned as well?

I didn’t do anything wrong. All I did was set up an AdSense account in an attempt to make money. What did I do to deserve having my account shut down due to actions which I could not control? At least my account balance was only about $106.00, because if it was several thousands of dollars, I would’ve launched a class-action lawsuit against the company. I’m positive I’m not the only person who has been scammed by Google through this program, and I’m sure that we’d all be more than happy to gang up on Google and sue their pants off.

But then it just hit me, and it hit me hard. What happened to me can happen to anyone signed up under the Google AdSense program. I assume that one of the ways that Google determines whether or not a click is considered “valid” is with regards to the IP address of the computer that clicked on the advertisement. If the same IP address is shown multiple times clicking on an advertisement, Google becomes suspicious. If someone was intentionally clicking on my AdSense advertisements just to get my account suspended, then even if Google had reinstated my account, what could I do to prevent it from happening again in the future? To be honest - absolutely nothing. I have no control over what other people do while they visit my site.

In other words, if you have an AdSense account, it only takes a single person to click on your AdSense ads several tens or hundreds of times, and even though you personally have no control over who clicks your ads, Google will suspend your account assuming that you as a webmaster are clicking on your own ads (or you’re having someone else click on your own ads) in an attempt to increase your account balance, which is not the case. So based on this, theoretically, ANY person could go to ANY website, click on an AdSense ad 100 times, and get the site owner’s AdSense account suspended, thus making him or her lose all of their earnings.

Reflecting back on my experience, it’s actually quite sickening, thinking that I gave Google 5 months of FREE advertising on my site, only to get my account deactivated due to someone else who didn’t want me to get paid. Google won’t provide me any proof that my account was tampered with - all I have to go upon is their email which “claims” that my account was a “significant risk” to their advertisers. No doubt it was more likely a risk to their business, with such a small site as mine making about $20 a month in revenue, only to have it all taken away from me.

No doubt there are AdSense account owners out there who have been paid by Google, but I’d bet that the amount of people who have not received payment in proportion to those who have would be something to the extent of 25 to 1. If you have received AdSense cheques in the mail, and think that this sort of situation could never happen to you, be warned. Like I said before, all it takes is for one person to ruin your reputation, and your AdSense account goes down the drain.

As for me, there’s nothing I can do. Google hasn’t paid me anything, they haven’t shown me any evidence that my account had been tampered with (other than that email message simply stating my account had been suspended due to “invalid” clicks), and they don’t have to provide me with proof either, as written in their Terms of Service.

I encourage everyone who reads this to spread the word about how Google is scamming everyone with their AdSense program. You display ads on your site for free, and when it comes time to pay out, for the majority of the time, Google doesn’t. And I’m sure there will be many people reading this arguing that AdSense is the best program ever, that they’ve “supposedly” earned thousands of dollars through it, and that they have in fact received cheques in the mail. Whether they’re telling the truth or not - that’s another story. Perhaps some of them are even people who have been paid by Google to advertise the AdSense program and its “authenticity,” just to fool everyone into thinking that Google does, in fact, pay their members. I cannot imagine how much free advertising Google has obtained through this con-of-the-century. Think about it for a moment. “Claim” to give out money, offer months of free advertising to their advertisers, then not pay out even one cent to the webmasters displaying those ads.

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