Almost every day, regular readers of WebmasterWorld's AdSense forum see posts like this one railing against Google for arbitrarily suspending an AdSense publisher's account due to invalid clicks. One of my readers (who I won't identify) was recently in a similar position and asked for for advice on what to do. Here's my list of suggestions:
- Don't panic. If you are innocent, your account can be re-enabled. It won't happen immediately, however, so you'll have to live with the fact that you're going to be out some income because of it.
- Politely reply to the account suspension email. Google notifies you of the suspension by email, you should reply to that email immediately and state that you've done no wrongdoing and that you're willing to cooperate with them in figuring out what's happened in the hopes of getting reinstated. Be polite, don't scream at them, don't threaten to sue them, that kind of behavior won't help your case.
- Examine your earnings report. Google suspends accounts mostly due to fraudulent click activity. Do you have days with unusually high clickthrough ratios (CTRs)? Have the impressions jumped all of a sudden for no apparent reason? Look for clues as to why Google has suspended your account.
- Comb your server logs. Not everyone has access to server logs, especially if you're using a free service like Blogger (which you can argue is one reason to setup your blog on your own site), but if you do take the time to look through them. Look for patterns. Are certain pages being accessed at regular intervals? Is there a lot more traffic? Is the traffic unusual in any way? If you're not technical, find a techie to help you with this. Obviously, the more comprehensive your server logs, the better your chances at figuring out what's happening. If you do find anything, tell Google about it. You can even provide copies of your logs to them, or extracts of those logs.
- Watch out for new inbound links or other events. If a new site links to yours and that site has itself been subjected to click fraud, the fraudsters may move over to your site as well. See if you can determine a causal relationship between an event and why Google thinks you're committing click fraud.
- Provide a valid explanation for increased traffic. If your traffic has increased suddenly for legitimate
reasons — maybe you started a successful advertising campaign or your search engine rankings have improved — then tell Google about it. Establish that what they're seeing is the new “normal” for your site.
Many publishers who find themselves banned by Google complain that the banning is arbitrary and unfair. That may well be, but remember what you agreed to when you signed up for the AdSense program:
Google may at any time, in its sole discretion, terminate all or part of the Program, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate the participation of any Site in all or part of the Program for any reason. — AdSense Terms and Conditions
Google argues that immediately suspending an account when invalid clicks are detected is their way of protecting their advertisers from further fraud, and that part of the Terms and Conditions lets them do it without notice. This is why I've said before that AdSense publishers must be proactive in reporting click fraud and other irregularities to Google. Prevention is always the best cure.