Search Engines

1/17/2008

• Suspended From Google Adwords

  I’m writing this blog as a warning to everyone using Google Adwords.
  The people who “run” adwords are Nazis with no feeling for human beings. If you make a mistake, there is no warning system and no appeals process.

  3 weeks ago I set up a campaign promoting a page on my blog in Adwords.

  When I wrote the ad it got flagged for a trademark violation (which is super common in Adwords) so I “requested an exception”.

  The next day my account didn’t have any impressions in it.

  I contacted google to see what was wrong with my account.

  6 days later I heard back from them saying that my account was suspended.

  Here’s the email I got back:

  Hello John,

  Thank you for your patience. I’ve consulted your account with our
  specialist team and it has come to our attention that your Google AdWords
  account does not comply with our terms of service and advertising
  policies. You have repeatedly submitted ads that violated our copyright
  policies in a related account. As a result, your account has been
  suspended and your ads will no longer run on Google.

  As noted in our Terms and Conditions, Google reserves the right to
  terminate advertisements for any reason. To view our Terms and Conditions,
  please visit https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder.

  We appreciate your cooperation.

  Sincerely,

  Michael C.
  The Google AdWords Team

  Needless to say I was shocked.

  At first I thought this must be a temporary suspension, I hadn’t done anything wrong. I mean…I hadn’t done anything to hurt Google. I hadn’t done anything that I knew of that violated any of their rules. I used their own process to “request” an exception. I didn’t demand anything. I didn’t do anything malicious. My account was in good standing.

  In my mind, this must just be temporary…after all, I had been spending over $20,000/month on Adwords (which, obviously isn’t a lot of money to Google, but 2 days prior I had gotten an email saying “since you’re one of our top advertisers, we’re now offering you phone support.”).

  I was wrong.

  I contacted them through both live chat and phone (Google phone number: 1-866-2google) and was assured that the suspension wasn’t temporary and wasn’t an accident. It was permanent.

  I was also told that the “specialist” team had made the decision and they assured me there was nothing they could do about it, and that there was nobody else I could talk to.

  Apparently Google has some magical “specialist” team that doesn’t have to answer to customers, and acts as an excuse for the people who do answer to customers so they can just say “I’m sorry, I know this must be frustrating, but I can assure you there’s nothing anyone can do. The specialist team made this decision and their decisions are final….no, there’s no way you can speak to them….no, there’s no way you can contact them or make any explanations to them….no, there’s no way to appeal their decision, their decisions are final.”

  So then of course I started flipping out. This is how I make a living, and I was just told that because I made a simple, honest mistake, I’m not allowed to ever show any ads on google again ever for any reason…forever…permanently.

  A simple mistake for which I received no warning, and there is no way to appeal the process.

  Murderers don’t get that kind of treatment.

  Rapists don’t get treated like that.

  (yes, yes, I understand that google is a business and they can do anything they want…blah, blah, blah. Whatever happened to “Don’t be evil”? I’ll tell you, It went out the door on August 19, 2004 just like wall street said it would.)

  So, I started trying to contact someone. Surely there must be a way to contact the specialist team and explain to them that this was an honest mistake.

  I wrote a very nice email explaining my situation and sent it to a few email addresses inside google that I thought might get some attention (one of them, btw, is matt@google.com. You might want to try it too…although it didn’t get me anywhere).

  The email I got back was:

  Hello John,

  Thank you for your email. I understand your concern regarding the
  suspension of your account. However, as mentioned in our previous email,
  your Google AdWords account has been suspended due to multiple Copyright
  disapprovals. We are unable to revoke your account suspension, and we will
  not accept advertisements from you in the future.

  Please note that our support team is unable to help you with this issue,
  and we ask that you do not contact them about this matter. If you need
  more information about our content policy guidelines, please visit
  https://adwords.google.com/select/contentpolicy.html.
  …
  …
  standard google email garbage
  …
  …
  We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising
  available.

  Sincerely,

  Saman
  The Google AdWords Team

  I thought the “look forward to providing” part was funny.

  I then tried to contact 2 different people inside of google directly through linkedin, both of whom declined the invitation to be introduced (not surprised).

  At this point, I’ve given up on trying to get my account re-instated. They don’t care that I’m a human who made a mistake. They’re not going to repeal their decision (how could they possibly have been wrong in the first place…right?)

  I don’t have an adwords account now. It has been a good 3 weeks of becoming more intimately accustomed to the way yahoo and msn do their ppc. They’ve made a LOT of improvements.

  In the end, this will probably end up being a blessing to me. It’s an excuse to start everything from the beginning. New business. New address. New name. New credit card. New websites. New computer. New IP address.

  Again, I’m writing this as a warning!. Please don’t rely solely on Google for your online advertising (fortunately I hadn’t…and I had other streams of income). If you do, you might make a mistake someday and find that you’ve been slammed to the floor and kicked while you are down, like I was.

  Please feel free to blog about this and spread the word. More people need to know that they’re not allowed to “request an exception”.

  digg this!
  
  

8/24/2007

• Google Banning Adwords Advertisers

  This morning I had an interesting email conversation with a subscriber of mine who just got banned from Adwords for promoting software that makes MFA (made for adsense) sites.

  Yes, banned from Adwords, not adsense.

  Here’s what happened:

  He is a beginning affiliate. He just promotes other people’s stuff through adwords. Obviously not google’s favorite person, but not something they discourage either (there are hundreds of thousands of people like him).

  He has promoted 4 products:

  1. JP’s Niches In a Box
  2. Brad Callens’ Niche Revolution
  3. Mark Roth’s Affiliate Radar
  4. Keyword Elite

  He got a “content violation” warning for the first 3 campaigns.

  In his words:

  Sure, the first 2 just have a brief mention of ‘Adsense’ at the bottom. But not affiliate radar, that’s just a conversion tracker. I emailed Adwords explaining this, and they apologized and said they would route this to their technical team. So the killer came with KE, which they disapproved automatically after 24 hrs of me putting up the ad. Not suspecting anything wrong, I just made some slight amendments, and emailed them explaining why KE is not a ‘Adsense template generator’ but a ‘keyword research tool’.

  6 hours after making the changes he got banned from adwords and was told that if he tries to sign up again they’ll know and shut him down.

  He chatted with them 3 times, sent 2 different emails, and had 1 phone conversation where they said that their decision was final.

  So here’s my question: Why is it that Google makes these blanket decisions and then has no process for repentance or explanation or forgiveness or anything of the sort.
  What if they’re wrong with their decision? What if they made a mistake? Do they not know they’re playing with people’s lives?

  I’m not saying that they don’t have to run their business, but can you imagine if my adwords account got banned and they said “our decision is final” and there’s no way for me to appeal or anything? That would sort of change my life!

  This guy didn’t get any warning about it. He wasn’t even doing anything wrong either. Keyword Elite is a keyword tool. Yes, it also builds adsense pages, but it’s main purpose is as a keyword tool.

  Also, why this guy?. If you do a google search for keyword elite you’ll see dozens of KE affiliates still promoting the product.

  Why aren’t they being shut down.

  Why will google not even look at someone’s explanation and consider it?

  Remember when google used to be cool and hip and trendy? Back before they went public and they cared about people, not shareholders?

  Back when they said “going public won’t change our company!”

  To tell you the truth, google looks more like microsoft than like google.

  Now, a disclaimer: I could have been told half the story. I don’t think I was, but it’s possible that I wasn’t told the whole truth and that this guy really did do something wrong. I don’t think so, but it’s possible.

  [tags]adwords, google, banned from google[/tags]

  digg this!
  
  

12/7/2006

• Processing Credit Cards for Free

  If you are selling stuff online, and it doesn’t involve a subscription product, you’re CRAZY not to use Google Checkout

  Yesterday I got a phone call from my friend Lanny Morton because he was quoted in a story on the front page of the money section of the USA today (I know…he doesn’t really blog…I’ve been telling him he needs to for like a year now…). He had gotten a phone call from a reporter who said “What do you think about Google offering to process transactions for free through 2007?” to which he resonded “Uhhh…mmm…Are you f’ing kidding me?”. Lanny didn’t even know that Google was processing transactions for free…and he wrote an entry on the google checkout blog.

  The reporter asked “Can I get a reaction from you?”. lol.

  Apparently google didn’t make a very big announcement that they’re processing credit cards for free for people. Maybe google checkout isn’t taking off fast enough for them.

  I think that in the future, there are a lot of merchant account companies who are really going to be hurting because of google checkout. If I can have google process my transactions so easily, why open up a merchant account. Google checkout is free…and right now it saves me 3%. I know…I could do this with paypal…but I’ve heard (and then had) bad experiences with paypal. Plus, there are a lot of people who don’t trust it. Most people trust google. Some people would die for google.

  If they would process subscriptions correctly (without making the user click a link each month and go through the checkout process) I would use them for everything I do (which is mostly subscription products).

  digg this!
  
  

10/25/2006

• Yahoo Has Major Issues

  Since Yahoo sent out the email telling everyone how they’re upgrading search marketing accounts, I thought I’d look into it.

  Holy cow do they have issues.

  First, I was looking at their API. They have all the documentation for their searchmarketing api online, but it doesn’t work. It’s not active for people. There’s a list at the bottom of the main page about it that has “How so I sign up?” as one of the list items, but it’s not a link. It’s just a question. This is just where the problems begin.

  Second, I had to dig around to find a phone number to contact anyone about it. I ended up finding the phone number to a company called kowabunga who was listed on their api faq page. I called them but they didn’t know anything about the API. All they could tell me was that the super fantastic yahoo ambassador program pays you $20 per account that you refer to yahoo search marketing. So, basically, this is an affiliate program that you have to pay $50 to join. That’s all they could tell me it was. I laughed at the chick and she laughed back because it’s sooooo dumb. Thanks…I’ll pass.

  Third, I got a phone number to yahoo customer service from the chick at kowabunga so I called. When they answered they asked me for my search marketing account number. I told her that I just had a simple question about their API and she said “So, I still need your account number so I can record the call.”

  Ridiculous.

  So I gave it to her.

  She then proceeded to put me on hold for every question I had and she would come back with a response of “I don’t have that information.” That’s basically all the information I could get out of her. We don’t know. I don’t know. They don’t know. Contact “them” and “they’ll” give you more information.

  I finally said to her “They don’t give you much information, do they?” to which she didn’t say anything.

  I hung up.

  No wonder so many people use google adwords and google’s getting rich off it while yahoo just continues to struggle.

  digg this!
  
  
• Google Website Optimizer - Does this fit their mission?

  Google recently announced the release of their website optimizer, which I heard about from googleicious.

  Now, this tool looks like it will be cool and all, but I don’t see how it fits their mission statement:

  Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

  How does this tool help them to organize and make information accessable and useful? I mean, I see how it helps them by knowing which sites are performing the best (may be incredibly useful as google releases a ppa program as well as their current ppc (adwords) program). But how does it help me, as a searcher? How does it help put better information in my hands? It certainly helps me find the best marketer and the best marketed information, but that’s not necessarily the best information and it doesn’t appear to make anything more accessible to me.

  I felt the same way about google checkout, but then realized that google checkout will probably make it easier for people to sell information at some point so people will make more information available…ok, that fits their mission.

  Searchviews touches on some of the problems that come with all the google tools. Interesting.

  Thoughts?

  digg this!
  
  

8/1/2006

• Google Video and Porn

  Earlier today Chris emailed me a link to a Matt Cutts blog post with links to video seo answers that Matt did.

  The answers themselves were normal.

  “blah blah, blah blah, blah blah, nothing you haven’t heard before”

  What really got me was when I was looking around the page I was on.

  See, I have never gotten into the whole video thing online. If I want to watch video, I’ll use my tv with dvr. It just looks better.

  Because of that, I had never been to video.google.com.

  I’m not linking to it because of the ‘Top 100′ link on the page.

  I clicked on it and I wish I hadn’t. Google’s top 100 videos are half porn!

  With Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, I was surprised.

  I mean, wouldn’t you think that with google not allowing adsense to go onto pages that are porn related they would do something about the porn showing up on their video site?

  It gets even worse. On the homepage of video.google.com on the right side is a “Top 10″. In that top 10 are links to:

  • Another Hot Chick - dancing for the camera
  • Topless Car Wash
  • Spring Break Mishap
  • Paris Hilton’s New Music Video
  • Girl Pwn

  Are you kidding me?

  digg this!
  
  

4/17/2006

• Aaron Wall SEObook Review

  I was out to lunch the other day with Jordy the other day and he asked me what I read about SEO that he could read too.

  I told him that I normally don’t read anything, because there’s so much garbage out there that it’s a giant waste of time.

  I still think reading most stuff is a waste of time, because the SEO industry is mostly a bunch of sheep who have never really had success doing SEO but they’ve read a bunch of garbage and they’re repeating it. What you end up reading is stuff that is outdated, wrong, partly wrong, blatantly wrong, or partially correct.

  I do on occasion read ebooks about SEO. My experience with Ebooks is usually different than most people’s. My experience is that there are a ton of ebooks out there with really really really valuable information in them, but that in order to use that info to your advantage (or, in order to use it to make money) you have to have other knowledge already. Just reading one ebook isn’t going to get you there, but if you can combine some of that knowledge with some other knowledge of your own, you can really find some winning combinations.

  So, back to my ebooks and SEO…

  A few days before I met with Jordy I had bought an ebook about seo which I told him would probably be garbage and I’d probably return it and get my $80 back.

  Well, it turns out that Aaron Walls SEO Book is one of the most informative pieces of information I’ve ever read about SEO.

  Here’s why I think it’s so good:

  In SEO, there are “white hat” methods and there are “black hat” methods. White hat is everything Google tells you to do. Black hat is everything Google tells you not to do.

  Most of the SEO world refuses to talk about black hat stuff except to say that it’s morally wrong and the people who do it are evil.

  Personally, I think there’s nothing wrong with black hat stuff. You can’t attach morals to a method of getting ranked highly in the search engines. Search engines are for profit companies.

  SEO methods either work or they don’t. They’re not good or bad except that certain things might get you in trouble with a search engine. It’s no different than any business practice in which you take a risk of making huge profits or losing everything you have.

  Aaron acknowledges this.

  I was shocked.

  He talks about how you can employ black hat methods, they just might end up getting your domain kicked out of the search engine indexes.

  That’s why I think this book is so good.

  Aaron actually has experience with the black hat methods and realizes that a bunch of them work. Because of this experience, he can put 2 and 2 together (white hat methods, black hat methods, search engine algorithms, other knowledge) and come up with some really good ideas.

  It’s also obvious that he’s gotten a lot of his information from some of the engineers at google and yahoo, and not from other users posting stuff at places webmasterworld.com or other SEO forums.

  That’s another reason I think it’s so good, Aaron doesn’t equate “search engine” with “google”. Most people out there don’t even acknowkledge that Yahoo or MSN exist except to laugh at them. What they don’t realize is that yahoo and msn traffic is often times more valuable than is google traffic. They also don’t realize that yahoo/msn get a LOT of searches.

  So, for those of you wanting to learn SEO, here’s the book I’m currently reading.

  digg this!
  
  

2/15/2006

• The parts are better than the whole (seo)

  I’ve learned over the past few years that the sum of the parts is much greater than the whole in SEO.

  What I mean is that being #1 for all the related search terms is usually better than being #1 for the main keyword.

  Take utah real estate for example.

  You get much better traffic if you are #1 for “provo utah real estate”, “park city utah real estate”, “salt lake city utah real estate”, “midway utah real estate” than if you’re #1 for “Utah Real Estate”. Sure, being #1 for utah real estate is great, but people want specifics.

  Look at Insurance.
  Being #1 for “Insurance” is great, but being #1 for “car insurance”, “life insurance”, “health insurance”, “home owners insurance” is much better.

  Or how about Business.
  “Business” is great, but “home based business”, “mlm business”, “painters business” is better.

  How do I know this?

  ummm…well, you’ll just have to trust me.

  digg this!
  
  

2/12/2006

• Maybe Yahoo Actually Listens!

  This was in my referer logs today:

  twiki.corp.yahoo.com/view/Overture/WhatTheWorldThinksOfYPN

  You can’t connect to it of course, because its an internal yahoo page.

  It looks like yahoo actually cares what other people think (unlike the other giant corporate search engine leader), and they’re keeping up on it. Maybe now they’ll actually do something about it.

  Here’s to rooting.

  GO YAHOO!!!
  GO YPN!!!

  digg this!
  
  

2/5/2006

• Google AdWords Abuses

  I’ll admit, I’ve only slightly used adwords. All of my adwords campaigns are run and managed by someone else who has gotten pretty good at it.

  However, someone else I know who is running multiple adwords campaigns emailed me yesterday with the following:

  Google is messing with me again. Only one week after they finally got my content impressions going again (they said they had to review my ad again to be sure it was all OK, and it took them 3 weeks) [[Google had previously disabled his content impressions for like 3 weeks for no apparent reason]], they have suspended it, saying that something was wrong with the ad. They claim that it is gramatically incorrect to write “Solteros(as)” but they had just approved it a week earlier and you see things written in Spanish like that all the time. So I changed the ad to what they recommended, just to get things going, but now it has been four more days and nothing has happened. So I am off-line currently with [[An affiliate program]], after making $30 to $40 per day profit for over a week.

  I have even wondered if some Google employee notices that a certain ad is getting tons of impressions (almost a million per day) and plenty of clicks (4,000 per day) at a penny per click, and decides to disable it and steal it for himself, at least for a few weeks. Am I way out there, or is this conceivable? Why else would it be approved and then a week or so later suddently disapproved, without me making any changes to the ad? I have sent Google two e-mails asking why they have done this and trying nicely to explain my position, but all I have gotten back in reply were form responses that didn’t answer my questions, saying that my ad is in the queue and will be reviewed “in due time.” They are now officially slower than Yahoo in getting things approved and running.

  (emphasis and bracket comments added)

  You know it’s a bad day when someone finds it easier or faster to use yahoo search marketing than it is to use adwords.

  Downhill, downhill, downhill…

  digg this!
  
  

2/2/2006

• Yahoo Missing the Boat

  For the past few months I’ve been getting a phone call from YPN about once a month because they’re looking for feedback. They want to know what’s going on with YPN from the publishers point of view (which is a whole heck of a lot more than I can say for adsense).

  Every time they call, I tell them straight up that YPN stinks. And I don’t just tell them it stinks, I tell them how to fix it:

  • Figure out how to get correctly targeted ads. They’re always serving mortgage ads it seems, no matter what the topic of the site. It’s like they took a short cut and had some people in india go through and put a ton of words into categories. Then, they serve the category ads if the topic of the page fits under that ‘category’. So, even if the page is about structured settlements or insurance, I’m getting MORTGAGE ads!
  • Fix the ad layouts. They haven’t yet figured out how to get the ads into the boxes correctly so they don’t look very good.
  • Fix the Yahoo Search Marketing site. It’s sooooo difficult to run a ppc campaign right now, that advertisers don’t do it. Because of this, their ad inventory is super low, so they don’t have enough ads to put onto targeted web pages.

  And they tell me:

  “We’ve improved our targeting”
  “We can’t do anything about Yahoo Search Marketing, that’s another department. But I’ll pass your comments on to them” (right…)
  “Our ads look better than ever”

  And they convince me to test their ads again.

  I do.

  They still stink!

  So here’s an email I got this morning from Perry Marshall’s mailing list. Perry wrote the Definitive Guide to Adwords and is pretty much an expert on adwords.

  (I love how he explains yahoo’s problems…it’s worth reading)

  A few weeks ago, a Very Large Wall Street Investment
  Firm with many hundreds of millions of dollars invested
  in Yahoo and Google called me to schedule a consultation.

  They wanted me to help them understand ‘How the sausage
  is made’ and share my views on Google and Yahoo’s
  long-term prospects for growth.

  Back in the day, GoTo (oops, I guess they’re called
  Overture now) (Oops, I guess they’re called Yahoo Search
  Marketing now) had the tiger by the tail.

  They built the world’s first Pay Per Click money machine
  and they had it made in the shade. They organized all the
  chaos of the Internet and started selling clicks. Now search
  engines could finally start making some money.

  And baby, did they ever make money. They thought
  they were making a lot.

  But then Google came along. Google showed ‘em how it
  should REALLY be done. I’m not sure any company in the
  history of the world has ever made so much with such apparent
  ease.

  You can ask any guy on the street why Google has done
  so much better, and they’ll tell you it’s ‘cuz Google is just a
  better search engine. And that’s true, but that’s only half the story.

  The other half of the story is that they designed
  AdWords to maximize the amount of money they make
  on every search. Advertisers have great incentive to
  lure people from the left side of the page to the right side
  and click on those paid ads.

  And yes, this has a LOT to do with you, as I shall
  explain shortly. If you’re going to succeed in this game,
  you’re going to succeed for the exact same reasons Google
  succeeded. So pay close attention as I tell you what
  I told the guys at the big investment firm.

  You may know that Yahoo just changed the size
  of their ads from 190 lines of description to 70, just
  like Google.

  Know why they did that?

  Because Google figured out before Yahoo did that
  they’ll make more money showing 10 little ads than
  3 or 4 big ones. Yahoo finally figured it out too.

  How did Google know that?

  By testing.

  Yahoo didn’t test.

  Shame on Yahoo. (Shame on everyone who doesn’t
  test, for they shall share the same fate.)

  Well then there’s the Click Thru Rate formula. You
  should know by now that Google multiplies your bid
  price times your click thru rate to figure out where you
  belong on the page. Yahoo doesn’t do that. Which
  means Yahoo ads that get clicks don’t rise to the top,
  and Yahoo makes less $ from every single search than
  Google.

  Now let’s say they make 10% less. Does that mean
  they get 10% less business? NO, it’s worse than that.
  Because they have syndication partners (MSN, Altavista
  etc.) and thousands of individual sites who share the profit.

  If their partners get a piece of the action, they make 10%
  less too. Which means they’d rather run Google ads than
  Yahoo ads. Which means Google gets more clicks
  and Yahoo gets less. The 10% disadvantage becomes 25%.

  But it gets still worse. Because if you’ve got 25% less
  traffic, advertisers are 25% less interested which means
  there’s fewer of them. So the bids are lower and now
  you’re 40% behind not 10%.

  In the real world of business, 10% is really 40%.

  (You should write that on a piece of paper in big fat
  magic marker and tape it to your wall.)

  I’m not done yet. Yahoo’s software is 5 years old, it’s
  clunky and horribly bureaucratic. Every time you want to
  change something it takes 3 days and it’s a nightmare.

  I told my friends who manage those hundreds of millions of
  dollars that heads should have been rolling at Yahoo a LONG
  time ago. Because… this should not be news to anybody!
  Heck, I knew this 3 years ago, back when Overture was still
  ahead of Google.

  Sad. Very sad.

  To our friends at Yahoo Search Marketing - who will no doubt
  see this email - I say: You better accelerate your plans to fix
  your stupid broken system, because you’re losing ground
  every single day.

  I say this as someone who has not the slightest interest
  in the Wall Street side of this equation. I own no Google
  stock (that would create a conflict of interest, given the
  work I do). I own no Yahoo stock. What I’m interested in
  me and my customers getting the most bang for our advertising
  buck. And I know that pressure from Wall Street just makes
  it tougher on advertisers.

  Plus I’d like there to be at least one company besides
  Google who doesn’t have their head stuffed in a cloud. I want
  just ONE good PPC alternative to Google. How about you?

  (Need I mention that MSN has a program in Beta right
  now? Yahoo, you’d better watch out, Bill Gates is coming to
  plunder your house.)

  So why hasn’t yahoo figured it out yet?

  Are they ever going to? Everyone’s rooting for them (except Google and MSN).

  I’ll forward the email on to the girl at yahoo who has been calling me. I don’t think it will make a difference, but at least I’ll try.

  digg this!
  
  

1/31/2006

• Google finally indexing WritingUp.com

  Number of pages indexed (as of this writing it’s 13,200).

  It even got a pr3.

  Funny how far behind they have been with this. I mean, the number of incoming links according to MSN right now is over 12,000. That’s been a pretty steady growth over the past 4 months. Nothing un-natural done. I didn’t do any link building campaign or anything.

  So, why is it that google is still showing zero incoming links?

  Who knows. But I bet if you ask them, they’ll respond…lol…

  digg this!
  
  

1/27/2006

• Adsense Re-instating Accounts

  lol.

  This is unbelievable. If you’ve had your adsense account banned, it looks like there might be a glimmer of hope for you…but you have to be persistent.

  In the past 2 weeks I know of 2 adsense accounts that have been re-instated. However, I had to appeal for both of those people. One of them got re-instated almost immediatly after I sent the third appeal. The other one took more than 2 weeks. Although, the second one getting re-instated may be due to the fact that he sent his appeal to them almost every day for the month and a half that his account was disabled.

  For those of you who need to appeal, here’s a successful appeal letter (although it may have been one of the other 30 he sent that did it).

  From: “Bill *****” < *****@gmail.com>
  Subject: Ad Problems
  Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 21:58:10 -0000

  Why don’t you answer your email??? I have sent the following to you all
  several times and still have NOT received a reply. What’s up?

  Dear Adsense,

  I am appealing the disabling of my account.

  My name - Bill *****

  My company - no company…private blogger

  My publisher ID…. Google Adsense Publisher Id:
  pub-14636510467*****

  My website URL… http://www.writingup.com

  My website’s audience… other writingup bloggers, my friends, my family
  and my students.

  My website’s content…I write my own website content; short stories,
  social commentary, famous quotes, blogging information…

  Primary source of web traffic…Search engines, technocrati, word of
  mouth, email to friends, family and students.

  The number of people involved with the administration of the site…one

  Relevant information…I assure you I am a genuine blogger, interested in
  posting my thoughts. I have NEVER asked for encouraged clicks, or click
  swapping.
  I enjoy monitoring the number of page impressions on my adsense
  account…to get a sense of how often my pages are viewed.
  And I have watched it STEADILY grow over the past three weeks.
  I haven’t a clue why there would be any inappropriate activity associated
  with my site. I heartily welcome a visit from you and encourage you to
  visit my site and review comments and postings and if there is anything or
  anyone who has done anything wrong, I will gladly take action with you.
  Perhaps another user does NOT like my postings and they over clicked the
  ads. Perhaps an overzealous student thought to click away. But I did NOT
  encourage nor would ever encourage such an activity. I want to know what
  kind of appeal my writing has, NOT how much money I can make. Please read
  my posting…It’s Not About the Money

  http://www.writingup.com/wcbelew/its_not_about_the_money

  It alone tells you where I stand on the issue…and it has generated 264
  reads. By all means, Take a Look!

  But as for me, I have no idea, nor do I know who would do such a thing.

  Please reconsider the cancellation of my adsense account.

  I look forward to hearing from you.

  Thank you very much.

  Bill *****, PhD

  Now, it may have been his persistence that got his account re-instated.

  Or maybe…his persistance just happened to cause his appeal to end up on the screen of the right person. Someone who actually believed his story…

  From: Bill ***** < *****@svecs.com>
  Date: Jan 26, 2006 6:46 PM
  Subject: Fw: [#44300758] Ad Problems
  To: John Jonas

  John,
  Believe it or not, I just now noticed that I have two ticket numbers with Google adsense, the one in the subject line,

  and this one…

  Fw: [#43128524] Google Adsense Appeal

  One was rejected and this one was accepted.

  Do you remember you advised me to try from different angles? Well, I found several email addresses and sent them in and perhaps generated several ticket numbers.

  I even sent another appeal today…that I cc’d you on. I dunno the workings…but I do know they reinstated me.

  Methinks that at some point there were too many clicks for the number of hits on my pages, but through persistence it has now leveled off…I dunno.

  Anyway, I have my adsense back ….for now…lol.

  Bill *****, PhD
  

  Maybe google isn’t as objective as they’d like you to think they are!

  digg this!
  
  

1/20/2006

• Google downfall

  I’m telling you…the downfall of google is going to happen.

  Google isn’t the small company it used to be. They’re becoming more and more like microsoft every day. It’s happening. Mark my words!

  digg this!
  
  

1/16/2006

• Contacting Adsense

  This has gotten pretty frustrating.  I’ve tried to contact adsense quite a few times and in the typical Google fashion, NOTHING.

  They don’t respond, they don’t acknowledge, they’re not interested…

  I’m wondering if anyone knows someone who works at google in the adsense department?  Any chance that I might get their contact info?

  I’d just really like to bring up some issues with them banning random peoples accounts for no apparent reason.

  digg this!
  
  

12/28/2005

• Another Adsense Account Banned

  Boy, this is getting tiresome.

  I got another email from someone I know today telling me that google has shut down their adsense account. That’s about the 6th one in the last month.

  So why all of a sudden is click fraud such a major concern of google’s?

  Why wasn’t it a major concern a year and a half ago?

  Is it because they were profiting from it for so long, but now the threat of something bad happening to them because of it is so great that the risk finally outweighs the reward?

  It turns out that none of the accounts that were banned were actual cases of click fraud. I knew 5 of the 6 people. Now, I guess it’s totally possible that they all really were clicking on their ads, even though they told me they weren’t, but somehow I doubt it.

  Plus, if they were clicking, they sure as heck weren’t doing it with an automated script. These were all non-techie people. If they were committing click fraud, it was on a very, very small scale, I promise. So why is google going so heavily after the little guys right now, and not concentrating on the large click fraud perpetrators?

  digg this!
  
  

12/27/2005

• Something is screwed up at Google

  So watch this:

  Number of pages indexed in Yahoo
  Number of pages indexed in MSN

  What happened here?

  NO pages in Google!

  Well, I’ll tell you what didn’t happen. It didn’t happen that the site is brand new and doesn’t have any inbound links:

  Number of backlinks in MSN

  (the reason I show msn is because they show true numbers. That IS the number of links that point to writingup.com)

  And it didn’t happen that the site isn’t getting any traffic:

  Alexa ranking
  Site statistics

  So what the heck are they doing at google?

  Did they label me and everything I do as being spam?

  Maybe. But the number of pages indexed for jonasblog.com would indicate the opposite, as would the number of pages indexed for jonasfam.com.

  The site has been up for over 3 months now.

  The site is getting pretty reasonable amounts of traffic.

  Google’s spider has visited the site (most recently on christmas day, but I know they came over a month ago) and has gone WAY beyond the homepage.

  Is this a power struggle within the google algorithm between it thinking this is a spam site vs the number of incoming links the site has?

  Or is google broken this time like yahoo was a few months ago?

  digg this!
  
  

12/14/2005

• YPN phone call

  I just got a call from the good folks at publisher.yahoo.com, wanting feedback on YPN.

  I gave them feedback.

  I told them it stinks and that I’ve been very disappointed with it.

  I also volunteered to do whatever I could to help them improve it so that I can get adsense off my pages. I’m totally serious about that.

  digg this!
  
  
• Google Christmas Gift

  I got 2 christmas gifts from Google in the mail this morning (I have 2 different adsense accounts):
  
  

  

  • laptop mouse
  • 128 MB pen drive
  • 4 port usb hub
  • flexible laptop keyboard light
  • collapsable usb cord
  • collapsable computer headset
  • keychane and wrist strap for the pen drive
  • batteries for the mouse
  • velvet carrying case

  Pretty nice.

  I’m still upset with them for screwing so many people…

  digg this!
  
  

12/13/2005

• To link, or not to link…

  The very fact that we’re having this discussion points out 2 problems to me.

  1. Are search algorighms so easy to manipulate that we really need to be careful with what we do on our websites, for fear of offending some search God? Don’t you think that google or yahoo has the ability to monitor the linking patterns of websites? If a site all of a sudden has a link from an authority site, and either doesn’t have other links or doesn’t continue to get links, don’t you think they know that one link was unnatural? Do we really need to use the “no-follow” thingy and do the search engines job for them? Isn’t that why you use a search engine in the first place? Because THEY find you the most relevant results?

  2. Why is everyone so concerned with helping the search engines out? Do we really think that a site as well linked to as Jeremy Zawodny’s site is going to be affected by putting a few outbound links on the site? Is that in a search engines best interest? NO!

  If google decides to punish Jeremy’s blog for putting some paid links, let them do it. Don’t you think that would degrade their search results? Both Matt and Jeremy and Greg understand this. Why do you think Jeremy decided to not use the no-follow with those links? I mean, don’t you think that if Jeremy put 50 links on the front page of his blog (as opposed to hiding them like he did), his site would still be just as authoritiative? Do you think just as many people would turn to him for answers? Isn’t it the same for other authority sites?

  Seems to me like Google talking about punishing sites who sell links is a scare tactic.

  The fact is that linking is natural. Buying links is natural. Advertising is natural.

  Just because a site sells advertisements doesn’t mean they’ve done anything wrong, not in the eyes of the web, nor in the eyes of a search engine (IMHO).

  As I’ve read the comments left on the blogs today about this, I think there’s a deeper problem developing as a result of this link war.

  An anti-Google sentiment.

  It seems to me that over the past year (basically since Google went public), there has been a lot of backlash towards google, their algorithm, their monopoly (brought on because of their great original algorithm), and some of their nazi policies. It’s the attitude that what they say is right, is right. It’s their completely closed book way of dealing with people. It’s the fact that they do things that totally change other peoples lives and don’t warn anyone about it.

  I think that anti-google feeling is what’s at the bottom of this whole argument (or, at least, that’s what keeps it going). People have loved google for the past few years but because of their dominance they’ve created some markets that cause problems, and I’m not sure they can fix them anymore.

  digg this!