Why Adsense Accounts Get Banned and How to Prevent It

Banned from Adsense–But Can’t Understand Why?

If you are an Adsense publisher, something that is always in the back of your mind is a possible account ban from Adsense. Many times, Adsense is totally justified in banning an account. You will see whining like this on many internet marketing forums, “Adsense banned me! Well, maybe I clicked on a few ads myself, but that was only to test if they were working…” Duh!
The hue and cry from us little guys is that “Adsense doesn’t want us to make any money! Once you break over a certain threshold, they cancel your account.” That just doesn’t make sense at all.

It's No Puzzle--Adsense Always Favors Advertisers Over Publishers

Of course Adsense wants publishers to make money; if a publisher is making money, so are they. It’s in Adsense’s best interest to have quality sites in the network where advertisers can buy ad space. No ad space= no ads=no money for Google. You just need to remember that if Adsense has to pick between a publisher and an advertiser, the advertiser will win every time.
Publishers more often than not have their account banned without warning, and by means of a form letter. No specifics are ever given. Typically, a publisher will receive an e-mail with wording similar to this: “We’ve determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we’ve found it necessary to disable your AdSense account.”

What Can Trigger A Ban from Adsense?

If Adsense sees a huge jump in CTR without a corresponding jump in traffic, or you have decided to generate some traffic via a paid service, it can trigger red flags with Google.  Veteran blogger and internet marketer Lisa Irby says that  “Often times these services send artificial traffic via bots which can generate false impressions and clicks on your ads.  That’s a surefire way to get banned from AdSense.”

Viligantly Monitor Your Adsense Traffic and Clicks

The best way that you can protect yourself from a ban is to carefully monitor your traffic. You should be using some kind of analytics program, such as Google Analytics, Get Clicky or Piwik to track where your traffic is coming from.

Signs You Could be Under a Clickbomb Attack

If you suddenly get a huge influx of traffic from a strange source, and also notice that your CTR has gone through the roof, don’t ignore it. You should note the IP that the traffic is coming from and the date it is occurring and contact Adsense via their invalid clicks contact form immediately  and let them know this is happening. You should also suspend showing ads on the site or sites being attacked at once. It’s a good chance that you are under a clickbomb attack from a rival publisher trying to put you out of business.
If you significantly alter your site layout and/or themes and it results in boosting your CTR significantly, you should also keep careful notes about that. Keeping “before and after” screenshots of any significant site revamps is not a bad idea, as you can keep it for documentation if you need it.  Don’t ever incentivize a visitor to click on your ads, or otherwise subtly trick them into clicking on an ad. It’s only asking for trouble.

What’s Super Annoying About Getting Banned by Adsense

Unfortunately, there seems to be no human review process before an Adsense account is banned. There is little recourse for the average user to fight a ban either. Here is the issue of banning via software nicely summed up by SubmitEdge.com:

It is a problem that Google relies on software alone to decide who gets closed down. It is disturbing that in 8 ½ years, they have made no attempt to do a better job at this. It’s also disturbing that unless you know a Brad Fitzpatrick or Ben Collins at Google who will take a personal interest, the odds of getting your account reactivated are next to nothing – and that is only after months of appeals while you’re losing money and your SEO is shot.

Getting your Adsense account back after being banned is a slim-to-none chance. You might have a shot at it if you have the right connections at Google, as Jef Poskanzer did, or  complain to the government as Mark Bowyer of Rusty Compass did. Pamela Parker of MarketingLand.com recently reported on these two Adsense ban and subsequent reinstatement cases:

In the first case, well-respected netizen Jef Poskanzer, who runs the acme.com site, was banned from AdSense on January 15. Google’s explanation, in a form letter, was that “… we’ve determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we’ve found it necessary to disable your AdSense account.” Though Poskanzer appealed, Google denied his appeal. But, then, he blogged about it on his site. Because Poskanzer is well-connected in the Internet world, Googler Matt Cutts posted on Google+ about the situation, saying he hoped the ad quality team would reconsider. Indeed, the intervention convinced Google to give Poskanzer another chance, and he was reinstated as of January 31. “My fame is an advantage,” wrote Poskanzer, “but what really ought to matter is my 8.5 year relationship with the company, plus my demonstrated history of working with AdSense to resolve our prior issue eight years ago, to our mutual benefit.” A second similar situation occurred to the Rusty Compass travel website, run by Mark Bowyer in Sydney, Australia.
On September 13, 2011, Google informed Bowyer that his AdSense account was being disabled for generating invalid clicks. He appealed and started a thread in the AdSense support forum. Like Poskanzer, his appeal was denied.
In December, Bowyer took the matter to the New South Wales’ Fair Trading — a state agency that enforces fair trade laws and provides consumer protections.
An article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald about the case and Google reinstated Bowyer’s account in mid-January, 2012. Bowyers has still heard nothing personal from Google, only receiving templated-style email communications.

If you are banned, don’t expect to hear from an actual human at Adsense, because that will never happen.
If you sincerely believe that you did absolutely nothing wrong to provoke being banned, there is some recourse available by appealing to Adsense for reinstatement into the program. Here is the link to the appeal form.
Just don’t be overly optimistic about your chances for reinstatement unless you are well-connected.