Why My Friend Got Banned From AdSense

Yesterday, an acquaintance of mine called me (since he thinks I am an expert) and asked me what happened to his AdSense account. He told me that he received a message from Google saying that his account had been disabled because he was considered a risk to their advertisers. He had some money earned (not a lot) and unfortunately this is now all gone. Making money online with AdSense is great, but sometimes, many of us forget that there are rules we must follow to stay in the program.

So what happened? I do not know for sure, but I started to ask him some questions to try and rule out what was the reason for this. AdSense TOS is very strict on a lot of issues and they do not forgive easily, if you do not abide by them. I could not stress this enough. The major reasons that this could happen, are the following:

1. Click Fraud – Clicking on your own ads is heavily penalized by Google. Cheating them will just lead to your doom at the end. They are not in the position they are in today by accepting this kind of behavior.

2. Inducing Someone to Click on an Ad – Blending is one “tactic” that Google even recommends. However, inducing someone to click on an ad deliberately is not accepted under their TOS.

3. Adult Content – Also a big no no. Soft or Erotic content (like bikinis and lingerie) may slide by Google’s tentacles, however, porn is not tolerated. Also, if you do have some spicy content that is not rated PG or below, you should have an initial page alerting your readers about it. In Blogger, there is an option to turn this on under the Settings menu. I nevertheless do not encourage the use of these type of contents with AdSense.

4. Competitive Ads – Google is not against showing other ads in combination with AdSense Ads as long as they are not confused with ad formats provided by Google. However, they do not condone ads that are related to casinos, gambling, porn sites, and the sorts. Also, So if you are planning to run this kind of ads, remove AdSense from your site, run the ads, and when you’re done, you can run AdSense again.

5. Privacy Policy – Oooppps, what is this? Frequently, I see a lot of blogs that run AdSense program, that do not have in their site a Privacy Policy. Google Terms and Conditions of their AdSense program, requires that all AdSense publishers should have a “Privacy Policy” on their websites. See my previous post regarding this subject (it is extremely important).

Having said that, my friend was 100% sure that it was not 1, 2, 3 or 4 of the above, and so leaves us with only one option left, number 5. I am not sure if this was the real reason, although it might well be, but it is always better to be on the safe side than being sorry. If you get banned by Google, the possibility of being reinstated is almost impossible, as I have gathered.

Tecnorati tags:  Banned By Google