What To Do If Your AdSense Account Gets Closed

 

Google’s court of appeal. You don’t want to come here. Most of the mistake people make at AdSense hit them in the wallet. Some mistakes though can hit where it really hurts and get your account closed. So what should you do if you get that dreaded email from AdSense informing you that your account has been shut down? Well, the first thing to remember is that you’ve pretty much got no power at all. Google’s Terms make it very clear that they have the right to kick someone out of their program whenever they feel like it and you have to prove your innocence.

But the people at Google aren’t a nasty bunch and they will listen to you if you feel you’ve been hard done by. Your first step then should be to send them an email asking why you’ve been banned.

The most likely reason will be invalid clicks. That might not mean that you’ve accidentally clicked your own ads. Google accepts that accidents do happen and takes occasional clicks like these into account. They’ll show up as clicks in your stats but you won’t earn revenue from them. Nor do you need to inform them every time your cursor accidentally lands on one of your ads. But if it’s more than occasional, you could be in trouble. It’s possible that someone else might have been clicking ads on your site repeatedly — perhaps a competitor hoping to hit your earnings or a family member who didn’t know it was forbidden.

It’s also possible that someone has stolen your AdSense code and placed it on their own site. It sounds strange, but publishers have been concerned about this so Google now lets you create a list of Allowed Sites. Only those click on those sites will count towards your income. And at least one publisher has been banned because the previous owner of the domain had clicked his own ads before the domain was sold.

Whatever the reason, the next step is to appeal. Google has an official appeal form. It’s available at        

Re-appeal form(click the link for re-appeal form)

Be sure to fill in all the fields in the form and provide as much information as possible. Be polite. Remember, Google’s system has detected a strange pattern in your click rate and is acting to protect its advertisers from paying for nothing. When advertisers start to feel that Google isn’t looking after their budget, none of us will make money. If Google has made a mistake, you want to help the company correct it, not annoy it so much it won’t want you back.

Someone will read your form, and you want to stay on that person’s good side. Provide proof of your innocence if you can and show that you’re genuinely trying to help them get to the bottom of the problem. If you spotted a click spike in your stats, tell them when you saw it and what you think might have caused it — if you have any suspicions. If you happen to know the IP address of the source of the multiple clicks, block it, supply it to Google and tell them you’ve blocked it.

And remind Google that you think its service is great and that you’d like to keep using it. There are plenty of stories around about publishers who got banned but were reinstated after appeal. If you can produce a good explanation of the events that led to your site being banned, there’s a good chance that you’ll be allowed back in. And if all else fails and you find yourself cut off, there’s always Yahoo! Publisher Network combined with Chitika and Kontera ads. It’s unlikely you’ll make as much as you did with AdSense, but you will still make something.