Has Google Closed Your Account Owing You Tens of Thousands?
Countless stories like yours are floating around the Internet, so you are not alone.
In fact, the exact phrase, “”After reviewing our records, we’ve determined that your Adsense account poses a risk” returns 25,100 results, mostly of people complaining that their Adsense Account was shut down without warning or any kind of recourse. Wham! Take your money at a whim.
That phrase is the start of a notice that usually runs like this …
After reviewing our records, 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.
We want Google to protect their advertisers!
But when a young temp working for Google can shut down a marketers account on a whim without recourse, that’s not justice — it’s bullying.
Google shuts down websites without notice or recourse because they can.
What are YOU going to do about it anyway?
A good friend of mine recently lost tens of thousands in dollars that Google owed him.
He had invested wisely in generating traffic and spent a good pile of his own money doing it, not to mention countless hours.
But, with a tightly worded notice, Google erased a payment due and said in effect, “We aren’t going to pay you.”
They don’t tell you what’s wrong, they don’t tell you how to fix it.
A lot of flagged click fraud might even be repeated clicking on an ad…. Which of course is totally out of the control of the publisher. Wouldn’t it be easy enough for Google to ONLY pay the publisher for the first click on an ad?
My friend was understandably upset.
Even more than the money, he was upset because he felt that Google was needlessly bullying countless people who were trying to do the right thing, but had no recourse, no one to talk to and who could be turned into financial ruin because someone decided to keep the money … and was big and powerful enough to make it stick.
So what should he do about it?
Fighting Google is a tough up-hill battle and my friend is getting two kinds of advice. One of them is “get the bastards”, and the other is “forget it and move on”.
My friend is really torn right now.
On one hand he would like to see people band together to fight …
On the other, is it really worth it?
It’s a long hard tough, expensive road to fight them – which is exactly why they think they can get away with it.
Most entrepreneurs have a limited amount of time and maybe the question is, “What can I do with the limited amount of time and resources I have to have the biggest impact on the most people?”
Answer that one and you will be on your way to making the right decisions.
What do you think my friend should do?
Class Action Lawsuit Anyone?
All the best,
Ken McArthur
KenMcArthur.com
jvAlertLive.com
TheImpactFactor.com
And many more …
21,500 results sounds like a class action lawsuit to me. Or it sounds like something a good publicist could spin into the Today Show or 60 Minutes. After all, isn’t google sort of predicated on the court of public opinion? And wouldn’t they be more likely to play nice if they knew your friend had a big hammer?
As of today, Google has a value of some
152.93 BILLION dollars. I’m not sure how likely they are to play nice… that’s some big hammer.
I see two options: 1) Forget about it and move on. In which case others will get hosed and the bullying will continue; 2) Find others in the same boat and move forward with a class action. Given a choice I personally prefer to stand up to the bully.
Hey Gary, many thanks for the input!
Can we spell FTC complaint? If the FTC had even 210 complaints on this, There would be a BIG problem for Google. The way to really do it is to file separate complaints on every angle on what they are doing wrong that violates fundamental procedural justice / natural rules of justice. For example, look at the FTC rules.
For example, if you find 23 violations of the rules, file 23 complaints. Don’t vent, just sum it up in 4-5 paragraphs, consisting of 2-3 sentences. Put in the least amount of effort.
Why?
Because the FTC will investigate each and every complaint. That’s their mandate. They will force Google to respond repeatedly. That’s all lawyer bills to Google of tens of thousands for every complaint, whereas you the person who complained simply spent 5 minutes on a single complaint.
If 210 people make 23 complaints each, the numbers begin to stack up.
Next, use YouTube and create some viral videos (Controveresy combined with two compelling emotions…watch the most watched videos – that is the formula)…
That’s our two cents worth.
Danny / Heidi
Great input Danny and Heidi! Miss you folks at jvAlert Live!
Yes. It’s called “time for a class action lawsuit”… no doubt about it. Bastards did the same thing to me several years ago and I warn all my subscribers to stay away from AdSense.
I had a web mall that had adsense ads on it and a another web site with the same. I never heard from them and my sites just disappeared. They owed me a fairly large sum of money I never received, Not as much as your friend but about half as much.
So sorry to hear Carol!
Hi Ken. Good article & very close to my “heart” (wallet? 🙂 ).
I had an Adsense account that was shut down unexpectedly for very similar reasons. The only positive from my point of view was that they didn’t owe me much money.
I jumped through all the hoops they put in place to try and get the decision reversed or at least get some clarity around why this had happened and what I could do to fix it, but no joy….
So, I gave it up as a bad joke and moved on.
The interesting end to this tale was that I actually know someone who works at Google so I asked him if he could try and plead my case for me to the appropriate person or dept, and he agreed! 🙂
Sadly, they told him nothing & said no, which was disappointing. He even agreed with my summary of the situation, which was “In the real world, this is like being found guilty of a crime and punished, but with no knowledge on what your crime was, and no right or opportunity to defend yourself.”
I personally can’t be bothered going down the class action path (no where near enough money to make it work while), BUT I do believe that a class action suit would be worthwhile to make Google take notice and be more fair, open & reasonable about these sorts of situations.
They really are a law unto themselves, and as for that “Do no evil” thing, I think they lost sight of that many years ago (sadly)…
Hi Ken, great question, terrible situation. I think your right about the young trainee’s at Google. This means the situation is in someway reasonable. So I think your buddy should give all the necessary people at Google to try and return some of the money that’s missing that he has made for the company.
First let me day I am curious about the investments to create so much traffic, so I would think this is something he would want to provide. Secondly Google Analytics and other tracking devices show where the traffic comes from so perhaps it would be possible to find out where the bad clicks were coming from.
Doing some good detective work himself may help them pay out what is owed without having to drag things out and leave the Google advertiser out of profit.
I would imagine that with so much traffic a lot of those ads may have been video’s everyone seems to be talking about video’s these days.
This week I have just been allowed to ad advertising on over 100 video’s on Youtube and hopefully in the next month or so, after four or more years using Google Adsense will get a £60 payment its been on the fringes all month so it should happen soon.
If it was not for Bill McIntosh story of making loads with Google Adsense years ago I do not think I would have continued.
I am really excited about getting a payment and have noted this example of business bullying.
Success in Washington and well done for getting Mike Filsaime to speak again.
Does this mean you will you be cruising with everybody?
The reason I ask is because last week at an marketing event (Daven Michaels Outsource 123) I met Captain Lou, I quizzed him a bit too. Have a great day Ken and all the best from London, UK. Waking up at 5.00am sounds a good tip, getting to sleep before 5.00am could be a good tip too.
Best and success
Robert.
Thanks Robert! Who knows what the future may bring! I would love to get a chance to get out to many great events including the cruise. I think live events are life changing!