Google's AdSense Creates New Class Of Disabled Bloggers

Running text ads on your blog never really struck us as the Get-Richest-Quickest path; we used to have Amazon ads on a book review blog and after a year or two and no checks, we decided we could better use the real estate and quit the program. A few months later we got our first and final check for...$6ish?

But Seattle's Furious Seasons blog has just discovered firsthand the pain of algorithmic rejection. The email from Google says:

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account.

Dawdy can rant like no one's business, and Google's no-warning yank of ads from his mental health blog has inspired new heights. Here he is providing customer feedback:

Your customer service stinks. Your press office is useless. Dealing with your company is like talking to a black box. Your monitoring algorithms are set way too tight. You seem to be a company run by computers and not humans, and if there happens to be a human being working at Google, then give me a call. ... You also owe me an apology for treating me like a scab. You guys are the ones making billions off the original content of others such as my colleagues in the journalism business and your values for how you reward content providers seem to me to be a bit out of whack -- because as near as I can figure you guys cut me off over a lousy $40 or so.

Sadly, Dawdy is going to have to get in a long, long line, because a quick search reveals that people have been complaining about AdSense procedures since forever...or 2005. There is no warning prior to AdSense accounts being disabled. There is no easy way to find out why, or get reinstated. Our favorite summing up of the usually fruitless attempt to get info out of Google's draconian email-bots is: "Google = Malaysian government?" There's also a petition with 902 signatures from people with their accounts similarly abruptly disabled. Part of the aggrieved reaction seems to stem from the timing: it appears that Google looks for invalid clicks and other suspected hanky-panky just prior to cutting the first check.

But maybe Dawdy should feel, simply, noticed at long last. Knowing that his blog is often critical of the pharmaceutical companies that promote their brand of well-being as just a click away, we find the words "your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers" heartening.