Why You Shouldn’t Cheat AdSense
If you applied for AdSense account with intention to cheat and earn fast bucks, I hope by now you have understood that you shouldn’t.
Why? You say. Google is so rich, losing some pennies won’t hurt.
Well. Probably. But when I say you shouldn’t, trust me. You really shouldn’t. These are just some reasons:
1. You can’t cheat Google
Every once in while, someone will comes out with ingenious idea of how to get more money from AdSense in less than honorable ways. He will announce to the whole world, posting in every forum and tell people how smart he is. His idea is always untraceable by Google, it is always original, and it always gives easy money.
What he doesn’t know is, few months after that, he will get caught by Google, always. And his AdSense account will be disabled. Always. And he is banned from ever applying for AdSense account again. Always.
Google is a giant, with 2005 revenue of almost US$ 10 billions, and profits of more than US$ 1 billion. A large chunk of this comes from Adwords / AdSense advertisements.
More click fraud means less trust, less advertisers and less money, to the extent that if unsolved it will bring collapse to pay-per-click advertisement business. Now. Do you think Google will let you jeopardize their billion dollar business model?
They have money and ability to bring together many of the the smartest and brightest engineers and scientists on earth, has been doing that and will continue to do so. How smart do you think you are that you can outsmart collaborative effort of the brightest brains?
You might be able to pull through for two or three months, but eventually the fraud detection algorithm will catch up and you are caught. And you get banned from Google AdSense, among other things.
2. Cheating = stealing
No matter how you want to justify, face it, cheating is stealing. You are not only stealing from Google, but also from Adwords publishers. Majority of these are are not big companies, but small webmasters depending on Internet to make a living.
Moreover, even if your morality (or lack thereof) permits stealing from your own fellow, bear in mind that stealing is illegal. Regardless of whether it is done offline or online, a crime is a crime. You might get jailed for that.
In fact, Google has started to bring AdSense fraudsters to court a few months ago. Some were jailed, and some others were fined heavily.
3. It is just too easy to earn more, legally
Let’s say you managed to cheat AdSense undetected. You don’t use clickbot or proxy or click-ring or paid clickers. You managed to somehow get the clicks from distributed IP. You don’t use pop-ups, spyware, adware. You are careful that your CTR does not exceed 10%. Still, your earning is limited. There is a cap you can’t cross, else you will invite unwanted attention to your account.
With so much effort to cover your traces, actually you will get better result if you concentrate your effort to improve the website.
Write more contents, submit articles, improve on your search engine optimisation, improve adsense placement, and you can get the same earning or even more. Sure it will take some time, but this is legitimate.
How to Get Banned from Google Adsense
With so many people ranting and screaming and crying that Google has disabled their adsense account, it’s really an interesting topic worthy to write about. You might be another one who just got the dreaded “invalid click” account closure email from Adsense team, and furious over it. Relax, mate. Not the end of the world, but it is definitely good to know the reason why you are banned. If you still have your account intact, read this, but as our Uncle Ferdy says: “Don’t try this at home.”
Keep in mind that these are HOW TO GET BANNED. In other words, this is a “DO NOT” list if you don’t want your adsense account to be disabled .
1. Ignore Adsense Program Policies & TOS
2. Click on your own ads, specially those you are “genuinely interested” in. Ask people to click on your ads: your friends, your family members, your relatives, your visitors, or even your dogs or your cats. Use proxies to avoid detection.
3. Participate in some form of click-ring. Click-rings are groups of people who gather with consensus to click each others’ ads. Most commonly used methods are Yahoo Groups, instant messenger, mail list, web forum, or specially written software.
4. Buy, write, or use click-bot software. Click-bot software will go around your site and click on your ads. Most of the times, these click-bots are using proxies to avoid detection.
5. Pay the Indian-clickers. These are the people whose main jobs are clicking on PPC advertisements and paid by the malicious publishers. Most of them are from developing countries like India or China.
6. “Invest” with websites that promises to deliver “adsense clicks” for your site. Whatever methods they are using, most likely it falls under one of the aboves.
7. Extra words to make your visitors to notice your ads. Write “Click here” or “Please support us” or “Visit our sponsors”. Anything other than Google-approved “sponsored links” or “advertisements”.
8. Put in as many ads as possible in every page. Put more than three units of the normal ads block, more than one unit of ads links, or more than one referral buttons for each adsense, adwords, and firefox; all in one page.
9. Use spyware to get traffics to your site. Spyware, adware, malware, or whatever it is called can force computer users to open your website everytime they start the computer. Or even better, use some kind of specially written software, toolbar, etc to display or click on your ads.
10. Use pop-ups on your website. Everytime your user open a page, pop-up another one, ideally with the smiley or the IQ Test advertisements.
11. Get as much un-targetted traffic as possible, for instance using the auto-surfing programmes to rotate the members around your site and other sites.
12. Put the adsense code in non-content pages: registration forms, term and condition, login page.
13. Have a competitor contextual ad on same page with adsense ads, for example Yahoo Publisher Network. Please note though that non-contextual ads, e.g. affiliate links or keyword-based ads are acceptable by google and won’t get you banned.
14. Get more than one adsense account. Maybe one for your dog-site, one for your cat-site, one for the v1agra pills, one for mp3 download, etc.
15. Put your adsense code in email the email, usenet, RSS, etc.
16. Tell everyone what is your CTR, your page impressions, etc. Telling people about your total earning, unfortunately, is allowed.
17. Put Google logo where you shouldn’t, and don’t put the logo where you should. In other word, ignore Google trademark.
18. Modify Adsense code as you see fit. Modify the layout, color, URL, will be well. Just anything other than copy-and-paste the code from Google.
19. And, this is important: if and when Google Adsense Team sends you email, ignore it.
20. Put adsense codes in the banned contents
* Excessive profanity
* Violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organization
* Hacking/cracking content
* Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
* Pornography, adult, or mature content
* Gambling or casino-related content
* Excessive advertising
* Any other content that promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others
* Pop-ups, pop-unders or exit windows that interfere with site navigation, obscure Google ads, change user preferences, or are for downloads. Other types of pop-ups, pop-unders, or exit windows may be allowed, provided that they do not exceed a combined total of 5 per user session
* Excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of web pages
* Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site’s search engine ranking, e.g., your site’s PageRank
* Incentives (monetary or point-based) to users or third-party beneficiaries for online activity including, but not limited to, clicking on ads or links, performing searches, surfing websites, reading emails, or completing surveys
* Sales or promotion of certain weapons, such as firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles
* Sales or promotion of beer or hard alcohol
* Sales or promotion of tobacco or tobacco-related products
* Sales or promotion of prescription drugs
* Sales or promotion of products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods
