Suspended by Adsense

[lazer]

Hi all

My forum has been suspended (not closed) by Adsense. We made changes and went back to them with an appeal but they have come back and said that there are still violations...We are a fairly large forum, with over 900,000 posts (Tech Support) and rely on the income from Adsense.

The violation that was cited (the link we were provided with) was a link posted, to a movie sharing site that the mods must have missed - 3 years ago. We have a stringent posting policy, so it is rare for this type of content to get onto the boards, and stay there.

We added a lot (over 60) of censor items and stopped ad serving on a particular forum that could be prone to having possibly dodgy links posted - an anti-virus fixing forum, where users post their logs.

My questions to you guys...

• Does anyone know how to properly assess the outstanding violations on such a large forum?
• As we are a fairly good Adsense earner, even though we don't have an account manager, is there a way to contact them and get more information?
• Is there a way for Google to provide further details, without lodging another appeal?
• Is there a paid service (for instance) that could look through the whole site and make recommendations as to why the violations are taking place?

It would be different if we were a borderline site, but we don't allow anything that would remotely put us in violation of these conditions...at least, that's what we thought.

I fully accept that if there are policies in place then they need to be adhered to. It's just knowing where the heck to start, in trying to find the violations?

Thanks.

 

[TheBigK]

This may not be related but I'd recommend use this opportunity to setup your own sales team and start contacting direct advertisers. You'll earn a lot [repeat L-O-T] more from direct advertisers.

 

[lazer]

This may not be related but I'd recommend use this opportunity to setup your own sales team and start contacting direct advertisers. You'll earn a lot [repeat L-O-T] more from direct advertisers.

Thanks TheBigK, I would like to see if we can get the GA thing resolved first. I will definitely consider that if we cannot get the ads re-enabled.

 

[AzzidReign]

What was the exact violation reason? What did you did with that post/thread?

Something I've seen with friends is that if the URL still exists, despite giving an error that thread no longer exists, but the wording is still in the URL, it is still a violation. Stupid, I know. So you may need to do a rewrite and move it to a thread (if it was a whole thread) that does not violate their TOS.

 

[DRE]

Happens all the time. Just change your domain name and put ads up later. Google doesn't block your entire site as far as what you got on your database or content. They only block your domain.

 

[lazer]

Hi AzzidReign. The exact violation reason was "Copyright" and the thread contained one link to a dodgy movie download site. We hard deleted the thread, so when you go to the URL you are met with an error page "The requested thread could not be found." Now the thread had been perma-deleted, I guess we can't remove the URL? Also, I'm guessing (again, guessing!) that it may not be the only thing they are unhappy with.

 

[Veer]

Hi AzzidReign. The exact violation reason was "Copyright" and the thread contained one link to a dodgy movie download site. We hard deleted the thread, so when you go to the URL you are met with an error page "The requested thread could not be found." Now the thread had been perma-deleted, I guess we can't remove the URL? Also, I'm guessing (again, guessing!) that it may not be the only thing they are unhappy with.

I guess, you'll need to check your entire site, and if there are similar threads, clean all of them.

 

[AzzidReign]

Hi AzzidReign. The exact violation reason was "Copyright" and the thread contained one link to a dodgy movie download site. We hard deleted the thread, so when you go to the URL you are met with an error page "The requested thread could not be found." Now the thread had been perma-deleted, I guess we can't remove the URL? Also, I'm guessing (again, guessing!) that it may not be the only thing they are unhappy with.

Yeah, you'll have to go looking for other movies that may have been added to your site. I would start by looking at the user that posted it and see if he/she posted more.

Go to google and type in "site:[yoururl.com] [insert search term]". So you can search for movies, .rar's (maybe), or even the same site that the person had linked to (i.e. rapidshare, megaupload, etc. (I know megaupload is down, but you get the point)).

 

[CTXMedia]

Login to Adsense then go here - https://support.google.com/adsense/ - and click the Contact Us link on the top navigation bar. You should get a notice telling you you quality for direct support (if your account qualifies) - then just select the options and email them your questions about to best resolve the issue and get your account re-activated.

Good luck,
Shaun

 

[woostar]

I used to own a few forums with tens of millions of posts and got warnings from Google all the time. I think we only got suspended once (for 24 hours) and that was because the page in question was moved rather than deleted (hence adsense was still on that page). When we were suspended it was over NSFW (non family friendly) content posted by a user. When you appeal you have to tell them how you remedied the problem and how you will stop it happening in future. For us it was as simple as going to google and typing site:domain.com "sexual expletive keywords" and then deleting any offensive contents. We now have a keyword filter built into our forum that alerts us when certain things are posted, but generally you "should" get a warning first from Google before any further action. Google won't really entertain you (apart from the adsense placement suggestions and tune ups they email you about) unless you're getting 20+ million pageviews a month. If you are a good earner with more quality content than 'crap' I wouldn't worry too much.

My main advice would be to type various keywords into google and have look at what's on your site:
site:yourdomain.com "keyword"

Hope you get it sorted out

 

[Luke F]

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/adsense-crisis.59043/page-2#post-629720

 

[lazer]

Login to Adsense then go here - https://support.google.com/adsense/ - and click the Contact Us link on the top navigation bar. You should get a notice telling you you quality for direct support (if your account qualifies) - then just select the options and email them your questions about to best resolve the issue and get your account re-activated.

Good luck,
Shaun

Thanks Shaun, the only problem is that for Policy Violation, you are always directed to the appeal form, not a free-form box where I can just ask "Please tell me where we are violating the terms and we will immediately remove the content".

 

[lazer]

I used to own a few forums with tens of millions of posts and got warnings from Google all the time. I think we only got suspended once (for 24 hours) and that was because the page in question was moved rather than deleted (hence adsense was still on that page). When we were suspended it was over NSFW (non family friendly) content posted by a user. When you appeal you have to tell them how you remedied the problem and how you will stop it happening in future. For us it was as simple as going to google and typing site:domain.com "sexual expletive keywords" and then deleting any offensive contents. We now have a keyword filter built into our forum that alerts us when certain things are posted, but generally you "should" get a warning first from Google before any further action. Google won't really entertain you (apart from the adsense placement suggestions and tune ups they email you about) unless you're getting 20+ million pageviews a month. If you are a good earner with more quality content than 'crap' I wouldn't worry too much.

My main advice would be to type various keywords into google and have look at what's on your site:
site:yourdomain.com "keyword"

Hope you get it sorted out

Wow, thanks mate. We have tried the "keyword" approach but when you don't know what you're looking for, you don't know what to search for...

 

[CTXMedia]

Anything in Webmaster Tools?

 

[lazer]

Anything in Webmaster Tools?

Apparently Adsense is a different part of Google..a different "company" if you like...

 

[CTXMedia]

Apparently Adsense is a different part of Google..a different "company" if you like...

Sure, I've just had notices in WMT before about content and wondered if there was anything related in there. Probably not - straws - cluthing ...

 

[creativepart]

This happened to us -- well, we just got a warning and a chance to fix the problem. We have 5+ million posts, so if you think 900,000 is tough try over 5 mil. They objected to nothing more than a photo of a girl in a bikini. She wasn't naked or doing anything. Just a girl, a model, on a beach in a bikini. They said the image centered on her breasts.

We did a LOT of image searching, made our off-topic forum for logged in members only. Contacted Adsense and they marked the warning "settled." And we've not heard back from them for over a month now.

If I were you, I'd look for terms like crack, warez, pirate, download, and even movie etc. Try to think like a bored Google employee searching for illegal downloads and look for terms that would be used by those kind of pirate sites.

 

[CTXMedia]

Actually, along those lines - have you used the ACP attachment viewer to check recent image uploads to see if there's anything dodgy there?

 

[AndyB]

Yesterday I added a new resource to help combat the problem where hot linked images are changed. My add-on is called Convert Image and it converts hot linked images immediately to attachments.

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/convert-image.2521/

 

[CreationNation]

I have also suffered this and been denied twice on my appeals. I have almost 9 million posts on my site and there's no way I'm going to find any and all violations that may exist. I try to keep a clean site but it seems the Google machine is really getting overbearing on what they allow or not (images of bikini clad women where the photo centers on their chest I've heard is one type of violation!?). I was with Adsense for 7 or so years and the initial "violation" they got me for was a post from 2006. I deleted within minutes but it didn't matter to them, and I tried to word my appeal just right but still no change.

So, I'm working on trying to get direct sales going. Google has too much control and this is happening to a lot of forum owners lately. I won't want to be at the mercy of their "say-so" no matter how easy it was earning with them.