How to get banned from Google Adsense

Google Adsense would have to be the best thing around for small and large webmasters. It is so easy to sign up and then display the Adsense code you could be earning money from clicks in a matter of minutes! The problem is, it is also easy to throw all that away by being banned by Google Adsense for not following their Program Policies.

Some people have what they think are great ideas for tricking their way into more Adsense income, but the sad truth is that Google has ways of finding fraud, and if you are caught they will not hesitate to ban you AND keep all the money you have earned so far. With a payment cycle of 3 months they have plenty of time to catch out dishonest webmasters.

So, how to get banned?

The number one reason is clicking on your own ads.

You may say 'But I am clicking on ads that I am interested in, isn't that what the advertiser wants?', or 'They will never find out'. Google's policy is that you are not allowed to click on the ads on your own pages for any reason whatsoever. Period. If you go against that policy you will be found out and banned, no questions asked.

The reason - Google has no way of knowing your motives for clicking, so they have a blanket ban on it.

Join a 'Click Ring' or 'Traffic Exchange'. Keep away from these like the plague. A Click Ring is where a group of webmasters get together and agree to click on each other's ads. This is a bad thing. It will get you banned. A Traffic Exchange is a scheme that purports to send more traffic to your site. This will not only get you banned, these exchanges will only send you low quality traffic anyway (i.e people who don't click on ads!).

The reason - Click Rings only exist to bring clicks, not genuine customers which will be of benefit to the advertisers. Traffic Exchanges artificially inflate visitor numbers which will result in advertisers who pay per impression paying more for unqualified traffic.

Get your friends and family to click on ads. Google won't find out will they? Wrong. Google has in place sophisticated systems to deal with click fraud. They examine where clicks are coming from (geographically and by IP), whether those clicks result in a conversion for the advertiser, how many pages were viewed as a result of the clicks and the time of day of clicks. Even if Google is suspicious of a pattern of clicks, they will ban you.

The reason - Google need to firstly look after their advertisers. If the integrity of the Adsense program is compromised in any way, advertisers will not trust Adsense and thus leave. In the long term this would affect Google's earnings and in turn your earnings. Google needs to keep a careful eye on click fraud.

Put the words 'Click Here' or 'Visit our Sponsors!' or anything else to encourage people to click on ads, such as borders or pictures.

Although this may get you lots of clicks this is a definite no-no when it comes to Adsense! Make sure you don't put any extra incentives on the page for people to click the ads. Google gives you the option of selecting border, background and font colors so as to highlight or blend in the ads in the Adsense code itself. No other changes are permitted.

The reason - Google's policy is for every Adsense block to have an equal chance to be clicked. Adsense ads should be part of the natural flow of a page. Google does not want webmasters to try and outdo each other with garish displays drawing attention to ads.

Put other contextual advertising on your pages.

If you put Yahoo Publisher Network or MSN ADcenter ads (or any other brand of contextual advertising) on the same page as your google ads, you will get banned.

The reason - Google allows only Adsense ads by themselves. This is a specific policy and is fair so as not to clutter up pages with competing ad services, thus diluting the revenue. I have seen pages with so many ads it is nearly impossible to know what the content is!