Tuesday, November 08, 2005

It's Over

I am mad at Google.

I have always been a lover of all things Google. My dream in life is to finally turn up on a Google search. But then Google was mean to me, and now we are fighting.

Google closed my AdSense account due to "invalid clicks."

I must admit, I am guilty of occasionally clicking on my own ads, which is illegal, but I only click on the ones that actually interest me - like yesterday with the whole "Mind like a Steel Trap" thing. And I don't encourage people to click on my ads - nowhere on my site did it say "Click Here" or any of the other illegal statements. I had never even mentioned having AdSense until yesterday, and I only mentioned it cause it was hilarious that they actually had an ad called "Mind Like a Steel Trap".

And not only did they turn off my account (although they continued to broadcast ads there all day long, so now I have deleted their code from my template), but "The earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected advertisers." First of all, I seriously doubt the advertisers were affected in any way other than a positive one seeing as how half of the stuff I ever took the time to click on genuinely interested me and I ended up signing up for something. Second of all, I hope the 100 or so advertisers that were clicked on during my time with AdSense enjoy their respective shares of the 20 bucks or so that was accrued. What's that, like five cents each?

So what can I do? I have sent them a strongly worded letter about how annoying they are, which I don't expect to result in anything cause if they can't even register me for a search through their search engine, they definitely can't respond to an email with anything but a computer generated response.

For now I will start researching alternatives to AdSense - I've seen a few other programs on other sites, and I may sign up for "Donate" on Amazon.com, although I feel better making money publishing ads rather then having readers contribute their own money to the cause.

1 comment:

Alison at Wardrobe Oxygen said...

I must say I have clicked on my ads before when I see something appealing to me - but I still haven't made even a dollar from my ads. That SUCKS! I know friends who have emailed others to come visit sites and click on ads and they haven't been shut down. Boo on Google

(and thanks for linking me!)