I run Google Adsense on my other blog – that safarisuit.com one to try and cover the cost of hosting. There’s been some changes with Adsense lately, one of them being that I have to tie that account to a Google account. Fair enough I thought, I’ve got a Google account, I’ll match them up. Except I can’t.
The message I received when trying to combine was not very helpful, ie “A user with the email you specified already exists
Please select a different Google Account login to access this account.”
After a bit of digging I found out that my existing Google account had been banned from running Adsense. I vaguely remember running Adsense on this blog briefly and I took it off. I’m a good girl though and never clicked on my own ads – a no-no in Google’s eyes. This is part of the email they sent me with the news:
Thank you for providing us with additional information. However, after thoroughly reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into consideration, we have re-confirmed that your account poses a significant risk to our advertisers. For this reason, we are unable to reinstate your account. Thank you for your understanding.
Actually I do not understand. What’s a significant risk? I run a personal blog. How’s this a risk? Surely some more information would not go astray, but Google wiggle out of this by saying they cannot let publishers know any information because of their proprietary system.
I’m not alone on this. The exact same thing happened to Ronni Bennett of Time Goes By recently and I’m sure we’re not alone.
Methinks it’s time to look around for advertisers who do not have such ambiguous emails and actually want to help their customers.
Oh, I knew there was a reason I was flying beneath the google radar by not attempting to make any money from my blog (besides the fact that my six readers probably wouldn’t click, anyway)!
Ah bureaucracy, where would you be without it? (Probably a great deal better off)
You’re right, Jen. It’s not just you and me. When the banned me from AdSense a few months, I spent some time checking around the web and there are many of us who, like you, followed the rules and whose accounts were canceled without explanation except that “significant risk to advertisers” line. There may be tens of thousands of us.
I keep wondering why there isn’t a larger outcry (except that Google is the monster that’s eating the internet). When they ban an AdSense account, they also confiscate any money owed you. With all the banned accounts, this must be a significant amount of money.
Interesting business operation, isn’t it: “Let’s just ban some AdSense accounts today and stick their money in our own account.”
Bastards…
This makes me really mad…
Sorry this happened to you…seems like a scam operation to me.
Love the photo of you guys playing your music!!!!!!