# Google AdSense - Leak from former employee.



## MannDude (May 26, 2014)

Stumbled upon this just a bit ago, gave it a read, supposedly from a former Google employee. Figured it'd be worth sharing as it's likely relevant to the interest of some of us here. Source is at the bottom, just a pastebin doc, so take it for what it is.



> I am a former Google employee and I am writing this to leak information to the public of what I
> witnessed and took part in while being an employee. My position was to deal with AdSense accounts,
> more specifically the accounts of publishers (not advertisers). I was employed at Google for a period of
> several years in this capacity.
> ...


Source: http://pastebin.com/qh6Tta3h


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## wcypierre (May 26, 2014)

Interesting, interesting story indeed.


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## GIANT_CRAB (May 26, 2014)

I won't be surprised if this is true.


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## WebSearchingPro (May 26, 2014)

A class action lawsuit is on the way against Google also.



> ****************************************************************
> After speaking with legal counsel today and explaining the massive problems I have discovered within the Google Adsense Program, and the almost hopeless dilemma its publishers have been experiencing, I decided to request counsel pursue a legal remedy in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
> 
> I explained to counsel that the Google Adsense program is built upon a cloaked veil of deceptive, unscrupulous business practices and its employees exhibit an almost illegal, dishonest and fraudulent behavior when leveling its own form of justice against their advertising publishers. This is mainly done by withholding payment and terminating publisher accounts without so much of even a morsel of evidence of wrongdoing. Instead, the Google Adsense Team is known to issue these supposed one size fits all boilerplate email termination statements which banish a user for “posing a significant risk to the AdWords advertisers” or “your account poses a risk of generating invalid activity,” both of which completely lack any substance and would fail to meet even the most flimsiest preponderance of the evidence standards in the most lopsided of corporation friendly courtrooms. Not to mention, the appellate process appears to be decided before hand and publishers complain of an inadequate patchwork response system, which appears to only issue responses in the rarest instances.
> ...


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## wcypierre (May 26, 2014)

source?

EDIT: Source = http://adsenseclassactionlawsuit.wordpress.com/ which is like 3 years ago?


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## concerto49 (May 26, 2014)

http://www.cnet.com/au/news/new-lawsuit-accuses-google-of-adsense-fraud/


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## GreenHostBox (May 26, 2014)

This is very surprising news to hear especially that's coming from Google. Is Bing the next hype?  opcorn:


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## Lee (May 26, 2014)

I doubt there was intent to defraud on the part of Google, do you really think they would do this by enlisting x number of staff to carry it out without any fear that it would leak out knowing the implications? I don't think so.

It sounds more like a heavy handed approach to accounts where significant upwards revenue trends were spotted and rather than spend the time checking it the answer was to ban before payout to prevent having to later recover from potential click fraud, which is significant in itself.

Of course legitimate accounts would get caught and it was the general feeling years ago when this first came to light that it was more poor management of process than deliberate intent to withhold genuine funds from clients.


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## drmike (May 26, 2014)

This sounds 1000000% factual.  Saw these outcomes in mass years back and turned my back on outsourcing anything to Google.  When it comes to money, why trust a middleman with a black box that pays you randomly what they feel like with no granular details.  Mind you this is a company that has reports for reports and looks at the smallest details in everything, but can't provide proper accounting on click-stream info to a publisher.  Can't tell a publisher that certain content is yielding high pay and other content is low pay. Why? Cause they MAY misuse said info.  Wrong, if they do, advertisers see lack of ROI and refuse to spend so highly and the market self-corrects.

What is absent from this because Google isolates their departments, is how Google has monkeyed with search and the filter bubble to drive search visibility away from whoever they want, whenever they want and have masked it as freedom of speech via algorithms.  They've used this in conjunction with publisher bans and theft from publishers.

I have no likes left for Google or any of their large competitiors.  It's all about the corporate whoring and pocket stuffing. Those with morals and the big picture benevolence are long gone from Google.


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## Awmusic12635 (May 26, 2014)

Well I guess this explains why my adsense account is banned


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## GreenHostBox (May 26, 2014)

Fliphost said:


> Well I guess this explains why my adsense account is banned


Was your Adsense account legitimate with real traffic?


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## Awmusic12635 (May 26, 2014)

GreenHostBox said:


> Was your Adsense account legitimate with real traffic?


Yeah a few years ago I used to run a tech blog  / guide website. Used it on that. One day just boom banned. I was decently close to hitting the payout period as well.


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## BlackoutIsHere (May 26, 2014)

Fliphost said:


> Well I guess this explains why my adsense account is banned


Yeah mine was banned shortly before the first payout as well.  Really unfortunate if this is true.


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## notFound (May 28, 2014)

Just noticed this, seems very likely that this is true. Around that time, I was heavily using Adsense and I got banned after my first payout, which was pretty large. I can't remember what the reason was but I knew it wasn't factual and didn't make sense.


Not surprised at all.


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## KuJoe (May 28, 2014)

I still get a check from Adsense a few times and year and I honestly have no idea why. I would look into it but then they might close my account if they see activity on it.


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## hcjake (May 28, 2014)

I guess I've been lucky. I get an adsense payout about every 2 months, never had any issues and I've been publishing ads since May of 2008.


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## raindog308 (May 30, 2014)

hcjake said:


> I guess I've been lucky. I get an adsense payout about every 2 months, never had any issues and I've been publishing ads since May of 2008.


Really? I've never been able to get more than $100 about once every 9 months.

Google used to have "parked domains" where you could park your unused domains with them. Oddly, I was getting $100 every 3-4 months with that - no idea why. They cancelled that program.

My payouts really make zero sense...and don't really correspond to Analytics. Clicks are worth seemingly random amounts...and of course, I have no way of auditing/verifying their data.

Now that I think of it...it'd be cool if there was a Javascript wrapper around Google's Javascript that recorded clicks. Otherwise, you're taking Google's word for it.


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## BlackoutIsHere (May 30, 2014)

raindog308 said:


> Now that I think of it...it'd be cool if there was a Javascript wrapper around Google's Javascript that recorded clicks. Otherwise, you're taking Google's word for it.


I'm sure that would instantly be classified as "cheating" or "tampering" and get you banned.


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