Matt's reply (or denial) is useless to this conversation. I have a great deal of respect for Matt and his contributions to the SEO community but he's quite possibly the last person I would expect to confirm, or even give credence to a claim like this given his connection to Google.
Asking the ad department if they've been stealing money from thousands of publishers over the last several years? Of course they're going to deny, no matter the truth as confirming would essentially be an admission a very serious crime.
By this measure, the comment of every single person who says that they were cut off innocently is just as useless to this conversation. Are people going to admit that they thought they could click ads on their site endlessly through Tor proxies?
confirming would essentially be an admission a very serious crime.
Serious crime? It is actually a problem (there needs to be more competition in this space), but Google can tell any publisher to stuff it at any time. They don't need to have a reason. Now generally that doesn't make sense if they're making money on the relationship, but we know that in many cases they aren't -- that a lot of shady sites undermine the trust advertisers have in the platform.
That post reads like a complete fake, not least the absurd "don't be evil" nonsense. It reads like fan fiction, or rather hater fiction. Like someone got the ban hammer and is doing what they can to try to get some sort of amnesty.
A lot of people engage in click fraud. A lot of people completely break the advertising agreements (the ads that try to solicit accidental clicks, the apps and sites that implore you to click on ads to help support them, etc). These might seem fine in isolation -- Google makes lots of money and little guy just wants a bit of chump change -- but if it isn't controlled it seriously threatens the entire advertising model. One of the reasons Google has succeeded in a cutthroat industry is that they take measures to prevent and control this.
The people caught out will always claim innocence.
Google needs publishers. They aren't going to cut off their nose for a short-term gain. But for those scam sites and users, it is better to be rid of them.
Google needs publishers. They aren't going to cut off their nose for a short-term gain.
For the sake of argument, I'll take a contrary position (I agree that the post smells like it belongs on snopes.com).
They haven't faced a risk of losing publishers yet. There are plenty of them. IF publishers called BS on Google and quit playing Adsense with them, then they may be forced to take care of the publishers they have. But as it stands, they can very well get away with using publishers until it's time to pay up, then dismissing them without explanation.
I faced this kind of stuff from them as an advertiser. One of my apps throws a red flag every time I advertise it- then I have to wait for human intervention to review, and always without explanation of what I need to fix.
This went on for years- I modify an ad, the ad is banned until review. Every time the ad was allowed, after review, because I am not doing anything immoral.
I implored them to give me the benefit of the doubt, after all these years, and spot-check if they need to. Hell, my grocery story lets me check out my own groceries with only occasional 'audits.'
