Gaurav Gombar

Its very rare that forwarded SMSes make any sense but this one is exceptional. I got this one few days back.

Don’t run ahead of God, let Him direct your steps,
He has plans & He has His time,
God’s clock is never late nor early,
It always strikes on time

I just had a recording session with Ayushmann of Big 92.7 FM for Big Sawaal which will be aired tomorrow. Big Sawaal is a question that Ayushmaan & Rajeshwari Sachdev Badola on Big Chai ask the listeners of Big FM in Delhi. The question is taken from one of the listeners only.

I called them today morning on my way to office and immediately my call got connected. They took a brief about what my question is. They liked it and agreed to air it for tomorrow and told me that we would record the question after 11 today.

To listen to my question, you can tune into Big 92.7 FM (Delhi) tomorrow from 7 am to 8 am. I should be interesting to listen as this is quite a different question as compared to ones which have been previously on air.

The title of post might seem depressing to you but that is what I currently feel. I had appealed against closing of adsense account and within 24 hours I got a reply from Google Adsense Team :

After receiving your response, we re-reviewed your account data thoroughly. We have reconfirmed that invalid clicks were generated on the ads on your site in violation of our Terms and Conditions and program policies.

While searching on net I found few links where few people have got their accounts enabled after putting a second appeal. Though not guilty but convicted by Google for no fault of mine is little disturbing. I wrote back to them and appealing against the closure of my account and stating :

I had noticed on 29th December 2006 that my there was a sudden increase in my earnings and clicks and it was not matching with the sum of all my channels earnings & clicks. I got suspicion that someone is doing something wrong and I immediately wrote to Adsense Team and got a reply with subject Re: [#97566290] Earning with AdSense that my data is being recorded accurately.

If you go through my records you will find that prior to 28th Dec. 2006 or so, the total of my channel earnings always matched up with my total earnings on each day and since the time I notified you and the day my adsense was disabled my total earnings was always greater than channel earnings. I reckon that some one has played a trick and try to put my adsense code onto some other website and started clicking the ads from thereon. If you check the records I am sure you would find that the clicks were generated from some other website and not from my sites.

I have never encouraged anyone to click on ads nor I have clicked ever on my ads to generate illegal revenue. I have worked very hard over a period of time to generate whatever revenue that I have been able to generate.

I have read about similar cases on web about Adsense accounts getting disabled and it seems like trying to build income from Adsense is very unsafe bet - since anyone can go to any website that features Google ads and start clicking on ads non-stop for a few hours and will have their AdSense account disbaled. So any malicious user can make bring someone’s source of legitimate revenue down. Can you please let me know how one can deal with such issue? Do you have any tips on how to avoid such cases happen in the future? As far as I can see, there is nothing a publisher can do about protecting themselves from this evil. Can you?

Please help me to prove my innocence - let me know if I can assist with providing you with information, logs or whatever you ask for.

I am not at all interested in the amount of money that was earned via the illegal activity /clicks of some individual, you can deduct whatever amount you find was done through that way and please consider my appeal for enabling adsense account.

Thank you for your consideration.

Two days have passed since I sent an email to adsense-adclicks-appeal@google.com but I have got no response from them. I have tried my best to convince them but I guess to take care of click fraud, Google will sometime make mistake of banning/penalising innocent people. I know one can’t fight Google and can’t enforce anything on them as they have kind of become next to God on web.

At the moment it seems that I may have lost this battle but War is still on to keep my sites up and running and survive without Adsense.

As I checked my mail today, I was quite shocked to find that my Adsense account has been disabled for invalid clicks and/or impressions that have generated on the Google ads on my site. I was shocked not because I will lose money that I have earned in last month or so and the money that I could have earned but because inspite of intimating Adsense Team on 29th December 2006 about sudden increase in earnings & clicks and there reply further that everything is fine, they have shut my account now.

I wrote to them that I find that my total earnings and clicks for last 2 days have increased quite dramtically and I was suspicious as neither I have made any changes to placement of ads nor I have placed ads on any new site. I also stated that I have channels for all websites where I have placed ads and the total earnings is lot more than the sum of my channel earnings and clicks which made me suspicion, so I decided to write them.

The whole thing implies that someone stole my adsense code and published it to some unknown site and started clicking on those ads which actually caused invalid clicks. I remebered I read a blog post - Be An Adsense Detective: Find If Someone Else is Using Your Adsense ID by Amit Aggarwal [Digital Inspiration] which actually made me write to them. But I could not find the way out how to find who is actually doing this & why and how to stop that person, so I simply wrote to Adsense Team

I got a reply from them stating we assure you that your data is being recorded accurately. Inspite of notifying them about this I find my Adsense have been disabled.

Though I have taken up the case and appealed to Adsense Team that I am not at all responsible for invalid clicks or any kind of illegal activity for generation of revenue using Adsense. I am not sure what will happen next as Google Adsense Team will decide on the issue and pass on the judgement.

The year 2007 for me have started on a busy note as load at work has increased and also some pending things from previous year have come up. Though its shaping up quite well and hopefully there will be major changes in my life and some good news too is on way for which I have been waiting quite patiently. All this have made me not blog as frequently as I would like to. I will be updating once in a while till things settle down and I can carry on from where I left last year.