michael lambe

Take a look at this page. Notice anything missing? Any glaring spaces? Gaping holes?

The ads have gone. And not by choice. Yesterday I received a mail from Google Adsense that read like this:

Hello Michael Lambe,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage
our advertisers in the future, we have decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realise the inconvenience that this may cause you and we thank you in
advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions that we
have taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more
information by visiting

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en_GB.

Yours sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

So that was a bit upsetting. Not just because of the lack of information as to why my humble sites are such a threat but well…you see the timing couldn’t be worse. For months now the adsense program has been producing very little because my blog at Deep Kyoto simply isn’t getting enough visitors (you need A LOT). However, from February excerpts from my blog are going to be published monthly in Kyoto Visitors Guide (readership 15,000) so I was expecting something of a surge of interest and along with it some actual income. With only a couple days to go, suddenly the source of said projected income is denied me.

Now you can appeal this decision, so I did immediately – in a panic (never the best way to do things) but having done so I received no confirmation email from adsense that they received my appeal. When this happens you are supposed to resend your appeal – perhaps you haven’t written your email address correctly? So I did. Double checked my email address.

Nothing.

I wonder if they got it? I don’t want to send too many appeals – there’s a danger of annoying them by being overly spammer-like. But anyway I learned on this site that only 1% (ONE PER CENT!) of appeals actually succeed. The likely reason for the disabling of my account is illegitimate ad-clicks (i.e. someone deliberately clicking on all the ads in order to gain ad revenue – or to deliberately get me blacklisted from the adsense system)… and the onus is on me to prove I or someone connected to me am not responsible. Very difficult to prove really… So it doesn’t look good. Of course there are alternatives to adsense but I feel like someone summarily expelled from school or dishonourably discharged from the army… DISHONOURED. I want another chance to prove myself and clear my good name. So I shall wait another 24 hours and then appeal again in a less panicky sort of way. Ho hum.

And if that falls on deaf ears (blind eyes?)… you may be seeing a new ad-system on these pages soon.

Update: Haven’t found a good alternative yet but until I do, I shall fill the space with pro bono ads like the one below.