I’ve had two Google Adsense ads on my blog Youth Leaders Academy for ages. They don’t bring in a lot of money, but they do contribute to covering the costs of my blog. I’d been thinking about getting rid of them and choosing some more ‘desirable’ ads myself, when suddenly I got a notice via email.
My account was being blocked by Google Adsense.
It was a short, standard email that didn’t give any reason why I was blocked, except for this generic ‘invalid activity’. So I searched online (yes, using Google – the irony!) and discovered that I wasn’t the only one who was blocked by far. It seems Google Adsense blocks sites on a regular basis and never, ever explains why.
Why I Was Blocked by Google Adsense: Invalid Activity
Invalid activity could mean a number of things according to Google itself:
But looking at this list, I knew I hadn’t done any of them. I’ve never participated in any illegal scheme to get more clicks, the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind! I’d just installed an upgrade of my WordPress Theme, so I may have clicked on an ad once to test it (which you shouldn’t do by the way, but it sometimes almost happens without thinking about it), but that couldn’t be it.
Request to Reinstate
All I could do was write to Google and deny the charges, requesting them to reinstate my account. You may wonder why I would go through this trouble if I’d thought about quitting myself. The thing is this: they block your payments, meaning whatever amount you’ve got they haven’t paid out yet, you can forget about. It wasn’t much in my case, about 50 Euros (65 U.S. dollars), but I wanted my money on principle. I’d earned it legally!
You’re supposed to demonstrate that you haven’t done what Google accuses you of. That’s kind of tough when
- You don’t know what you’re accused of and
- They’ve blocked access to your Adsense statistics as well.
It must have had something to do with suspicious clicks, but how to check these out without access to the statistics?
So I just wrote an email stating I had never engaged in any of these activities, listing them one by one, and that it had to be a mistake. I’d read online that you can only appeal once, so I really expected to be denied and lose my account and my money. Luckily, Google decided to accept my ‘explanation’ (How do you explain if you don’t know what you’re accused of?) and gracefully accepted me back.
It reminded me once more that you should never put your eggs in one basket, especially not if that basket is called Google.
Anyone else ever have the ‘pleasure’ of being blocked by Google Adsense?
Hariharakumar says
My entire Google account was once blocked including adsense but never reinstated. I lost almost $523 US dollars. I appealed many times to Google to reinstate my account but I never got any reply.
Rachel Blom says
That’s a lot of money. I’ve read stories like this when I was trying to figure out how to get reinstated. It’s unfair that you lose money you’ve already earned, no matter what it says in their user agreement! It makes me feel lucky, even though it’s a relatively small amount in my case.