Google Blogoscoped

Forum

Wow: Getting Banned By Google for Being Dugg (Digged)!

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

Monday, November 20, 2006
17 years ago2,529 views

This user was apparently banned for "unusual activity" after, well being Dugg too often and having thus many more impressions without his ads being clicked as far as I understand. Google Adsense banned him and does not reply to attempts to contact them.

http://blog.o7c.net/2006/11/20/if-you-digg-deep-enough-you-hit-google/

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

It's a more general symptom of automation.

Google doesn't want to examine each situation individually, in person, because of cost. So they draw up algorithms for what they consider to be "normal", and kick out everyone whose account activity does not fall within a certain distance from "normal".

Clearly this is unjust. Also, some of the most interesting and important sites are those that sit outside of the bland middle.

But no company can afford to automate much less than its competitors. Looking at each case individually is very expensive.

Travis Harris [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I commented there :

When impressions increase and clicks do not, the advertisers see a decrease in their conversion rates. This looks very bad for the agency(Google) so they are forced to cut that publisher. That said, you would think that Google, being a company of innovative change would come up with an adjusted conversion rate or something similar.
I agree, it is wrong to ban you for being a small guy that is becoming successful. They are here to solve problems… not to “make them go away”

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I agree with Travis on this this..

"They are here to solve problems… not to “make them go away”"

Google is punishing the small man for being successful in a small way and that itself is not the right way to go. In terms of automated algorithms that switch things off, it rather should be an alert system that actually triggers human intervention on the fly. In this way Google can diagnose these events in real time, as its happening and learn more.

== >> : "Looking at each case individually is very expensive"

Roger , do you have cost vs profit to backup your statement ?? True value is creation is customer loyalty. I alwasy keep saying this. If google keeps muckin up their users, then they will revolt and stop using adsense.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

pd: I don't have hard data for this specific situation, but you can look at typical tech support costs. A straightforward "tech support incident" might cost $50 to resolve, so you can see why PayPal, eBay, Yahoo, Google etc prefer to avoid one-to-one support whenever possible.

True value is creation of customer loyalty, as you say. But Google can get away with alienating 0.1% of their users if they can cheaply keep the other 99.9% loyal.

I'm not saying that this is a good situation; just that it doesn't surprise me. All people can do is vote with their feet, and move to an alternative ad company.

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Increase of impressions and clicks? Not at all!
A study claimed that the majority of the Digg users are blind to AdSense
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006350.html

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I can confirm what Tom says. Every time one of my posts gets on digg's frontpage, CTR drops. digg users are very proud of this combination: Firefox + AdBlock + Filterset.g

Forum home

Advertisement

 
Blog  |  Forum     more >> Archive | Feed | Google's blogs | About
Advertisement

 

This site unofficially covers Google™ and more with some rights reserved. Join our forum!