Adsense banned for critical cartoon.
OK heres a simple summary of what happened for all who want to know. And yes that button is there for a reason.. 
I have been doing Adsense publishing for 18months without any problems. I produce sites that in the main have some value.
I have always also done cartoons for fun and it seemed logical that doing a cartoon about seo and adsense would be fun. Matt Cutts of Google had seen a few doodles I had done of him and always said that my original effort looked a bit wierd. So it seemed obvious that he would make a good subject of my first seo cartoon strip.
The strip portrayed Matt as a spam fighting super hero stopping two well known uk spammers and all in all was positive to him. It was picked up on Threadwatch and even Matt Cutts commented that it was ‘a hoot’.
However less than 30 minutes later i got the dreaded email telling me my account had been banned for ‘invalid clicks’. I have NEVER CLICKED ON MY OWN ADS so I appealed.
36 hours later Google have denied my appeal and any further appeals.
They keep my money, all my sites are now without revenue streams and there is nothing anyone can do. Unless you have serious clickfraud detection and prevention in place dont expect that it couldnt happen to you…
If its a coincidence its a very spooky one……
September 12th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
That is a bit odd. I love the auto-reply emails they send out for any query. To every general question, there’s a general answer.
That’s a shame that you’ve lost your Google Adsense account. Why not try for YPN?
- Clint
September 12th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
EXACT same thing happened to me, I was earning around 10$ a day for serveral months, I NEVER clicked my own ads, I NEVER spammed my sites, I know the TOS very well and I never violated any of them. I got the exact two same emails you got. Word for word. It was the same Ban Notification letter and the same Appeal Denial letter. Rediculous if you ask me.
September 12th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Welcome to the club. I did not do any cartoons about any of the Google team, but I was banned for “clicking my own ads,” although I hadnt ever clicked any of my own ads. I appealed as well, and was denied, they kepy my money, even the money from the previous months because my payments were on hold.
September 12th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
It’s not a coincidence. You’re in violation of their terms, making money of scraped sites. Pfft. Draw more attention to yourself.
September 12th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
I wonder if the fault lies with Google, or did you piss off some spammers somewhere? Given what happened to Blue Security I wouldn’t be surprised that the spammers didn’t frame you.
September 13th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Thanks TheDude…. what evidence do you have that I have any scraped sites?
September 13th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Clint - Im UK based so cant do YPN
September 13th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Enricopulatzo,
Yup your probably right… but it doesnt make as good a blog post
September 19th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Hey, SEOidiot, it apparently didn’t have to be Matt or anyone else who didn’t like the cartoon… anyone at all could have gotten you banned. For all you know it was a girl who had a crush on Matt. :p
http://digg.com/business_finance/Get_Any_Competitors_Adsense_Account_Banned_Permanently