Darren Straight’s Blog

Benjamin Cohen, the former teenaged dot.com millionaire, has run into a problem as he tries to make his next million: Google won’t pay him for ads run on his website

This story sounds exactly like what happened to me and loads of other people on the web I know who are honest people that do not click there own ad’s and got banned from Google AdSense:

From day one, I integrated Google AdSense adverts on to PinkNews.co.uk. It instantly provided advertising that was both relevant to my readers and that fitted into the context of the website. In addition, I was able to weed out advertisers that I didn’t want my brand to be associated with, such as pornography and dating.

Sure enough, a couple of months later, a cheque for a couple of hundred pounds arrived from Google, which was duly banked and the funds cleared. So far, so good.

But a couple of days later, I was informed by e-mail that my AdSense account had been terminated due to “click fraud”, and that I would receive no further payments and be unable to use Google’s advertising products again.

After a number of e-mails to Google without replies and no response from their press office, I decided to cut my losses and concentrate on selling advertising direct to clients, thereby bypassing Google’s system.

Then a few months ago, I got chatting about my experiences with Google’s AdSense product with some friends in the industry and it became apparent that the false allegations of fraud were not unique to my business. I also learnt that some advertisers claim that money they spent on “fraudulent clicks” was never returned to them.

In order to test Google out, I signed up to Google AdSense once again. I was accepted, despite the fact that they had previously told me in no uncertain terms to never use their products again. I wrote to them to make sure that my site would meet their admission criteria. Trinh, from the American based AdSense team, checked us out and said that we were approved for the ads.

A couple of hundred dollars’ worth of revenue later, once again an e-mail from Google appeared in my inbox. It told me: “It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

“A publisher’s site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including but not limited to clicks generated by:

“a publisher on his own web pages; a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads; automated clicking programs or any other deceptive software; a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason.

“Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms and Conditions and program polices.

“Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment. The earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected advertisers.”

Now let’s be clear: I informed staff not to click on the Google ads, or indeed any other adverts on our site. We do not encourage others to click on the adverts, we do not run automated clicking programs nor had we altered any portion of the advertising code.

So seeking some sort of clarification from Google of which particular heinous offence our site was accused of committing, I wrote to the AdSense team asking them to explain what had happened.

In what I believe to be an automated reply, I was informed: “As you know, Google treats instances of invalid clicks very seriously. By disabling your account, we feel that we have taken the necessary measures to ensure that invalid clicks will not continue to occur on your site. Due to the proprietary nature of our monitoring system, we’re not able to disclose any specific details of these clicks.” I was also given the opportunity to appeal this decision but reminded that, “Google reserves sole discretion in considering whether to take any action on an appeal”.

By refusing to give details of the clicks involved, it was hardly going to be an easy job to explain why I felt that their decision was reached in error. However, I gave it a shot, explaining that: ” We do not click on our own adverts, we just wouldn’t have time. The Google AdSense revenue constitutes a tiny fraction of our revenue.

“In addition, you have provided no evidence of IP addresses of the relevant clicks, so I cannot double check that they were not clicked on by a member of staff by accident. All staff are however informed not to click on adverts displayed sold either by us or by agencies so as not to distort the click through ratio we achieve.”

As we suspected would be the case, Google denied the appeal. They said: “We understand that you wish to receive specific information regarding the invalid clicks we observed on your account. However, due to the proprietary nature of our algorithm, we cannot disclose any details about how our monitoring technology works or what specifics we found on your account.

“Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further participation in Google AdSense. We appreciate your understanding.”

This left a number of questions in need of answers. Such as whether the money earned by PinkNews.co.uk was returned to the advertisers concerned. On this, Google was, at best, ambivalent: “Unfortunately, due to our confidentiality restrictions”, ah, those again, “we cannot provide you with a written declaration that the remaining earnings of your account will be returned to the affected advertisers.

“However, please be assured that the affected advertisers will be properly refunded in this way.” Hardly reassuring at all, really.

Even most calls to its press office are left unanswered. Google, as a virtual company, is largely uncontactable, and judging by this instance, pretty much unaccountable as well.

In particular, I am concerned at the fact that both advertisers and syndication partners are denied the right to audit the figures produced by Google. All you are provided is an average cost per click figure, together with the total revenue for the day.

Via: TimesOnline | Digg

I must say I find this kind of funny.

Congrats to the team who made Writely for getting acquired by Google. They built it in .NET. It used to be uncool to startup a company with Microsoft technologies, but I’ve seen more and more .NET stuff being done in the Valley. Who’s next?

Via: Robert Scoble

Just found a Blog post titled “Google’s Secrets Exposed” posted by Rick Segal on his Blog, and I must say thank you Rick for telling me about that Google Video with Seth Godin in it speaking to Google about its success.

Here’s a very good use of 48 minutes.

Seth Godin spoke to Google and, in 48 minutes, pretty much gave the talk every company of any size offering any  product or service should watch.

There is a pretty interesting moment that struck a cord with me.

Seth, in the video, talks about a Google shirt he wore in a NYC market. A lady selling peaches fawned all over him talking to him about how she loves Google, Google is her life.

Years ago, I was on vacation in Stockholm visiting the VASA museum. I was wearing my Microsoft developer relations coat with my Windows NT polo shirt. Yeah, I was geek pathetic, leave that aside.  A women comes up to my wife and I and says “Do you work for Microsoft?” Why yes I do, I say proudly.  She responds with a rant about not getting her Word upgrade and some other problem she was having with a support question.  Before my wife had a chance to grab her by the throat, I politely took her name/number (no email!) and promised somebody from the local office would call.

Slightly different times, slightly different issues but in end: Brand.

Watch the video, here. It is a great use of your time.

[Memo to Robert Scoble: Tell HR to make this mandatory viewing for all of MSFT.]

Via: Rick Segal’s Blog

Do you have what it takes to break the Google addiction?

Watch the college video here.

Looks like Microsoft isn’t quite yet finished with search technology as a major release is expected in 6 months time, read below for more information.

Microsoft says better than Google soon
Wed Mar 1, 2006 4:18 PM ET
By David Lawsky
PARIS (Reuters) - Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe, its European president said on Wednesday.

“What we’re saying is that in six months’ time we’ll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google,” said Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

“The quality of our search and the relevance of our search from a solution perspective to the consumer will be more relevant,” he told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit.

But being good is not enough to win the hearts and minds of consumers already dedicated to another standard.

U.S. courts and the European Commission found Microsoft countered that problem by trying to kill off Netscape’s browser and RealNetworks audiovisual software by bundling its competing code into Windows, violating antitrust laws.

But bundling would find little purchase against Google because it lives insulated from Microsoft on the Web, unlike other applications that were easy game for the software giant as they perched directly on Windows.

Holloway said that the company has no plans to integrate its search engine into Vista, the new Microsoft Windows operating system set to replace Windows XP later this year or early next year

TWICE AS GOOD

“Should we add a Google-like search engine but twice as good hard-core into Windows? Guess what. If we did that, I don’t think a company called Google would be very happy,” he said.

“You’ve also got to a step back and say where do you integrate,” he said.

Microsoft will put its search engine into its widely used communications tools Windows Messenger and Hotmail.

“Integrating search into those other applications … makes it very seamless for people,” he said. Timing in Europe will be pegged to that in the United States.

“The UK will probably be at the same time, France maybe three months behind, Germany maybe three months behind. It’s not two years behind.”

He said that Microsoft’s goal — but not its initial offering — would go beyond finding URLs and instead focus in on the specific information sought by Internet users.

“Generally these days what you get back is URLs, and based upon research 50 percent of the time you do a search you don’t get the URL you’re looking for,” he said.

Holloway said that the promise of Microsoft’s search capability is to dig down.

For example, he said, potential home-buyers might find a group of houses in the price range and with the precise amenities they are seeking.

Or a surfer might find a restaurant with the kind of menu a diner wants in a particular geographic area.

(additional reporting by Siobhan Kennedy)

Via: Reuters | LiveSide

Not long ago I just loaded up the Google Adsense page from http://www.google.co.uk/adsense instead of the normal USA Google Adsense page http://www.google.com/adsense, and I was quite surprised when I got the following message with Internet Explorer Beta 2 Preview:

There is a problem with this website’s security certificate.

The security certificate presented by this website was issued for a different website’s address.

Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.

We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.

Click here to close this webpage. 
Continue to this website (not recommended).

For more information, see “Certificate Errors” in Internet Explorer Help.

Here’s the same but as screenshots!

Now why has this happened? Well I basically think it has happened because the Security certificate Google Adsense UK is using is from the Google Adsense US site, which means that the certificate is registered to the domain name http://www.google.com and not http://www.google.co.uk

Looks like Google is launching Google Purchases (purchases.google.com)

The new ‘Google Purchases’ service (purchases.google.com) will be launched in a few days, and is to allow users to make micropayments within ‘Google Base‘ (buy and sell all kinds of items), to acquire licences of ‘Google Earth‘, non-free videos from ‘Google Video‘, and to pay products of the Google Store.

Users only need their ‘Google Account‘ (it’s free and your Gmail account is your pass), and they have to add their credit or debit card information (only Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover are allowed). For security reasons, it’s not allowed to use the same credit card for more than one Google Account.

Credit card information is housed in a single location on Google secure servers, and data are encrypted during transmission with SSL technology.

With this payment information, each time users want to buy an article, they must click ‘Buy’ button (view image) and Google knows which card to charge (with no extra fees) and which address to deliver items (view image). In addition, users are to receive a confirmation email reporting the buy and the amount charged.

At any time users can review their order’s status (view image), along with a link to cancel or have refunded (if sellers’s refund or cancellation policies allow it).

Via: A Google Blog

Google Page Creator is once again open up for registrations from the public, though to be honest it still seems to be having some problems every so often!

Google Page Creator is having a little trouble right now.
This is not because of anything you did; it’s just a little hiccup in our system that will hopefully go away soon. We apologize for the inconvenience, and recommend you try reloading this page.

Google Page Creator

Hey check this post out below, I know it’s directly copied from Gabor Scelles Blog, but I just fealt the need to post it here as well, full credit goes to him of course!

It’s good to keep an eye on headcount when comparing companies. The number of employees you have pretty much defines what you can do: How many products can you develop and maintain, and how many shrink-wrapped software boxes or click-through banners can you sell?

I went out and collected some statistics for the three major Internet players: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

All of these companies have been in exponential growth mode since the year they started. It’s surprising to me that Microsoft is more than 6 times bigger than Yahoo and 11 as big as than Google, at least in terms of employees.

Also, Microsoft has been around for ages and consumes much of the timeline. Here’s a graph for just Google and Yahoo:

Google is growing much faster than Yahoo these days. Over the last two years, Google’s average employee growth rate has been 100%, while Yahoo’s was at 34%, and Microsoft’s was at 10%. If the current growth rates continued,

• Google would surpass Yahoo’s headcount in 2007, and
• Google would be bigger than Microsoft in 2010.

This seems a little too optimistic to be true: It will likely become harder and harder for Google to double its headcount every year. Microsoft grew 80% on average in the 1980s (49% percent if you don’t consider 1981, when the company more than tripled in size). For the 1990s, its average yearly headcount growth dropped to 24%.

An easy way to grow fast is to acquire companies. All three players have bought plenty of smaller businesses along the way. For example, Yahoo grew by 1000+ employees when it acquired Overture in 2003, thereby increasing its headcount by more than one-third.

Lastly, let’s have a look at how Wall Street values the employees of each company. With yesterday’s market caps,

• each Microsoft employee is worth $4.3 million,
• each Yahoo employee is valued at $4.7 million,
• and each Google employee is valued at $19 million.

I’ll leave the interpretation of these numbers up to you.

Sources: Some of this data was hard to come by and I had to use different sources for the data points. You can find all references and underlying data in this Excel spreadsheet.

Via: Gabor Scelles Blog (thanks)

Well it looks like the rumours about Google creating a website creator were true as Google this morning released an Ajax page creator called Google Page Creator, just one problem though and that is that Google has had to disable registration and access to it until they can increase capacity to it has they received an overwhelming amount of traffic to it, here’s the official message:

Thank you for your interest in Google Page Creator! Google Page Creator has experienced extremely strong demand, and, as a result, we have temporarily limited the number of new signups as we increase capacity. In the meantime, please submit your email address and we will notify you as soon as we are ready to add new accounts. Thank you for your patience.

So as you can see you can’t register yet so I’ll leave you with a bit more information about it:

Want to create an online photo tour of your vacation to Bali? An overview of the South American precipitation cycle for your science class? A shrine to your pet ferret?

Now’s your chance. We’re testing a new product that makes creating your own web pages as easy as creating a document in a word processor. Google Page Creator is a free tool that lets you create web pages right in your browser and publish them to the web with one click. There’s no software to download and no web designer to hire. The pages you create are hosted on Google servers and are available at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com for the world to see.

At Google, we’ve found that listening to our users early helps us develop the best possible products. So we’re giving our users a chance to play with Google Page Creator even though it’s not yet fully baked, and we’re counting on you to send us your feedback and suggestions. If you’d like to stay up to date on all the latest Google Page Creator happenings, sign up for our updates mailing list.

Via: Google Page Creator Site