Blogbar & Cybersoc.com Adsense misadventure
We’ve received an e-mail from Robin, running cybersoc.com, a blog on research/management/law, regarding Blogbar use & Adsense.
Apparently Robin has been kicked out of Adsense recently. He describes what has happened to him on this post, where he tries to figure out the possible whys.
He’s been kicked out, according to an exchange he had with Google, because
We have reconfirmed that invalid clicks were generated on the ads on your site in violation of our Terms and Conditions and programme policies…
Robin explains he’s installed Blogbar a few days ago, after having already seen in his Adsense account the increase in revenue / click. Then, 2 days after installing Blogbar, he’s being kicked out of Adsense. Could that be because of Blogbar ?
Blogbar & Adsense, & Adsense numbers, etc
Blogbar proposes you to submit your Adsense # when you create your Blogbar. This Adsense number is commonly available to everybody, and in itself has no “privacy” or personal info attached to it. For Google, it’s merely an identifier: With the Adsense #, they can resolve who you are (they issue the # once you’ve completed the registration process).
So, everybody using Adsense on his blog has to send the Adsense # to Google when the page is loaded. For instance, Blogbar own Adsense # is
pub-0189436817918665
and can be seen by looking to the source code of our blog (look for “pub-” string). Similarly, the Adsense # of Mike who commented on Robin’s blog is
pub-7942538102426325
; (I just had a look right now).
This issue of privacy of the Adsense # has already been raised on the Digital Point excellent forums : Digital Point proposes his users to share revenue with them by supplying their own Adsense #s. Check this link to see their own FAQ, which is similar to ours.
So, what does Blogbar knows about Robin ?
Nothing ! : we don’t keep any log of the Blogbar creation process. It means that once Robin (or anyone else) has generated his Blogbar code (including site URL & Adsense #), if he doesn’t use it, we have no trace that he ever connected to our site (beside classical server log).
When somebody runs a search through a Blogbar with an Adsense # included, it calls the Blogbar script on our server. It sends us the search term, the search engine chosen by the user, and the Adsense # associated on that Blogbar. Then, we just process the search request to Google server (if that engine was choosen) and include the Adsense # so that any sponsored links shown will be credited to the Adsense # we pass as parameter.
Blogbar relations with Google
We have no special relation with Google, nor any agreement. We just use Google as any other search tool. Our system (feeding them with users’ Adsense #) doesn’t appear to be against their terms of service. Of course, if we learn it’s against their TOS to do what we do, we’ll simply cut out the Adsense # passing.
Blogbar, Malware ?
Eric & I try to be fairly transparent on what we do, as this blog and the site tries to prove. We tell you what we know about you - nothing personal, and not much more than can be available by a log analysis : we even have a list of our users being automatically updated everytime somebody’s Blogbar is called (i.e. shown on his blog).
More than that, we just know quantitatively how many searches are conducted. But we don’t know what search terms are queried, to what engines.
Should that change, we’ll announce it here, as before.
So, why’s Robin been kicked out ?
Difficult to say, but there’s the issue of invalid clicks raised by Google. I’ve just spend a couple minutes on a thread on the subject on Digital Point, and it could be the explanation.
