AdSense is Google’s advertising platform for publishers. It’s a nice idea – you sign up and the serve ads on your website based (sometimes loosely) on your content. You get traffic, the traffic clicks on the ads, you get paid. Meanwhile, the advertiser has extended the reach of his or her advertising so it’s a “win win.”

Except that Google somehow has decided to turn into the IRS when it comes to enforcing its AdWords standards which are fairly ambigious and basically created with the idea that – at any point in time – Google can and will shut you down. This happened to me. I was told my site was a candidate for click fraud. I didn’t see anything in my Analytics reports that showed huge spikes and, honestly, the amount of money I was generating through AdSense was negligible at best because my site wasn’t getting gobs of traffic. But one day I got a note saying your account had been suspended. I tried to appeal – which is a process that involves sending an email to a nameless, faceless person who functions and judge, jury and executioner. Nope, they said. My account showed all of the characteristics of click fraud and so the $50 that I had earned was taken from me and given back to the advertisers.

This is not to knock Google generally. They are the most spectacular company at what they do, which is deliver relevant search results. I spend a lot of money on AdWords so it is nice to sometimes see that my account is credited on that end for click fraud. Google owns search and that’s that. Google is search. PERIOD.

But after this experience, I would not recommend AdSense to a publisher. There are lots of other networks out there that can provide revenue. Google sometimes needs to remember that it started out as a research paper and stop treating everyone on the web like a powerless serf.