Several years ago, I ran a niche hobbyist website and incorporated Adsense (because why not?!?). The site featured a fuzzy search function since it referenced tens of thousands of named parts. The search result page would echo the (sanitized) search term followed by the matching results - along with recent search terms in the right sidebar.
One day, some spambot hit the site and started searching for terms like "mesothelioma". Adsense would see that page with "mesothelioma" in the sidebar, query for it, and served up the ambulance chaser's paid ads, even though there obviously were no matching results.
I didn't realize this was happening for several weeks since this low volume site was earning very little and I never even hit the minimum withdrawal limit. Suddenly I was earning $50 - $100 - per day. This lasted for a few weeks but before I could transfer the earnings, Google locked the AdSense account due to abuse. It might surprise you, but Google support was not helpful and after a series of reviews, they permanently shut down Adsense for this site.
Therefore, I also turned off Google Adsense for my websites.
I was dumb enough when I was 11 to sign up for Adsense under my Mom’s name and put it on a php-based meme sharing site I made that my fellow 5th graders used.
Anyway, I noticed I could make a couple dollars a week. So I had my friends sit there and spam load the site. Made about 80$ until Google banned me (my mom) for life from Adsense
I have a VERY similar story about me adding AdSense to a Club Penguin hacks, tips, and tricks blog.
But I think I need to correct you -- what you and I did wasn't dumb at all. It was quite innovative for our pre-teen brains. This was my first exposure to running a business and setting up a team and thinking like an entrepreneur. Just imagine all the ice cream and Pokémon cards we could have bought if it had worked...
It's been like 10 years since I worked in the space but I'm pretty sure showing adsense on search results like that has been against the tos for a very long time unless you get a specific search feed(which is basically impossible these days and even 15 years ago was limited to companies like ask.com)
You have to agree to have read the policies when signing up and they've always been pretty clear about placement rules. Not placing ads on non-content pages is a pretty basic rule and would clearly apply to this since a search result is non-content.
Interesting. It seems like a ToS violation would have been worthy of a warning and revoking the offending earnings, but nope, it was no mercy or review.
or at least an explanation. That would of course require a customer service apparatus designed to service customers rather than one designed to force them to become tangled in the abyssal morass.
OP in this case isn't the customer, they are a supplier who has agreed to terms then decided to go against that agreement in a way that allowed scammers and himself attempt to defraud Googles actual customers.
OP isn't the good guy in this story. Them breaking a very basic, clearly worded rule assisted in fraud. Of course they deserve to be banned from the network if they can't even follow that rule.
Also all the other people in this story complaining about their rates falling off a cliff can blame people like OP who place ads in places they shouldn't leading to low quality traffic. No one wants to buy network ads if they have quality anymore.
I don't get the impression that the OP was deliberately breaking the ToS. That doesn't mean they weren't violation but you usually inform someone when they are breaking the rules, even if you are taking punitive measures. It would be like arresting someone and never telling them what they are being arrested for. Not only is it scummy behavior to not tell them but it also doesn't effectively communicate to others that the thing won't be tolerated.
If I hire someone to do a job for me and find out they are breaking rules to try and get additional money from me and my clients I don't owe them anything.
The scummy behaviour is agreeing to only put the ads on content pages then immediately putting them on search result pages to attempt to extract more money from advertisers.
I feel like you're not quite understanding the level of fraud in advertising. There is a reason all the networks are quick to fire publishers/affiliates because the ones that aren't go broke paying out for fraud.
If you don't think that people are entitled to know why their service is being terminated then I don't think we having anything else to discuss. enjoy your day
Even though Google provides the software to manage the interaction the publisher is the supplier in this agreement, they tried to defraud the client.
No one owes anything to someone that tried to scam them out of money. I also don't send replies to every phishing attempt explaining why I'm blocking their email.
Go click on new with readdead enabled. Do you believe HN owes every banned spammer an explanation on why their account was banned?
The person would have agreed to the placement rules when they signed up then went and broke them leading to Google and advertisers being defrauded by a bot. Why would you expect mercy there?
I think there is a super-sophisticated industry where advertisers are gamed out of their advertising dollars, and we occasionally can see it leaking out. For example I was very recently relentlessly hammered by political advertising by some odious tech guy who wants to get nominated for some congressional seat in the Bay Area. This was hard programming, where they just threw out the guy's name before you could hit mute, figuring that ppl would do that as quick as they could because the guy's vibe was so unrelatable. I have to imagine that the seasoned ad folks saw this dude as a pay day that they'd milk for all he is worth with this utterly misery inducing campaign. It's almost 100% brainwashing, with the tiniest sprinkle of substance. It has to be an industry that's preying on the buyer as much as the consumer.
I also get bombarded by anti-Saikat ads, most from "Abundant Future", which appears to be a PAC funded by Garry Tan and the Ripple guy. the ads loudly proclaim that AOC tweeted once that one of Saikat's tweets is divisive, and that Saikat is a millionaire. This coming from two guys who control a huge pile of money in San Francisco.
Every person and company I know who had an Adsense account was banned and not paid. Two of them were banned for terms violations which were things Google reps told them to do. Endless conspiracy theories on this, no idea.
Because ads are cancerous, it may make you a few dollars, it massively reduces the usage of the internet, it eats resources (energy, time) from the world, it helps breaks privacy, it continues to paint the normality of the internet as a cesspit
"I never saw most of the offending ads because of my adblocker, so I didn’t notice the changes or experience any irritation personally. "
--------
If you run a website that serves ads, whitelist it in your adblocker so you can see what your own damned site looks like to people who are still rawdogging the world wide web.
I have a tool on my website that gets about 250k unique views per day. During COVID I decided to put a single ad on the page to try to make up for my wife's lost income. It was for a time bringing in close to $500 a month, and was a nice little side income.
My wife never returned to work, we had kids and she has stayed at home with them. As such the ad has stayed up. Last I checked though it is bringing in something like $36 a month despite traffic being higher than ever. I get a payout from Google every couple months.
I'm considering taking it down just because the payoff is so low. It's honestly barely breaking even with the added expense of complicating my taxes.
I do find it interesting that the author specifies they use an ad blocker whilst also wanting to view the industry 'from the inside'. I'm not sure there isn't a level of hypocrisy there, albeit understandable.
As staunchly anti-advertising, I wouldn't include advertising on anything I publish personally, but then I also don't publish anything, so I have no pressure to change my stance. I think I've convinced myself that my opinion doesn't matter to those who may be able to earn a decent stream from advertising (as much as I dislike that, and as much as I dislike my opinion being value-less).
I joined AdSense in 2003. At peak it was generating US$15k a month.
Nowadays it will be a miracle if it passes of US$800 a month.
I think the shift to a more localised audience (NZ), diversion of ad spend to large social networks are responsible. Our traffic is similar in volume but nowhere near as "valuable" apparently.
I had some sites that used it years ago ca. 2006. $500/mo at peak. Then one month it suddenly halved for no apparent reason. And it kept dropping. After a while or just wasn't with the ugliness. And I learned to never count on Google.
Since then I've become anti-ad and haven't had any for years. I am sorry for my embarrassing lapse in judgment. :)
I had to turn off adsense when every ad they were running was a deceptive green "download" button. It was a whack a mole to try and block them all and was a waste of effort.
Man spends 20 years as a participant-observer in the AdSense ecosystem for academic purposes, earns less than a TA, and gets flagged for writing about the very legal cases he's an expert on. Peak Google.
I put Adsense on my website in 2004 on a Thursday. Logged in Saturday and discovered that I'd earned $25! I immediately click one of my own ads, then logged back in to check my earnings per click. Later that week I got a warning email from Google. Told my wife.
She made me take all of my Adsense ads down immediately for the rest of the month and the first couple weeks of the next until we received our first Adsense check.
Then, and only then, did she let me put the ads back up. That first check bought us a freezer. The next paid our rent.
Those were fun times: $50 CPM was not usual 2004-2005.
There’s an interesting conversation to be had about ad sponsorship on web content when the share of people just getting summarized results from {LLM chatbot of choice} is increasing and siphoning actual views.
In college I made like $1,000/month on Google Adsense on a website that had a few dozen pages at most. No idea what I was doing, but thanks Google Adsense for paying for practically half my education and a whooole lot of drugs.
> Plus, turning off the ads should more clearly classify my blog as “non-commercial” for the various legal tests that impose greater liability on commercial actors.
Anyone know what these might be offhand? I think federal trademark law may sting more if used commercially. But what else could he be referring to?
It seems with AI models this space is ripe for on-domain ad sales as a SaaS. Just pay an invoice to "advertise here" Have an AI make sure the links adhere to content policies. Don't track visitors or charge per click. Just pay a fee and get the banner.
As a visitor to a site, it is refreshing to NOT be subjected to constant ads. Even though I have an ad-blocker running, not having to use it is a definite plus. Thanks for taking this decision!
was making enough 10 yr ago with it to cover my mortgage every month. I noticed it ticking down year over year after 2018. Now I get a payment every few months. It was a great ride while it lasted.
> Nor is it an argument that companies can’t do better jobs within their own content moderation efforts. But I do think there’s a huge problem in that many people — including many politicians and journalists — seem to expect that these companies not only can, but should, strive for a level of content moderation that is simply impossible to reach.
The three problems I see are:
1. People who imagine content moderation prohibitions would be a utopia.
2. People who imagine content moderation should be perfect (of course by which I mean there own practical, acknowledged imperfect measure. Because even if everyone is pro-practicality, if they are pro-practicality in different ways, we still get an impossible demand.)
3. This major problem/disconnect I just don't ever see discussed:
(This would solve harms in a way that the false dichotomy of (1) and (2) do not.)
a) If a company is actively promoting some content over others, for any reason (a free speech exercise, that allows for many motives here), they should be held to a MUCH higher standard for their active choices, vs. neutral providers, with regard to harms.
b) If a company is selectively financially underwriting content creation, i.e paying for content by any metric (again, a free speech exercise, that allows for many motives), they should be held to be a MUCH higher standard, for their financed/rewarded content, vs. content it sources without financial incentive, with regard to harms.
Host harbor protections should be for content made available on a neutral content producer, consumer search/selection basis.
As soon as a company is injecting their own free speech choices (by preferentially selecting content for users, or paying for selected content), much higher responsibilities should be applied.
A neutral content site can still make money many ways. Advertising still works. Pay for content on an even basis, but providing only organic (user driven) discovery, etc. One such a neutral utility basis, safe harbor protection regarding content (assuming some reasonable means of responding to reports of harmful material), makes sense.
Safe harbors do not make sense for services who use their free speech freedoms to actively direct users to service preferred content, or actively financing service preferred content. Independent of preferred (i.e. the responsibility that is applied, should continue to be neutral itself. The nature of the companies free speech choices should not be the issue.)
Imposed selection, selective production => speech => responsibility.
Almost all the systematic harms by major content/social sites, can be traced to perverse incentives actively pursued by the site. This rule should apply: Active Choices => Responsibility for Choices. Vs. Neutrality => Responsible Safe Harbor.
This isn't a polemic against opinionated or hands-on content moderators. We need them. We need to allow them, so we have those rights to. It is a polemic against de-linking free speech utilization, from free speech responsibility. And especially against de-linking that ethical balance at scale.
> I never saw most of the offending ads because of my adblocker
Using ad blockers is unethical. No one who uses one (probably 99% of people on HN) wants to hear this, but the conclusion is inescapable really.
You may commence your downvoting.
ETA: Why do I claim it's unethical? Every ad-supported page is an implicit contract: If you want the good stuff on this page, you need to pay for that by giving some of your attention to . Nothing more. If the trade-off isn't worth it to you, that's fine: you have the right, and the ability, to reject it -- to cease interacting with the site at all. OTOH, using an ad blocker to access the site without "paying" (with your attention) is violating the contract in the same way that hacking a parking meter downtown to park your car for free is. Running websites isn't free, and even if it was, it's the site owner's prerogative whether and how much ad-attention to "charge". If the fundamental idea of capitalism is sound (and perhaps it isn't -- but then let's discuss that), exorbitant ad burdens attached to desirable content will eventually be outcompeted by other sites offering similar content for free with fewer ads, or for actual cash.
There's a more self-serving argument, too: If everyone used 100% effective ad blockers, Alphabet (minus GCP) and Meta would not exist, and nor would the very large number of free-as-in-beer services that make up a large part of what makes the internet useful to people. Using ad blockers is only "sustainable" in the same way that mafia protection rackets are "sustainable" -- by being a sufficiently small drain on the rest of society.
Why did you think that using an ad network was ever a sensible option for revenue? Ads are cancer and a security risk, so blocking them is just common sense.
154 comments
One day, some spambot hit the site and started searching for terms like "mesothelioma". Adsense would see that page with "mesothelioma" in the sidebar, query for it, and served up the ambulance chaser's paid ads, even though there obviously were no matching results.
I didn't realize this was happening for several weeks since this low volume site was earning very little and I never even hit the minimum withdrawal limit. Suddenly I was earning $50 - $100 - per day. This lasted for a few weeks but before I could transfer the earnings, Google locked the AdSense account due to abuse. It might surprise you, but Google support was not helpful and after a series of reviews, they permanently shut down Adsense for this site.
Therefore, I also turned off Google Adsense for my websites.
Anyway, I noticed I could make a couple dollars a week. So I had my friends sit there and spam load the site. Made about 80$ until Google banned me (my mom) for life from Adsense
But I think I need to correct you -- what you and I did wasn't dumb at all. It was quite innovative for our pre-teen brains. This was my first exposure to running a business and setting up a team and thinking like an entrepreneur. Just imagine all the ice cream and Pokémon cards we could have bought if it had worked...
Fyi, my account was registered under my father’s name (I had his permission ofcourse)
https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/48182?hl=en#zippy=...
OP isn't the good guy in this story. Them breaking a very basic, clearly worded rule assisted in fraud. Of course they deserve to be banned from the network if they can't even follow that rule.
Also all the other people in this story complaining about their rates falling off a cliff can blame people like OP who place ads in places they shouldn't leading to low quality traffic. No one wants to buy network ads if they have quality anymore.
The scummy behaviour is agreeing to only put the ads on content pages then immediately putting them on search result pages to attempt to extract more money from advertisers.
I feel like you're not quite understanding the level of fraud in advertising. There is a reason all the networks are quick to fire publishers/affiliates because the ones that aren't go broke paying out for fraud.
No one owes anything to someone that tried to scam them out of money. I also don't send replies to every phishing attempt explaining why I'm blocking their email.
Go click on new with readdead enabled. Do you believe HN owes every banned spammer an explanation on why their account was banned?
> might surprise you, but Google support was not helpful and after a series of reviews, they permanently shut down Adsense for this site.
Not surprising at all, everything I’ve ever heard about Google support sums up to “they basically don’t have any,” even for enterprises on GCP
https://missionlocal.org/2026/04/saikat-chakrabarti-sf-campa...
I also get bombarded by anti-Saikat ads, most from "Abundant Future", which appears to be a PAC funded by Garry Tan and the Ripple guy. the ads loudly proclaim that AOC tweeted once that one of Saikat's tweets is divisive, and that Saikat is a millionaire. This coming from two guys who control a huge pile of money in San Francisco.
> Adsense (because why not?!?).
Because ads are cancerous, it may make you a few dollars, it massively reduces the usage of the internet, it eats resources (energy, time) from the world, it helps breaks privacy, it continues to paint the normality of the internet as a cesspit
--------
If you run a website that serves ads, whitelist it in your adblocker so you can see what your own damned site looks like to people who are still rawdogging the world wide web.
My wife never returned to work, we had kids and she has stayed at home with them. As such the ad has stayed up. Last I checked though it is bringing in something like $36 a month despite traffic being higher than ever. I get a payout from Google every couple months.
I'm considering taking it down just because the payoff is so low. It's honestly barely breaking even with the added expense of complicating my taxes.
As staunchly anti-advertising, I wouldn't include advertising on anything I publish personally, but then I also don't publish anything, so I have no pressure to change my stance. I think I've convinced myself that my opinion doesn't matter to those who may be able to earn a decent stream from advertising (as much as I dislike that, and as much as I dislike my opinion being value-less).
Ethical Ads: https://www.ethicalads.io/
Nowadays it will be a miracle if it passes of US$800 a month.
I think the shift to a more localised audience (NZ), diversion of ad spend to large social networks are responsible. Our traffic is similar in volume but nowhere near as "valuable" apparently.
Since then I've become anti-ad and haven't had any for years. I am sorry for my embarrassing lapse in judgment. :)
She made me take all of my Adsense ads down immediately for the rest of the month and the first couple weeks of the next until we received our first Adsense check.
Then, and only then, did she let me put the ads back up. That first check bought us a freezer. The next paid our rent.
Those were fun times: $50 CPM was not usual 2004-2005.
interesting that someone looking to make some (modest) money with AdSense is blocking ads...
> Plus, turning off the ads should more clearly classify my blog as “non-commercial” for the various legal tests that impose greater liability on commercial actors.
Anyone know what these might be offhand? I think federal trademark law may sting more if used commercially. But what else could he be referring to?
> Nor is it an argument that companies can’t do better jobs within their own content moderation efforts. But I do think there’s a huge problem in that many people — including many politicians and journalists — seem to expect that these companies not only can, but should, strive for a level of content moderation that is simply impossible to reach.
The three problems I see are:
1. People who imagine content moderation prohibitions would be a utopia.
2. People who imagine content moderation should be perfect (of course by which I mean there own practical, acknowledged imperfect measure. Because even if everyone is pro-practicality, if they are pro-practicality in different ways, we still get an impossible demand.)
3. This major problem/disconnect I just don't ever see discussed:
(This would solve harms in a way that the false dichotomy of (1) and (2) do not.)
a) If a company is actively promoting some content over others, for any reason (a free speech exercise, that allows for many motives here), they should be held to a MUCH higher standard for their active choices, vs. neutral providers, with regard to harms.
b) If a company is selectively financially underwriting content creation, i.e paying for content by any metric (again, a free speech exercise, that allows for many motives), they should be held to be a MUCH higher standard, for their financed/rewarded content, vs. content it sources without financial incentive, with regard to harms.
Host harbor protections should be for content made available on a neutral content producer, consumer search/selection basis.
As soon as a company is injecting their own free speech choices (by preferentially selecting content for users, or paying for selected content), much higher responsibilities should be applied.
A neutral content site can still make money many ways. Advertising still works. Pay for content on an even basis, but providing only organic (user driven) discovery, etc. One such a neutral utility basis, safe harbor protection regarding content (assuming some reasonable means of responding to reports of harmful material), makes sense.
Safe harbors do not make sense for services who use their free speech freedoms to actively direct users to service preferred content, or actively financing service preferred content. Independent of preferred (i.e. the responsibility that is applied, should continue to be neutral itself. The nature of the companies free speech choices should not be the issue.)
Imposed selection, selective production => speech => responsibility.
Almost all the systematic harms by major content/social sites, can be traced to perverse incentives actively pursued by the site. This rule should apply: Active Choices => Responsibility for Choices. Vs. Neutrality => Responsible Safe Harbor.
This isn't a polemic against opinionated or hands-on content moderators. We need them. We need to allow them, so we have those rights to. It is a polemic against de-linking free speech utilization, from free speech responsibility. And especially against de-linking that ethical balance at scale.
> I never saw most of the offending ads because of my adblocker
Using ad blockers is unethical. No one who uses one (probably 99% of people on HN) wants to hear this, but the conclusion is inescapable really.
You may commence your downvoting.
ETA: Why do I claim it's unethical? Every ad-supported page is an implicit contract: If you want the good stuff on this page, you need to pay for that by giving some of your attention to. Nothing more. If the trade-off isn't worth it to you, that's fine: you have the right, and the ability, to reject it -- to cease interacting with the site at all. OTOH, using an ad blocker to access the site without "paying" (with your attention) is violating the contract in the same way that hacking a parking meter downtown to park your car for free is. Running websites isn't free, and even if it was, it's the site owner's prerogative whether and how much ad-attention to "charge". If the fundamental idea of capitalism is sound (and perhaps it isn't -- but then let's discuss that), exorbitant ad burdens attached to desirable content will eventually be outcompeted by other sites offering similar content for free with fewer ads, or for actual cash.
There's a more self-serving argument, too: If everyone used 100% effective ad blockers, Alphabet (minus GCP) and Meta would not exist, and nor would the very large number of free-as-in-beer services that make up a large part of what makes the internet useful to people. Using ad blockers is only "sustainable" in the same way that mafia protection rackets are "sustainable" -- by being a sufficiently small drain on the rest of society.