Defining Evil

What does one do when accusations of fraud are presented with a complete lack of incriminating evidence? If you are dealing with Google and the charges concern click-fraud in the AdSense program, then a whole-lot-of-nothing. You can plead your innocence and request information regarding any supposed, invalid clicks, but you will be answered with form-based responses and rejection.

This all, of course, fits nicely in with Google’s terms for participating in AdSense. As such, those who are ‘found guilty’ have little recourse or options for legal action. Any money one has earned as a part of the program is funneled back to the advertising participants, regardless of whether a dime of it was legitimately accrued.

It is certainly understandable that Google wants to minimize fraudulent clicks so as to protect its advertisers’ investments and its own reputation. The advertisers who participate in the AdSense program are already taking a gamble that click-throughs will lead to a purchase or other such monetary gain. Google has a responsibility to see that these investments made are not being abused.

But it appears that Google has become overzealous in its crackdown on click-fraud. There is a level of expectation when it comes to false positives in a system of this magnitude. The problem is in how Google is approaching possible abuses of the system. Sites with suspected, invalid clicks are given only one notice, that their AdSense account has been canceled. What is absent in this communication is any information on appealing the decision. There are ways to attempt an appeal, but such attempts rarely appear to be met with anything short of rejection.

As was mentioned prior, and what appears to be the greatest disservice to its customer base, Google will not provide information (or evidence) as to how the clicks in question were determined to be invalid, nor will any be given as to aid the account holder in determining where said clicks occurred or originated from. Thus, even if an AdSense participant is innocent of any involvement in the supposed click-fraud, there is little that can be done on their part to prove that innocence.

Oddly enough, the information that Google requests when one does attempt to appeal an account cancellation is comprised of the very details that Google is already in possession of.

Google may certainly have lived up to its mantra of “do no evil”, but the manner in which it has done so might have more to do with how it walks the line between ‘evil’ and basic customer disservice.

[Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I previously been a participant of Google’s AdSense program. The opinion expressed here is purely as a close observer of how the policies involved can negatively impact those, likely, rare cases of “innocence”.]