Is Google Stealing Money from Web Site Owners and Cheating AdWords Clients?

I’ve had my own websites for quite a few years now and I’ve always had AdSense Ads on most of my sites to earn a bit of income on the side.

I’ve never earned very much money from the AdSense ads, but the odd hundred dollar payments are nice.

Most of my online income comes from my own eBooks and from affiliate products that I recommend. So AdSense has always been very much a sideline for extra income. I use it because it’s simple to use. I just place a few ads on my web page templates and then let them do their own thing. It was a really easy “set it and forget it” system.

And it worked really well until recently when I started noticing money being taken from my AdSense account. Not only that but the number of clicks kept disappearing too.

So I started to wonder if Google is not only stealing from website owners, but cheating their Adwords clients too.


I went onto the AdSense forum to try and get some answers about what was happening, but the replies I got raised even more suspicion in my mind. It seemed like I was far from the first person to question the missing money from an AdSense account. And no one was providing any adequate answers.

In fact, the only answer that was given was “invalid clicks” which is a veiled way of saying “cheating”.

I argued that no cheating had been happening on my websites and the answers were incredible.

One person said that my content was encouraging people to click on my AdSense ads, even though the blog post they were referring to was one I wrote about changing the way I work. It never mentioned AdSense Ads and that I wanted people to click them. But I was told that my content could be interpreted and implying it. You can see for yourself at
http://writeaholic-inspiration.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/changes-are-afoot.html

I was also told that if too many people were clicking on the ads on my site and not making a purchase, it could look like ‘click fraud’ so I’d have to forfeit my income. How the hell the number of sales a client makes has anything to do with me I don't know.

And that’s the part that got me to wonder if Google were only stealing from me but also cheating the Adwords clients who paid for these ads in the first place.

You see it wasn’t only my money that was disappearing, but also the record of the number of clicks disappeared too.

I began to think about it and realised that if an AdWords client is tracking the number of clicks on their ads AND the number of sales being augmented from them, then they’re being lied to.

I figured that if a client’s ad received 1,000 clicks a day (for example) and generated 10 sales then it’s a ROI of 1 in a 100 clicks.

But if Google are reducing the number of clicks to say 100 (by removing them from various AdSense accounts) then the client will think that they’re getting a Return of Investment of 10 sales per 100 clicks, which looks much more impressive than 10 in every 1,000, which was the real number.

And Google can’t use the “invalid clicks” excuse for removing every single click count.

Here’s an example of how they cheated me out of a valid click, one that I at least know about.

One day I checked my AdSense account in the morning. It had one recorded click and an amount of 42 cents earned.

At midday I checked it again. Still one click and still 42 cents.

Later in the day I checked again. This time 15 clicks and $15.95 in earnings.

An hour later I checked again and there were no clicks and no money earned.

So what happened to my extra 14 clicks that I accumulated that afternoon? Was it considered “click fraud” because no one made a purchase?

And what happened to my original one click for 42 cents? Surely they didn’t think THAT was “click fraud” too? Yet they still whipped that meagre amount of money out from under me.

If I hadn’t received the extra 14 clicks would they have let me keep the 42 cents?

It just all smells rotten to me.

AdSense publishers are having money stolen from them and Adwords clients can’t trust the click count because Google is fiddling with the numbers.

So what have I done about it?

I’ve taken most of the ads off my template pages and stopped using them completely on some of my sites. I can’t remove them all because it would take too long. But I have removed quite a few.

I can’t stand what they’re doing.

I hate being ripped off.

Take a look at the two screen shots below. These shots were taken only about an hour apart. But look how my money - and the clicks that generated it - has disappeared.

Make of it what  you will.

P.S. And by telling you about my AdSense income disappearing, I’m not in any way asking  you to click on any of the ads on my site. Although, according to Google, telling you not to click on my ads is just as bad as telling you to do it.

It’s a lose-lose situation for AdSense publishers.

P.P.S.(You can see the whole forum debacle at https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/adsense/_jQJX8eSYCA/48Rxvyp7LnIJ.)

UPDATE:
13th March 2014

It happened again today.

I checked my Adsense account and saw that there were 14 clicks recorded and over $14 earned.

Actual screen shot of my Adsense Account

Then 45 minutes later I checked again, just before I closed my laptop for the day:

Now you see the money...now you don't

As you can see, the money and clicks had vanished.

During the night, 3 more clicks and some money appeared in my account.

But where did the rest go?

And how many times have they done this to me without my seeing it? It could be happening a lot because the money disappears fast.

One thing I can tell you; I'm getting really sick of this.

UPDATE
26th March 2014

It's no surprise that more money and clicks have disappeared from my AdSense account.

Just look at the screen capture shots below:

The one above is showing that on 25th March, my AdSense account had received 18 clicks and earned $22.49

This next screen shot, above, was taken the next morning on 26th March. AS you can see, the earnings listed for "yesterday" (i.e. 25th March) is 7 cents, not $22.49 as it was the day before.

This screen shot was also taken on 26th March and is showing the number of clicks for the day before (25th March) which is zero. So not only has my money disappeared but so have the clicks.

And if Google is doing this to all AdSense publishers, and there are probably millions of them, just think of how much money they're stealing and how much 'click fraud' they're committing on their AdWords clients when millions of clicks are removed from accounts every day.

They really can't justify this.