[breput]

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.

[willio58]

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

[namanyayg]

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...

[allpratik]

Quite true. I was dreaming about more powerful computer and more computer games via that money. Sadly my mom pulled the plug!! ;)

Fyi, my account was registered under my father’s name (I had his permission ofcourse)

[sanswork]

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)

[shermantanktop]

Sounds like a footgun waiting to go off? Unless Adsense is pretty explicit about this, beyond some language buried in a TOS.

[sanswork]

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.

https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/48182?hl=en#zippy=...

[Sevii]

Adsense is designed to have as many footguns as possible.

[fooker]

Footguns as a service

[breput]

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.

[b00ty4breakfast]

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.

[sanswork]

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.

[b00ty4breakfast]

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.

[sanswork]

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.

[sanswork]

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?

[anon7000]

> 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

[riazrizvi]

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.

[etc-hosts]

I think Saikat is just willing to spend more of his personal huge fortune on ads than most people usually are.

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.

[aaronbrethorst]

Is that the guy who kept running those quixotic campaigns against Nancy Pelosi?

[etc-hosts]

No, you are thinking of Shahid Buttar. definitely not an early Stripe employee.

[AJ007]

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.

[zelphirkalt]

I am guessing these companies were not big enough to make enough of a fuss and have a good legal team? Google likes making money, and if there is the slightest reason to not have to pay someone, then they are gonna make use of that reason. Might even make it onto someone's KPI list of "prevented fraud".

[iso1631]

> 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

[mememememememo]

Interesting "DoS" attack.