My Phone Call With Google

Google and I have been fighting.

I have been working out. Google better watch out!
I am ready for them!

I have never fought like this with Google before, in fact, I would rather stay on good terms with them. After all, Google is kind of like the parent and I, as a blogger, am like the child. Whatever Google says goes and I am stuck with their decision.

So - you are probably wondering what went happened?

Well, at the end of March, I woke up to the nastygram saying there was invalid activity going on with my account.

WTF!!!!

I was nearly in shock. I thought I was going to cry. And then I remember, I don't really care because my writing is about my writing, not necessarily the money I make from my blog. So if you are wondering why I have been absent lately, it has nothing to do with my Google Adsense ban.

Anyway, I have tried to be nice and calm about the situation, appealing to the Google Gods. Only, it doesn't matter what I say or do, I just get a canned message back.

Do they think I am stupid??

If you message me back within 4 hours, I can pretty much guess you did nothing to evaluate my account.

This of course went on through the course of several different appeals. I know they say one shot is all you have, but I like to be annoying. So, what does it take for me to sit down and write them a letter every single day until I get some attention. Not a whole lot of time, in comparison of where I could waste it elsewhere. (Do you notice how much I update Facebook?)

Well, I got sick of remembering to write to them, and I got sick of trying to reword the facts so it sounds like I am coming up with new evidence. However, I don't have any new evidence. I don't know what might have caused them to see invalid activity.

Good-bye spare change. I probably
won't get to spend you anymore.

This is what I do know though. At the beginning of March, I started to actively promote my blog. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of spam comments coming in. I turned on Captcha to deter the
spam. My traffic tanked. Right after I did that, Google took away my account.

Days later, I found out my writings have been being copied on other websites. So yeah - how happy does that make me? I can't make money off of my stuff, but other people can copy it and at least make money. Google frowns at duplicate content.

However, it doesn't matter how much I study the stats, I can't seem to find anything that jumps out as unusual.

And Google... well they are equivalent to a parent saying... "Because I said so."

They are a bully. That is really what it comes down to. If any of the small guys start making money, they quickly do an update to change those numbers. If people click on your ads, even though the ads are matched toward what they should be interested in, Google will call you out for fraud. Why - because God forbid if the advertisers have to actually pay for their advertising!

So as a small fish in a big ocean, I am the little guy, barely making pennies, and they choose me to lay down their wrath. So while I actually care very little about the money, I have this problem of wanting to know.

So right now, I am sitting on the phone, calling Google. I waited on hold for 30 minutes before accidentally hanging up the first time. The second time....

If I knew this was going to be such an exciting
date, I might have gotten up and tried to
look presentable. 

.... well, I have already been on hold for an hour and a half.

What can I say... I don't give up easily!