dug 
> Hello,
>
> As you know, Google treats instances of invalid clicks very seriously. By
> disabling your account, we feel that we have taken the necessary measures
> to ensure that invalid clicks will not continue to occur on your site. Due
> to the proprietary nature of our monitoring system, we're not able to
> disclose any specific details of these clicks.
Wow, that’s convenient isn’t it. You can’t see what specific people are doing on specific machines behind firewalls so you analyse behaviour patterns and penalise individuals based on those assumptions. I did wonder how you would handle the fact that you couldn’t afford to adjudicate each click with human inspection. You’re in murky waters indeed…
> Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further
> participation in Google AdSense. However, if you can maintain in good
> faith that the invalid clicks we detected on your ads were not due to your
> actions or negligence, or the actions or negligence of others working for
> you, you may appeal the closing of your account.
Please accept the present note as a formal appeal.
> Google reserves sole discretion in considering whether to take any action
> on an appeal.
>
> In order to appeal the disabling of your account, please email us at
> adsense-adclicks-appeal@google.com with the details requested below. We're
> unable to consider appeals that do not contain all of this information:
>
> - Your name
Dug Falby
> - Your company's name (if applicable)
N/A
bq. > - Your publisher ID number (located in the AdSense code on your website
> with the format, pub-################)
pub-6496886088358499
> - Your website's URL
A - http://www.donkeyontheedge.com
B - http://www.labellife.com
C - http://www.pumpernickle.net
D - http://www.bigsaucer.com
> - Date your account was disabled
19 October 2005
> - Your website's audience
A - UK designers, parents and those interested in my activist ramblings
B - New launch, not sure of actual audience but target is UK record industry execs
C - People searching for UK-based usability specialists
D - New launch, to date, zero traffic (not been publicised yet)
> - The source of your website's content
A - Self-written
B - Manually aggregated by two record industry specialists.
C - Self-written
D - Written by a food journalist
> - Frequency of content updates
A - weekly
B - weekly
C - infrequent updates
D - posts are added almost daily
> - The primary sources of your website's traffic
A - links from other blogs (have been slashdotted and boingboinged in the past) as well as traffic generated by alistapart.com
B - Traffic to small to analise
C - No specific referrer stands out - general
D - No traffic yet
> - The number of people involved with the administration of the site
A - 1
B - 4
C - 1
D - 1
> - Any relevant information that you believe would explain the invalid
> click activity we detected
Well, seeing as your idiotic policy prevents you letting me know what the specific problem was, I can’t very well isolate any one incident can I?
However, the problem may have happened because of bigsaucer.com.
When I launch a new site, I check the Adsense ads carefully to see if I need to do any filtering. During the first week or so I check back often and visit all the sites advertising through google. As a result of this, bigsaucer had a ridiculously high ctm.
To give you an example of why this is important, I published another site for a major UK museum. We had a whole series on Graffiti art in the UK and all the ‘targeted’ Adsense ads were about graffiti-removal services.
This was clearly really bad news and your ads made us look very stupid. (Can I suggest this problem might be something you guys need to look into).
I’ve been checking ads that look wrong or those that visitors or clients complain about on all my sites since I started using Adsense. I would be surprised to hear that your TOS does not include this in a ‘fair use’ definition of your service.
If it doesn’t, you really need to give publishers a way to register their IP (or some other technique) so you can filter them out and allow them to do this checking without penalty.
> If Google decides to evaluate your appeal, we will do our best to inform
> you quickly and will proceed with appropriate action as necessary. If we
> have reached a decision on your appeal, subsequent or duplicate appeals
> will be ignored.
Thanks, I look forward to hearing from you
Best,
Dug
–
Dug Falby
http://www.donkeyontheedge.com/