Google Adsense Policy Violation Paradox

Question

A client's website appears to have google adsense blocked, the code doesn't load instead it returns a 403 forbidden.

We have been through the troubleshooter : https://support.google.com/adsense/troubleshooter/

The highlights:

Nobody at the client's office remembers ever seeing an email to say the site was banned. They were advised by a friend of a friend of a... (etc) who works for Google [who couldn't find the site on any blocked list] to just open another account, but the new account was auto-rejected.

The trouble shooter suggests address PIN verification failure, but I cannot find anywhere in the adsense app that says that the address is not verified, in fact they have had payments in the past; but they have not used adsense for a while, an alternative ad provider has recently been a victim of the recession, so are wanting to relaunch.

The ads are not in a any sort of nested frame, just on a basic test page with real content and minimal design so there is nothing to break. We have gradually stripped more and more off the page to try and get them to work. Both synchronous and asynchronous codes have the same issue.

So the troubleshooter points us to the form : https://support.google.com/adsense/contact/cant_see_ad?rd=1 and we get the response

According to our records, ad serving was disabled to your site because the site was in violation of AdSense programme policies.

So we check the policy appeal page and get this message

No sites have had ad serving disabled for your account.

So we submit a review request, basically saying, help we're stuck and don't know what to do, and get an auto responder back

Unfortunately, we weren't able to match the Issue ID you provided with any actions related to the publisher ID you provided.

Because we don't have an issue ID to provide!

What on earth do we do now?

Answer 1

If Google decided that the site was in violation of its policies, it most probably was so for some reason. Now, the fact that you don't have an explanation is certainly very frustrating.

However, you should run your own investigation with Google, since you will only find general recommendations about your issue here. If you explain the issue to Google and if they conclude this is a bug, they will tell you.

However, if your client broke the rules, intentionally or not, it is very hard to retrieve a banned account in my experience. And Google probably won't give you details about it.

Next step would be to use a different ad network, or to start from scratch with a new website without forwarding from the previous site. There may be an issue with the current content too. It would have to be fixed beforehand.