AdSense Account Disabled for Invalid Activity - What should you do?

Disclaimer: this is not official advice from AdSense or YouTube, but is based on my understanding of how the system works.

If you have received a notification from AdSense that your account has been disabled because of "invalid activity", then here is what you need to keep in mind:

• Before you do anything else, carefully read and understand the information AdSense provides to publishers:

FAQ: AdSense Account Disabled for Invalid Activity - AdSense Help Center

Can my account be reinstated after being disabled for invalid click activity?

Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center: Google's Protection Against Invalid Clicks

Top Reasons for Account Closure - AdSense Help

• If your AdSense account is disabled, your YouTube monetization and Partnership will be disabled as well. 

Please read this article: Why is monetization disabled for my channel? - YouTube Help Center

"If your AdSense account has been disabled for invalid click activity or other reasons, you cannot participate in YouTube’s monetization programs."

That means you cannot link a different AdSense account to your channel to restore monetization.

Your only option to get your disabled AdSense account restored on appeal.

• AdSense only promises to look at the first appeal you submit, so you should not rush to submit an appeal.  

For an appeal to be successful, it needs to demonstrate that you understand the source of the invalid activity on your ads, and that you have plans in place to prevent invalid activity from occurring again in the future. That means you need to do a careful analysis of all the data about your traffic and ads you have, both in saved reports from your AdSense account and in your YouTube Analytics.

Hopefully you have been actively monitoring the activity on your ads in your AdSense account.

You can learn more about the data in YouTube Analytics here: http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=1714169

• AdSense will not provide you any details about the invalid activity on your account.  

The appeal form is not a way to ask AdSense for more information.  Since you only are guaranteed one chance at appeal, don't waste it asking for information you won't be provided.

• Invalid activity does not only refer to clicks you made on your ads yourself. It includes any activity on the ads that is not initiated by genuine interest in the ad. That means invalid activity can include:

 - clicks on the ads by your family, friends or fans trying to "help" you out

 - encouraging clicks by drawing attention to the ads

 - artificial inflation of impressions on your ads by purchasing traffic or views on your videos, or by joining a traffic exchange or view exchange

 - watching the preroll ads on your own videos

An appeal that merely says "I did not click the ads" is unlikely to be successful. You need to determine what the source of invalid activity may have been.

• The invalid activity on your ads did not necessarily occur immediately prior to your AdSense account being disabled.

Keep in mind that invalid activity could have occurred weeks or months prior to your account being closed, so you need to look at all the data relating to your traffic and ad activity, not just recent data.

• If you have ads on your website or blog in addition to your videos, the invalid activity could have been generated by the ads on your website, on your videos or both.

If this is the case, you also need to review the traffic sources and activity on your site in your site's logs and stats. If you use Google Analytics, SiteMeter, StatCounter or other 3rd party analytics on your site, review that data as well.

• You are not allowed to create a new AdSense account if your original account is disabled

If you create a new AdSense account after your original account is disabled, that new account will be disabled as soon as AdSense spots the association with the originally disabled account. 

If your new account was disabled because of an old disabled account, it is extremely unlikely your account would be restored on appeal.

• Neither AdSense Support nor YouTube Partner support can help you if your AdSense account is disabled.  

You will not be provided any additional information about the invalid activity on your account, and you will not be provided any direct assistance.

Your only option is to submit a convincing appeal after researching the traffic and activity on your ads.

Since no one on this user-to-user forum has access to your account information, that means it's up to you to review and understand the data in your accounts.

So what should you do if you have more questions:

If you have questions about your monetization being disabled or linking AdSense to your YouTube account, post here in the YouTube Monetization forum:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/monetization-on-youtube

If you have questions about how to submit an appeal to AdSense, or how to understand your AdSense reports, post in the AdSense forum:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/adsense

If you have questions about how to understand your YouTube Analytics reports, post in the YouTube Partners forum:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/youtubepartners/reporting 

And remember there is no hurry - better to take your time than to use up your one chance at appeal before you have gathered and analyzed all the relevant data.

Reference ; AdSense Tips: Different forms of invalid activity
                   Working better together: Protecting against invalid ... - Inside AdSense
 

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Why is Google asking for my phone number?

On rare occasions Google may ask you to provide your phone number to regain access to your account.

Image from  http://cdn4.groovypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/image51.png

I am being asked to provide a phone number to get back into my account, is this legit?

If you logged in and were taken to a special web page that asks for your phone number then yes, this is a legitimate Google site. You will need to provide a phone number in order to continue.

Why does Google ask for this?

It is an anti-spam system. Here's how it works. 

Each phone number can be used to re-activate accounts a small number of times before it won't be accepted anymore, and each Gmail account can send to a limited number of recipients every day. 

Because most people don't buy things from spammers, they need to work with lots of accounts in order to send enough email to make money. If we think an account might be being used by a spammer, we lock it until the owner provides a phone number. So, spammers need to have access to a large quantity of phone numbers to unlock all their accounts. This is very expensive for them but pretty easy for most regular people. In most cases it is expensive enough for the spammer that it becomes unprofitable for them to spam, so they give up.

I am not a spammer. Why am I being required to provide a phone number?

Your account was probably compromised and used to send spam. When we detect this we send the account to phone verification. This is to lock out the spammers until you have the opportunity to sign in to your account and change the password. We have to do this because it may be days or even weeks until you next check your mail, and it's likely spammers will try to repeatedly abuse your account during that time.

What will Google use my phone number for?

We will send you a number that you have to type into the web page. After that it won't be used for anything else. In particular it will never be used for marketing things to you.

I don't want to provide my phone number, that's personal.

You can provide any phone number that has not been "used up". It does not have to be your own. Even payphones can work.

I don't want to provide any phone number at all.

You can follow the instructions on the verification page to contact support. However it may take us some time to get to your ticket, as these cases are lower priority than people who have been genuinely locked out without any way back in. We strongly encourage you to go through the phone verification process - many people have already done it, and we keep the numbers used private.

The code never arrived.

In some parts of the world SMS is not completely reliable. If the code never arrives, try logging in again and using the phone call option instead.

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