Remember my recent post about how a blog commenting marketing strategy is not the smartest thing in the world? It was a bit controversial, to be sure.
But I wanted to bring this back up again in light of an email I received last week - with a warning for bloggers, and the comments you choose to accept on your blog.
Bloggers: Comment Spam is YOUR responsibility! And you might just lose one of your streams of income over it if you're not careful...
Here is the email I received last week from Google Adsense:
Subject: You have 3 working days to make changes to your site
During a recent review of your account we found that you are currently
displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our program
policies
(https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=aspe-1pp-en).--------------------------------------------------
EXAMPLE PAGE: (link removed)Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may
exist on other pages of this website or other sites in your network.VIOLATION(S) FOUND:
COMMENT SPAM:
As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers may
not display Google ads on pages with adult or mature content. While we
understand that it may be challenging to monitor user-generated content,
such as comments, on your site, we require publishers to check that the
webpages containing their ad code complies with our program policies. More
information about this policy can be found in our help center
(https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=116000).REQUESTED ACTION:
Please make all necessary changes in the next 72 hours.If the violations are corrected within the aforementioned time period, ad
serving will not be affected. If changes are not made and/or other policy
violations are encountered during the review process, ad serving will be
disabled to your site.ACCOUNT STATUS: ACTIVE
Your AdSense account remains active. However, if we continue to find
problems, we may disable your entire account. Therefore, we suggest that
you take the time to review the rest of your network to ensure that all of
your other pages are in compliance with our policies.
Yes, you read that right.
Comment Spam can get your Google Adsense account disabled.
They may not be the only merchant you work with that takes this same action. In addition to your merchants and/or vendors, certain comment spam will reflect very badly on your professional reputation with your target market as well.
I thought this would be a good opportunity to look at Comment Spam from the other side of the coin. Yes it sucks, and yes we all think it's annoying. But there is nothing we can do to stop it completely - and ultimately, we ARE responsible for what shows up on our sites.
I fixed the offending comment Google referred to, by the way. Sometimes they're sneaky, masked behind non-adult anchor text for example. I can only imagine the undertaking of reviewing my entire network of content, after almost 8 years of blogging. 😯 Surely a few others did sneak through over the years. I can only hope they, and other merchants, will give me a 3-day warning again if others are found.
Just a little heads-up. It's something to keep an eye on. Be sure to install good spam-catching plug-ins, outsource your comment moderation, and keep a close eye on the comments that get published on your blog!
UPDATE! I received another email from Google this morning...
Hello,
We previously notified you about a policy violation on your site, and we asked that you make changes within 3 working days. After reviewing your site, we've found that the previous violation was not corrected, or we’ve found another violation. Therefore, we've disabled ad serving to your site.
Your AdSense account remains active. However, we strongly suggest that you take the time to review our program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) to ensure that all of your remaining pages are in compliance.
Please note that we reserve the right to disable your account at any time.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Boo! 😛 Fortunately I don't focus much on Google Adsense, and won't feel a sting from losing them in my affiliate network. Interesting to note, they gave me no way to respond or request re-inclusion.
That said, this is obviously a BIG issue and one I need to figure out a way to resolve (without the obvious easy route of disabling comments altogether - lol). Bah.
I hope this proves a helpful lesson for you, especially if you do rely on Google Adsense as a strong stream of revenue on any of your blogs.
Watch those comments carefully! 😉
Best,
Highly Recommended for EVERY Blogger (You'll love this!!):
About Lynn Terry
Oh my holy goodness gracious! That second note leaves you to have to look for the offending comment throughout your eight years of blogging. Holy cow! John, from OneMansBlog.com, is always preaching about deleting comment spam, even the "link dropping" kind ...this really, really brings it home - hard. Like in the gut.
I am super careful about approving comments. Even legit comments that have questionable links or anchor text - I delete. If you can't comment with your name and a decent site, sorry.
Still, no telling where the offense is in my thousands of pages of archives. Unfortunate... I hope this warning proves useful for other bloggers at least!
Forgot to mentioned this: not that I'm terribly experienced yet, but I have to say that I think the end of open-comments in blogs is approaching if Google is going to crack down like this. I have personally considered simply requesting that all comments come in email form to me--that way, I can still help my visitors by posting the question and my answer on the blog, but I don't have to deal with reviewing my blog entries every 24 hours. It would be time-consuming but probably preferable to getting a Google slap...not really sure what other options are there. Am I totally off the wall for considering this?
I turned off comment display on one of my older blogs. It was the easiest solution. And I moderate comments heavily here as I mentioned above... turning them off on this blog is just not justifiable.
I have some other niche blogs on the network where I can turn comments off and turn off the display of comments. Will do a bit of groundwork and see if there is resolution to be had (or not).
You could always edit the comments template to remove the URL and anchor text from all comments. However, the problem may be that the link is in the comment itself and done in a way so it isn't obvious that it's a link.
It might be time to think of changing to Facebook comments...
That's definitely an option for this blog (ClickNewz) as most readers have a Facebook account. Something I've been considering.
From another perspective i.e. finding spam comment on your blog, have you tried the "Exploit Scanner" plugin? It displays possible JS obfuscation exploits within WordPress. Sounds scary, Lynn, but a simple plugin does show you any possible 'hanky panky'... maybe that can help you finding that comment (or as the second email from Google indicates, a number of comments).
Btw, Google could only do good by editing this templated email. But then again, they don't want to 'explain' it to the publishers, which takes up their time. Makes you wonder why won't they take the time out to serve their biggest money makers by far? :/
Good luck Lynn 🙂
I'm a small fish to Adsense, no doubt. I earn less than $1500 a year usually. So like I said, small fish to them - and not a big loss to me.
I have a feeling the offending comment isn't on ClickNewz anyway, so I'm off to browse the rest of my network...
OK, so I am new to your world. Please tell me, what do you mean by "my network"? You network of affiliate sites? Instead of you possibly repeating this for the gazillionth time, maybe you can point me to an 'about' page of sorts, telling me about what you're up to? 🙂
I have been trying to copy your easy-going writing style, so a little background would help too... hahahaha 😉
Most of my affiliate sites and blogs are under pen names and private registration. 😀 Suffice it to say that what you find under "Lynn Terry" is all I am willing to disclose... under this name (which does happen to be my legal, given name by the way *grin*). But yes, I have a number of blogs & sites that I operate in various niches.
I under completely agree and respect your point of view about disclosing personal niches (especially in affiliate marketing). One should always try to keep under the radar and dont try to make unnecessary noise cause it takes sooo much sweat n long nights to optimize the design and content.
and it takes less then 15 mins to analyze all the golden nuggets from a given site ( provided one is willing to spend money on right tools )
and Kudos to you for reminding us all how important is it to diversify our income stream. 🙂
Well Lynn its a good thing that your business model is not solely adsense! It would be nice to have a way to apply for re-inclusion ... that doesn't seem fair to me.
This post proves that Google cannot endure spam activities on the sites.
Wow, thanks for the heads-up...but sorry you had to take a bullet for the team on this one!
This reminds me of being out at SMX West back in March and seeing a Google engineer basically become a pinata for the audience. He was getting hammered with comments like, "If someone at Google would answer a @#$% phone!" and "If Google would respond directly to people...".
I know Google is all about algorithms and automation, but at some point there has to be personal, human interaction in order to keep them from losing revenue. I know you say you're a "small fish", but you're not the only one...and it adds up.
As you point out, though, this is why it's important to diversify your income and not rely on a single source! Great job with that.
-Shane
Not to worry - FB is giving them something to be worried about!
What a pain! Glad it's not going to be too much of a sting for you.
What do you think of disabling comments after a few weeks or a month? I've found that I get a lot of spam on older posts and I have been considering this. I would think it would help in terms of spam at least, not sure if it would have an effect on the sites usability.
I actually get a lot of legit comments on archived posts - particularly evergreen posts that I have intentionally maintained top rankings for. So on most of my blogs, that wouldn't be an ideal solution...
I appreciate the fact that Google is trying to keep their network "clean". That's a big benefit to their Adwords customers, to be sure. But it is frustrating that there is no way to get more information from them (Which site? Post? Comment?) or appeal the decision in any way. Good to hear that your income doesn't depend on Adsense, but for some, a sweeping decision like this would be a disaster.
It would be nice if they would at least tell me the domain 😛
I agree, it could be a real shocker for some to wake up to on a Monday morning, after so many years of getting a check from them consistently every single month. Fortunately it's not a big deal for me personally, but I hope this warning reaches the right eyeballs.
They currently owe me just under $350, which I hope they still send. Would be very uncool if they withheld earnings over this...
It always amazes me that Google won't give more help in a situation like this. They have the data, and could make it much easier for webmasters to clean their sites if they'd just give you a link to the pages with issues. Not that difficult.
At least it's a minor part of your income.
True... and true 😉
How much do you let through? I've never seen any.
The original offending comment was on my older blogspot blog. I went in after that email and changed my settings to hide all comments, throw all new ones to moderation, not display them, etc.
I just checked now - and those settings were back to default 😐 No wonder they disabled my ads! I fixed it again. Let's see if it sticks this time... grrr.
Oh my gosh - way back in ancient history!? Hopefully your changes stay the way you set them (funny that it was on blogspot and Google owns blogger but couldn't tell you where to go look for the offense?)
Even on my little locally focused blog I get scores of what seem to be auto-generated spam comments. I am not sure I understand what people think they are achieving by it though!
Update: I found a support link and contacted them, letting them know the violation was resolved. The link was: http://www.google.com/adsense/support/as/bin/answer.py?answer=113061
I am still seeing ads on the site they pointed out originally, and still see earnings (for today even) in my Adsense account. Hopefully I'll hear back from them and all will suit them.
Still, pay close attention to those blog comments! Adsense may be the least of your worries. And you don't want to go hunting down links buried in 8 years worth of content someday 😛 LOL
Wow! They couldn't tell you where the offensive piece was or at least include response details to discuss the problem? That's just rude on their part. :-/
I only have adsense on one of my websites right now and it doesn't allow comments - thank goodness. I've been shying away from Adsense in general for monetization, other things just seem more profitable.
I choose to NOT have comments on my sites.
I tried it, but grew very tired of the spam, etc. Not too mention, I can write more pieces if I'm not spending my time dealing with comments.
I don't want the extra work and aggravation of moderating comments. I just want to publish what I write without having to monitor the actions of complete strangers. It's enough just to keep my websites from being hacked.
Despite not having comments enabled, I have gotten links from message boards and other sites from people discussing my posts. Since I don't allow Pingbacks either. I find out through my referring stats on AWSTATS who is "Talking about" my posts. I never have to get involved with keeping possible offensive content off my sites because it is on THEIR sites instead of mine.
Not having comments has not stopped my readers from coming back and reading what I have to say.
I know of several big bloggers Seth Godin, Steve Pavlina and a few others who don't allow comments either. They don't want to deal with it and have found that not only is their traffic NOT affected by not conversing back and forth with the readers, but instead their readers are using their own platforms to speak their minds.
Obviously, the situation of losing Adsense, etc. would be another reason to not have comments. It just further cements for me that I made the right choice for myself and my sites. To each his/her own though....
I will note that I do have Polls on some of the pieces that I write and this has been a nice way to let the reader have some interaction, if they want.
TMZ has both Polls and comments, but they obviously let most all comments through. I wonder how they keep advertising companies happy when they let a lot of very nasty, racist, etc. comments on their site? Yahoo also allows a LOT of horrible comments through on their articles. It would seem that the bigger sites get more leeway in the type of content that they allow on their sites....
Very good points L.M.
I noticed the "no comments move" on several popular blogs and found it interesting how the conversation continued elsewhere. Particularly on Facebook. I'm leery about moving my communications off-site, to Facebook for example, with the potential to lose them in the future if anything every happened to FB or their comment app OR my account. Food for thought...
Wow! Lynn, that is brutal and really irresponsible on the part of Google in my opinion.
So let me get this straight. You fixed the issue and they still pinged your site?
That seriously annoys me. Your blog is great. Google is losing touch with people very quickly.
Kudos to your and your great blog! Long live affiliate marketing and a free internet.
Eat that one Google!
Mark
I may not have made this clear earlier, and if not my apologies, but the original offensive comment was *not* here on this blog - it was on another. And while I did disable comments on that blog (ie fix the issue) I checked back two days later and discovered my settings went back to default - and comments were displaying there again. So that falls back on me unfortunately...
I'm new to affiliate marketing and blogging, but, I learned everything I know from reading ClickNewz.com and from Ros' Super Affiliate Handbook.
Comment spam is the last thing I would have thought of to get my AdSense account banned or disabled. I am so glad that you posted this article because I only recently started my IM blog! Who knows how many businesses you may end up saving by posting this valuable information.
One more reason why you should never put your eggs in one basket! One punch from Google and bye-bye AdSense revenue. Harsh eh?
Hey, Lynn:
I've always been leary and weary of Google Adsense because when I first got into it about 3 years ago, it was all the rage. About not violating the Adsense TOS and yada yada. Also since I was a site flipper that was one of the things always mentioned to us, to not leave Adsense code on a flipped site - because down the line, you never know what wacky things the new owner might decide to do. And sure enough now two years down the road, I heard of a fellow site flipper who has trouble with Adsense now, cause he left his Adsense code on some of his flipped sites. Ooops!
Google is very strict on their TOS.
Cheers,
Missy
p.s. What happened to your Comment Luv? Don't see it now.
Great tip re: flipping, Missy!
I have never had the CommentLuv plugin. I use KeywordLuv which allows you to use "Name @ Keyword Phrase" in the name field...
Having a strict commenting policy in place is mandatory for a blogger. On one of my sites (not a blog) I had to maintain the negative word list on a daily basis as i received so much comment spam from Russia. Now I even entered 'www' and 'http' to the negative list, so that no life links can be entered into the comments section. The rejection rate increased, but the time spent on clean-up work has been reduced tremendously.
Why don't you try to get hold of a Google Rep on the phone - i know it takes some time, but is worth it. Email them and also call, so they know that you are actively working on resolving the problem. But make them look into the issue again and tell you where something is wrong.
Good luck and keep us posted on how this situation evolves.
Tom
I would also point out that Google Adwords will disable your site as a landing page if your content has been scraped!!! You heard that right too!!! Doesn't matter if they can tell which is the original or not. I fought with them for almost a month on one of my sites and they wouldn't budge. Claim it's not unique and original any more. Anybody else have this happen?
Ouch! Seriously? And no resolution on that yet??
I have watched many videos of Matt in which he has explained that Google always discourage spamming activities.Your post is the result of his statement.
From Feb 2011 Google is focusing more on the quality in each sense.I think it is the need of time.
Of course they created the issue by giving links such heavy weight in their PR calcs.
That is scary stuff. I received a similar message for a Pligg/Digg-clone site that I have. I searched all the bookmarks to find offensive terms and removed them. But keeping up with 300+ bookmarks a day is going to take quite a bit of time. I will have to see if I get the second message.
I say good I cant stand reading through comments and seeing profanity and things that do not belong. You should have been more responsible and fixed it from the start you did not gain anything in the end you lost.
Lisa
Who p**d in your cornflakes today?
Lynn has been an EXEMPLARY blogger and online marketer over these many years. She's one of the more responsible online marketers I've come across in the 10 years I've been online.
For you to say she "should have been more responsible" is irresponsible of YOU to say. But then again, you must be "perfect", so please excuse me, ma'am!
Sheesh ...
Rick Wilson aka CorpRebel 8-/
I agree. Lynn is the LAST person in the world that I would call irresponsible.
It seems that Miss EasySixFigureIncome just wanted to a link, but had to throw out unsubstantiated insults to get the link.
FYI: There has been a growing problem for YEARS with Google shutting down people's Adsense (and Blogger accounts) for little to no reason at all. Then they KEEP the money. "Google" it....lol.....and you will find story after story of many good, non-spammer type people that were taken down.
I have an old post to be republished soon about one little man that sued Google over closing his account, and WON. HAHA.
Interesting - would love to see that when it's republished.
I mentioned in Lynn's other blog commenting post that I do comment on blogs with SEO in mind - but I only comment where I can contribute something.
However, I don't have commenting on my blogs, yet I've been on the fence about this for some time. I don't have a great deal of time and don't wish to get bogged down in moderating comments. If I had an assistant to moderate, I'd probably add commenting despite potential risks set out in this post (although I don't use Adsense, but may in the future).
Another reason I like blog commenting for SEO is I actually think it's fun. I'm not in a race and don't consider ROI too much. I just get into it.
I prefer it to article marketing (which I do) and guest posting (which I do), because it's informal, immediate, and there's a ready-made audience. I can crank out my points and publish them ASAP. Most of my comments do get published. I have a massive list of blogs I visit regularly (ClickNewz is at the top) for reading the posts and commenting.
That said, Lynn, this post is a very good cautionary tale for bloggers and the potential hazards of enabling commenting.
Boy did I disturb some people or what with my comment. I was not looking for a link by any means I just don't see how there could be nothing wrong with the sites since Google sent out 2 emails. There must be something on the site that is a problem. My point was that if you are a seasoned or unseasoned whichever blogger you are then you would have been reviewing your comments so that this would not happen. Otherwise please enlighten me.
Lisa
No worries Lisa 😉 It's practically impossible to screen *everything*. Things DO slip through. Especially if the hyperlink is masked by a seemingly unoffensive domain name and misleading anchor text. I cannot possibly click on every link and check them out. Just isn't going to happen. So I did the next best thing on that particular blog: closed and hid all comments.
Like I said earlier, not a big loss for me - but a good point to consider as other merchants and vendors may follow suit in the coming months/years. So my goal was not to fuss about Google, but rather to bring up the topic for other bloggers in hopes they'll be able to avoid a revenue loss.
I've started using google Adsense recently. So, I found what you've mentioned in this article helpful to get an idea about how it works. And I am going to keep an eye on those sneaky comments. 😉
Since so much of the blog posts on my site are tied to current changes in WordPress and other techie aspects of online marketing, and not so many evergreen posts, I decided to close comments after two weeks. I was getting spammed silly on older posts and could no longer afford to spend time searching through those caught in the spam filter to find the few legit folks.
Like most folks, I used Akismet, but it has a tendency to false flag good folks as spam. I turned it off and tried GASP, which is supposed to yield fewer false positives. However, it let allowed a comment that had an offensive word (body part) that no filter should ever allow. I have since turned Akismet back on and run them both, which is soemthing many geeks have suggested not doing. But, there are several A-list bloggers running that way and it's working fine for them, and me too.
Wondering what sort of filter(s) you are using on your sites.
I'm using Akismet - and have an assistant that moderates all blog comments here on ClickNewz. Including fishing for false positives (what a pain!).
We will always aware of spammer to keep ourselves on right track.
I get quite a few spam comments on my blog, which I can currently keep up with, but I didn't imagine things like this could happen when just a few bad comments manage to sneak in. Thanks for making us aware of how vigilant we have to be.
Pretty amazing that you can lose adsense for "adult content". I wonder what Google considers "adult" nowadays. Funny because lots of people serve up ads on facebook or twitter, that are displayed right along side adult type content. Isn't that why the government has laws protecting UGC? Because there is no way that anybody should be expected to moderate every little word posted for validity etc...
This is a timely reminder. Just yesterday I was wondering if the comment was spam or not. Although it was captured as Spam, he had a photo and the address looked legitimate. So I approved him.
Perhaps next time the commentator looks doubtful, I should just delete it.
Thanks, Lynn.
Ros
Oh my, my head is spinning with all the information I have to know! Having just getting started in this business, I am happy to learn as much as I can. Thank you Lyn!(Connie Ragen Green checked my site once and told me to remove a comment that I thought was legit...so how do you know what is spam and what is not?) It seems a bit overwhelming at times doesn't it! lol. Also, totally not related to this post BUT
Does anyone know why my adsense would have been blocked on my url by the webcrawler? I have checked the forum for a possible answer but it just confused me more???
Hi Lynn, thanks for your post.
Since i've implemented the new Facebook commenting system at http://Clientonomy.com i've had absolutely no comment spam at all.
I can recommend it.
Hi Lynn,
I'm a relative newcomer to your site, which I find very informative. At this stage I am totally dependent on Adsense income, so your post made me thankful that I decided right at the start not to allow comments on my sites.
Removes a source of free content, I suppose, but also cuts the workload and allows me to sleep at night.
Perhaps when I start seeing some affiliate income I might rethink my policy, but for now it stays in place
After reading through all this I am thinking of shutting off comments on my sites as well. They are only a few months old, and so far I have not gotten any really worthwhile comments anyway. It would take away the need for Akismet! etc.
What a bummer Lynn! Thanks for sharing!
Now I have run into a problem. I decided to deactivate the comment ability on my site after reading all this, but I can't find where to do it? I have a WP blog.
Lynn,or anyone else, could you tell me how to disable my comments in my WP blog? Thanks for your help!
Hi Ruth. On a WP.org blog, from the Dashboard page, go to Settings > Discussion. You'll find all of your global comment settings there.
Also, if you want to disable comments per post/page, you can check/uncheck the box for Allow Comments in the Discussion module on the text editor page while creating that page/post. If you don't see the module, go up to the top right corner and click the Screen Options tab to expand it, and then click the Discussion check box. You should see the module just below the text editor.
Hope that helps,
MaAnna
Thanks MaAnna, I did find that section, but even if I uncheck the allow comments box in the Settings > Discussion section, it is not deleting the comments box underneath my posts. How can i make the comment box disappear?
Thanks again!
Ruth
It looks like that global setting simply unchecks the box by default in the Discussion module on each page or post. The problem for you is that the old post already had that box checked and that is overriding this new global setting. I'm betting the comment box won't be available on all of your new posts and pages since you changed that setting, but be sure to inspect the checkbox in the Discussion module on the post/page you are creating, and ensure it is set correctly.
Instead of going back and unchecking the Allow Comments box on each old post, another idea is to change the global setting for "Automatically close comments" to 0 days. So, the comments that are there will still show, but no new ones can be added.
I'm sad to hear this again, Lynn, because recently I left a great comment on a blog and it disappeared when I clicked submit. I find this increasingly "normal" due to spam comments. Will we go back to low to no interaction on our blogs and why on earth do people spend their time spamming, do they really get something out of it? I'm in astonishment!
That is really awful, Lynn. It makes me feel glad that I don't have that many comments on my blog if Google is being that anal retentive. Thanks for sharing this information. I will definitely have to be more careful about which comments I let through.
This post highlights another angle to the problem of spam. It would be nice to see Google come up with an API that allows a blog to pass links through to see if they are considered violations of the TOS so they can be flagged to the moderator(s) of the site.
The spammers would find a way to get around it pretty quick though -- probably just start using redirects and change where it goes after a couple days once the comment is approved.
It's possible that the comment was linked to a perfectly fine domain that has been flipped by its owner and is now used in a less legit way.
I don't think eliminating comments is the way to go. Using Facebook or Twitter is limiting to users. Maybe "everybody" is on Facebook, but that doesn't mean we want to use it to comment on blogs.
Before reading this post I have never thought about a serious action for spammers from Google
Lynn, thank you so much for this warning. I had to laugh about you not catching the spam when it went through. I have one measly blog that gets hardly any visitors at this point,and I get tons of comments, mostly on the oldest posts. Unlike you with your many sites, I have time to weed through them, delete the URL "names" and
Whoops! ...having first read them. I also click on their web site if I have a doubt, and then often trash it.
I think I've gotten a few real comments from Poland and other places, but most are straight out of the Marketers International Book of Comments.
I'm wondering if Bruce is right about not allowing any comments? I have only about five blogs I comment on, and Clicknewz is one of them. It's fun to read comments of others and I'd hate to lose that connection. But do most readers care about commenting?
They re-enabled ad serving across my sites after I disabled comments on my older blog. It's good they do have an appeal & recovery process in place... that actually works! 🙂
Because of danger of attacks of spammers I close comments of some of my posts.
I just received the same email from adsense yesterday. I am really worried that they will totally ban my account but still hoping after deleting all the spam comments in my blog. Do you think adsense will consider this? Do you know someone who received the same email but wasn't banned at all?
Is it advisable to remove adsense from that site and put it back after the three days notice? =)
Okay, I think it's time for some calm, because I'm not sure I like how most of the people here are commenting.
If anyone is thinking about getting rid of comments because you're scared of a Google notice then just stop writing your blog now, create a website, and move on with life. That's just too much of an overreaction.
The same goes for creating all these new ways of making people register to comment. If you didn't pay attention, Lynn's account was on Blogger, which is one of those sites that makes you register to leave a comment; either that or you leave a comment that doesn't tell anyone you've responded to their comment. They have many options for blocking things or for moderation if that's what you want to do.
Next, most blog platforms have some way that you can work on protecting your blog from spam bots. WordPress has a lot of them, and they all work well. What they won't stop is live comment spam, where someone's been paid to leave stupid insignificant posts on your blog. In that case you just have to be smarter in noticing what's coming your way. It's not always easy to discern, but a good comment policy gives you backing in removing comments from your blog if you're suspicious.
And finally, I got kind of the same letter late last year. They don't like a certain post on one of my blogs because it talks about a certain subject. There's no profanity, and they have ads that show a heck of a lot worse language and other stuff than what my post is about. But they decided they didn't like that post, and thus there's no Adsense on that blog. So what; in all the time I had Adsense on that blog I earned less than a dollar, and that was almost 3 years. Blogs are never going to be the big dog for Adsense; products and other things are. Notice, they didn't kill Lynn's Adsense account for that one thing; it's all going to be fine.
Lynn didn't do anything wrong; no one else does anything wrong. Don't panic or overreact. Do the best you can, encourage visitors to your blogs, make it easy for them to comment, set up protections, scrutinize those comments you're unsure about, and then go about and have fun. Calm down!
Thank your lucky stars they gave you three days warning. But then again perhaps they knew I couldn't do too much about the domain name. You see I have a blog called loadofbulls--t.com and it appears after several years they decided it wasn't good enough anymore. Still good enough for a PR2 though and Google still sends traffic so I'm not worried about the little adsense I lost.
Regarding comments, I always check who's leaving a comment and I delete the ones that don't fit the bill.
If you install the adsense plugin (why do work) just leave one page for comment and remove from everywhere else. then you could remove adsense from that page. On the other hand you may want to keep adsense on the comment page as you will surely get a lot of traffic there.
Pretty strange they wouldn't tell you the violating posts 🙁
This is really an eye opener. I will have to get a microscopic spectacle so I can be able to scan my comments very well before approval. still wondering why Google does not gives room for reply to such cases when they send their warnings.
You've done a lot by sharing this piece with us. I've never think about this before. Yes I agreed we're responsible for every comments on our blog. I guess I'll start looking into my comments one after the other to avoid any ban.