Google Adsense = Disastrous customer support = Robotic. Nonsense. Catch 22

Isn't it ironic? In the next few paragraphs I will lay out my horrible experience with Google Adsense on another of their web properties - their own blog site. But let's not waste time, what is this all about?

Being a long-standing technologist, mentor and evangelist of several rising stars in the internet and mobile tech space, I still have the time for some of my own projects. One of the them is arguably the biggest ex-pat Bulgarian community in Europe. It has persevered for 10 years now and sometimes even to my surprise (considering my time constraints) bolsters a growing userbase and plenty of up-to-date relevant information. The site offers latest news, growing knowledge base, blogs and huge forums.

In few words, it is a helpful site valued by its community.

One beautiful day (2 weeks ago) I received a notification from Google Adsense that my site has violated their Terms and Conditions and that I have 3 days to resolve the issue. The organised person I am, later that very same day, I looked in greater detail at google's request. Google was pointing at a link on my site where one of the users has posted a lady in lingerie. That being said we do not encourage such content so it was immediately removed. The site discusses employment, family, commute etc. but yes users do sometimes exchange about daily life and become playful.

In the mean time a second request for removal arrived which superseded the previous one. Again links related to the post with such content. Cleaned the pics, left the content which was mostly links.

Submitted an appeal and the pain began. When you send an appeal to the "policy specialists" you do not get a copy of your polite message but a standard email:

Hello,

Thanks for contacting Google AdSense. This an automated reply to let you know that we've received your appeal request.

It looks like you'd like to appeal the disabling of *********. While we're unable to respond personally to this particular message, please rest assured that your request has been submitted for appeal and one of our policy specialists will be reviewing it soon.

Please note that while we will take your comments into consideration when evaluating your website, there is no guarantee that ad serving will be re-enabled.

We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

About 2 days later I received a rejection of my appeal. With a standard email.

Hello,

Thank you for providing us with additional information about your site. However, after thoroughly reviewing ******** and taking your feedback into consideration, we're unable to re-enable ad serving to your site at this time, as your site appears to still be in violation. 

When making changes, please note that the URL mentioned in your policy notification may be just one example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of your website. Appropriate changes must be made across your entire website before ad serving can be enabled on your site again. 

If you'd like to have your site reconsidered for participation in the AdSense program, please review our program policies and make any necessary changes to your webpages. 

Once you've fully resolved any issues with your site, please review this Help Center article to learn more about how to create a successful appeal.

We appreciate your cooperation. 

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Went back to that particular forum and took another cleanup, removed whole topics that could be considered by some as adult material and submitted another appeal.

A day later - rejection. Same email.

Went again removed a whole subforum that was touching on issues of our users sexual life and had links to legitimate sources with articles on the topic. Submitted an appeal.

A day later - rejection. Same email.

Removed the whole forum, put it in a hidden folder so that i have references and people's content protected just in case someone needs that information. Submitted an appeal.

A day later - rejection. Same email.

This time I was really clueless. I checked again and could not find anything wrong. Without indication of which links violate the Terms and Conditions of Google Adsense and with a content repository of 150 000 posts I cannot really do a lot even if I want to. I wrote this:

Google team, we have removed not only this link but also many other pages where we suspect there may be a violation. We need your assistance should you find more content that does not comply with your terms and conditions.  

Please PROVIDE US with a LIST, our latest appeal was rejected with a general automated message. We are your trusted customer for 5 YEARS, we deserve at least some BASIC support from a human being. 

Thank you! 

A day later - rejection. Same email.

I am now really clueless and it is a bit sad that a company that I know closely would give me this experience. My web property has real impact on people's life and some income from ads is always welcome to cover the bills.

But rest assured even without the revenues from Google we will persevere as we did for 10 years already.

Google you can do better than this!

UPDATE: I have resubmitted again.

A day later - rejection. Same email.

I have now moved all my properties to Yahoo Bing network.