Why Google Adsense stopped serving Ads on my Blog

Most of you would have realized that Adsense Ads were not visible on this Blog for the last 2 days. Every Adsense publisher must be aware that Google has strict guidelines for this program and even crossing it in some-way-or-other may cause your Google Adsense Account to be banned. Now, How is this related to Ads not being showed on my blog, even though my Adsense Account is active? Did I cross my lines somewhere? Did I get banned from Google? What was the exact reason? Let me tell you what exactly happened….

One fine morning, (on 14th July 2010) I received a mail from the Google Adsense team saying that one of the pages in my blog are violating the Google Adsense terms, and for this sole reason, they had stopped serving Ads on my website.
They clearly mentioned that I was responsible for writing content about Hacking/Cracking which is not allowed as per Google Adsense guidelines, and so has stopped serving Ads on my site. They mentioned the responsible URL too and said that if I do not take some steps regarding this issue they be even ban my Adsense account. Have a look at the exact Email from Google:

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as
http://www.techfreakstuff.com/2010/06/hack-twitter-account-profile.html.
Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of your website.

As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on sites with content related to hacking or cracking. For example, sites showing ads may not provide instructions or equipment to illegally access or tamper with software, servers, or websites.

As a result, we have disabled ad serving to the site.

Your AdSense account remains active. However, we strongly suggest that you take the time to review our program policies
( https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=aspe-2pp-en ) to ensure that all of your remaining pages are in compliance.

Please note that we may disable your account if further violations are found in the future.

I was going all crazy as I wasn’t writing any content on Hacking on the mentioned URL and so I checked my Blog whether it was showing Adsense Ads or no. I also checked the Adsense account and it was working pretty well. Also, Ads were appearing quite properly on my blog! But, still I wrote a reply to Google saying that the mentioned URL had no content related to Hacking, even though its Title appeared to be so. The Title of that page was “How to Hack Twitter Accounts?” but I explicitly told Google authorities that it only contained some Customization tricks and was no way intending to hack Twitter accounts. Have a look at my Email to Google:

I completely agree that Ads must not be placed on Content which relates to Hacking or Cracking. But the URL which you mentioned is in no-way related to hacking. The word “hack” is used only to show that the method we are using for customization is different than
usual.
There are a few pages where I write about Decrypting passwords [but in no-way hacking]. Still as a precaution, can you tell me how do I stop showing Ads on those particular pages in my WordPress Blog.

Awaiting your response. Thanks!!

Nothing happened that day and I was pretty relaxed that Google has somehow found and corrected their mistake. But, the real shock came next morning! Adsense Ads were not visible on my Blog! I was totally going nuts. I dint know what to do. I thought that Google had taken some serious action on me. But, I realised that my Adsense account was still working. I heaved a sigh of relief!

I thought I must do something for disabling the Ads on that webpage which Google complained about, so I tried different methods but I was unsuccessful. In between, I received an Email from Google saying that they were sorry for the confusion and the Ads will start appearing on my blog within 48 hours. Read their complete Email:

Our AdSense representatives monitor all sites participating in Google’s AdSense program according to our Terms and Conditions and program policies. It appears that we sent the prior warning message in error. I apologize for the confusion.

We have now re-enabled ad serving to your site.

Please note that because ad serving to your site was temporarily disabled, there may be a delay of up to 48 hours or more before ads begin appearing on your site again. We appreciate your patience.

I wrote about this incident on my Facebook wall, Amit Banerjee and Raju PP were of great support there. After thinking for some time, I came to the conclusion that there is no point in risking my Adsense account just for earning a few quick bucks. I thought that it will be a cool idea to disallow the Google Adsense Bot from Crawling that page through my robots.txt file, so that Ads wont be served on that page and normally on other pages. I also stopped the Adsense bot from crawling another page which had similar content(but in no way intended towards hacking). After all this, I had some mental peace, but still the Ads were not visible on my Site. I was following the principle of “Wait and Watch”. Anyways, I had no other option..

On 16th July afternoon, Ads started appearing on my blog and it was the time to rejoice. The tension was relieved but I made three cool observations about the Google Adsense system:

1. The Title of the Web-page rather than the content of that web-page has a great bearing in deciding which Ads appear on your Blog (even though it is called contextual Advertising)
2. It may take upto 48 hours for Google to implement the change they have applied into their Adsense systems.
3. Google may give you a chance to correct your mistake if you have a been a loyal/trustworthy Adsense Publisher(referring to me) for a long time (more than 2 years)

I would like to hear your comments about this incidence!!