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Google mum on AdSense payments failure fix

Web publishers facing tough time ahead

Some web publishers are facing financial stress as Google’s AdSense platform has been withholding payments for advertising, in some cases since the September fees were due.

AdSense users contacted Google last month regarding a zeroing out of their accounts in September. With many accounts, the amount due was stuck at $0, despite the sites themselves clearly generating enough traffic for a more significant amount to be due.

The payments, which were to be processed by the beginning of October, have failed to materialize, although Google said in support forums that it was working on the problem and expected to have a solution shortly. With October payments now due, it appears that there are still going to be plenty of publishers facing a second month of non-payment.

Google has said the problems are due to syncing issue between the payment system and the front-end. The money is there, they say, it's just not getting through to customers as yet. In a posting on October 12, Google said that the problem would be resolved "as quickly as possible." On November 1, they abbreviated that assurance to "a.s.a.p."

However, it now seems that a number of customers are still going to be without payments for last month as well.

“For a small number of publishers with this error, the October ‘Payment issued’ line item is also not displaying. Publishers with this problem will be paid as usual and according to the normal schedule,” said the company in a posting on the Google support forums. “We understand that publishers who use Western Union as their form of payment will be unable to pick up their payments without the corresponding MTCN numbers. If the problem is not resolved in the next few days, we will email your MTCN numbers individually.”

The search giant also noted that Google Affiliate Network publishers faced the same problems for September and October. The Register contacted Mountain View, asking when a fix would be available, but has received no response.

“Most Google publishers don’t have the dependable income stream that comes with working at Google,” wrote XYHD.TV blog author Brandon Wirtz, who says he finally got an answer from Google after posting a video about the problem online.

“Many of my clients you could say live more stretched than pay check to pay check." he wrote. "They stretch the payments on hosting, rent, and utilities. Quite a few of my clients live for the boom in ad prices that comes in October, November, and December when they make the majority of their money.” ®

Update

Google has provided The Register with the following comment:

"A number of AdSense accounts were impacted by an issue affecting how earnings are displayed, and a subset of these accounts will experience an October payment delay. We know how important payments are to our publisher partners. We are reaching out to partners affected by this and are working diligently to correct the problem."

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