Surely considering how long someone has been using Adsense is an obvious thing to take into account? Why did they not do it before.

Good question. Not saying this is why, just throwing it out there, but could it be because AdSense hasn't been around long enough for there to be any tenure to accrue?

This all seems positive, but I think they should have been doing most of this all along.

It could also be that they're taking stock of how their practices could look to the Dept of Justice, should it ever investigate them, and making changes accordingly. I'm not arguing that IS the case because this doesn't particularly strike me as an aspect the DoJ would look into, I'm just sayin' it could be.

I find it interesting that they stated that they will now take tenure into consideration when reviewing accounts with invalid activity. This implies that an account with good standing in the long-term was not previously taken into account.

This implies that an account with good standing in the long-term was not previously taken into account.

Exactly, everyone got the same treatment. The change is that they're giving long term publishers better opportunities to explain their situation.

What if you're an honest but amateur un-tenured publisher and break the TOS? Most people don't read the TOS, any TOS. It's a common activity, everyone is guilty of it. Everyone is guilty of not reading some rules here and there. One could say their error is probably the same as the tenured publisher's error. Should the un-tenured have recourse to better opportunities to have their explanation heard?

I'm just happy that if I'm generating invalid activity enough to get banned they'll actually let me know enough about the activity to, you know, fix it. Good move Google, thank you.

- I wonder if they're about to embark on a ban campaign in the not too distant future?

- I wonder if search and adsense will be more on the same page in terms of advice to webmasters?

They must have looked at shrinking AdWords profits and realized it's not in their best interests to remove publishers for technicalities.

What they need to do is take a much stronger stance against sites that blatantly copy, jump to #1 in the rankings , and rake in the AdSense money off your own work.

The other thing is if they CHANGE the TOS. Who goes back and reads it again, even if they read it the first time. I actually did this year, and found some stuff that might be new or maybe I just didn't remember. It wasn't anything that caused any changes on my part, but it *could* have been. So now I plan to add that to my twice yearly "do this when the time changes" list, along with swapping out the batteries in the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detector - re-read the AdSense TOS.

One of my more cynical twitter followers suggested that it might be a precursor to a new wave of mass bannings; gives em something to point to to prove they're being fair, so to speak. I'm not sure I'm ready to go quite that far, but it's an interesting theory.

What they need to do is take a much stronger stance against sites that blatantly copy, jump to #1 in the rankings , and rake in the AdSense money off your own work.

That would be great, but it'll never happen. Google wants things that scale. That doesn't scale.

The TOS can also be confusing. For example, go try to figure out precisely which types of alcohol/tobacco/drug related sites it's okay to run Adsense on.

The TOS can also be confusing

Some of that is deliberate. By leaving some things open to interpretation, it leaves Google wiggle room when they want to ban a site/account.

Ember, that's what I figured, too. ;)

Funny what a down quarter, and reduced CPC revenue will yield...