How Competition can Get You Banned?

A real story:
You are the hero and you are an ethical Webmaster. You start your new web site; work all day and night to generate content. Your efforts start to pay in the form of back links and organic traffic. You keep on adding fresh original content and your position in the SERPs shows that. You out rank the not-so-original site that used to rank #1.

The owner of the not-so-original site, the not-so-ethical guy (and the villain in this story), gets frustrated. He wants to out rank your site. But you keep adding new stuff regularly and stick to the top line of Google golden triangle. He tries out many ways but he can't out rank you, as his site is a not-so-original site. His frustration grows!

Now he starts to think differently - not to become ethical, but to harm you in a different way. He decides to cut short your main income stream - Adsense!

What can the villain do to your adsense income?

Multiple clicks?
This is easy to track if you can keep an eye on your CTR. Once you find that there is something unusual, you can report it to Google through this form.

But this was not what I wrote this for. There is still another way he will try that can get you banned even with out you knowing about it!

Using your ads on sites that are not allowed
He may place your ads on a site that does not comply with the Google policy. Google will hold you responsible for your ads, no matter where they are placed. So this is what you need to look out for. Now, how can Google spot that your ads are on a non-qualifying site? They have a report to the advertisers at Adwords with all details of sites on which the ads were displayed. This data combined with the fact that they can filter off sites with adult content when you switch-on the safe search gives you the answer.

Now what can our hero do to guard this?
Google’s answer to this question is - Allowed Sites

This feature in your adsense account allows you tell Google about the sites on which your adsense ads are displayed. By doing this you are only held responsible for your ads displayed on the sites that you fill in the Allowed Sites – effectively protecting you from a misuse of your ad code by the villain. Just specify all the sites where you want your ad code to be displayed and you are done!

Let the villain display your ads on any site that doesn’t comply with the policy, you will no more be affected. The ads will still be displayed and the visitors will still be directed to the advertisers web site when they click.

Where does the income from these clicks go?
How to implement Allowed Sites in Adsense?
What are the pros and cons of using Allowed Sites?

The story continues… implementing, pros - cons of using Allowed Sites and summary...