googleads.g.doubleclick.net

"Referring Site" sending a large amout of traffic.

[Wingate]

Does anyone know what this is? I opened up my Google Analytics account today and saw a huge spike in referral sites. When I dug in a little deeper I noticed I was getting between 400 - 800 visits a day from this source.

It started on about Feb 5th and just keeps climbing. Also, I have two sites on two servers doing this so it's not just a fluke.

Anyone know what's going on? What is this?

[Gomvents]

adwords content network

[Wingate]

Well, the strange thing is that I'm not paying for anywhere near the amount of traffic it's sending. I'm getting an average of about 600 visits a day and only paying for maybe 50 clicks.

[cgrantski]

Congratulations.

It's possible, perhaps likely, that there is some fraudulent traffic coming from those sources --- owners of the publishing sites who think they'll get more money if they add a few clicks of their own to the mix (there are whole cottage industries set up to do this). Google seems to be pretty good at detecting these and not charging you for them.

It's also possible that Google will catch up in its billing, though it's getting kinda late for that. Google has to get data from Doubleclick and sometimes those things are slow.

It's also possible that you've set a limit on your daily spend of about 50 clicks' worth of traffic, and Doubleclick is screwing up by not turning your ads off properly. Therefore Google has to honor its arrangement with you.

[Wingate]

Thanks for the feedback guys, helps a lot!