Logs are your friend in this case.
You can generally differentiate normal user behaviour from a bots through the following signs:
A normal browser will request other files, e.g. .css, .js, .gif, .jpg etc, as well as the html pages.
A normal user will not hit the same page over and over, without going to other pages in between. Nor will a normal user request the same page over and over within seconds of each other.
Q) Is your campagin showing the requests as clicks? Are you getting an above average number of clicks on your campaigns?
Normally Google tend to be quite good at recognising multiple clicks from the same set of IPs, and will not charge them to your account. If you are seeing clicks are being attributed, I suggest you contact Google Adwords support, and provide them with the revelant log files of the clickbot activity on your site. They should then be able to confirm if you've been a target.
Also get the hostname/network of the offending IPs. If they aren't a proxy then this is further evidence that your are being affected by a clickbot. Do the User Agents change on each request?
The problem with turning your campaign off, as you well know, is that you loose out on the opportunity of gaining real customers. However, until this is cleared up, it is probably your only option until Monday.
Hope thats of some help,
JP
I have been getting clickbombed by a "Content Partner".
in what context do you mean, Search Partner or Adsense Partner, and if so, is it a specific site?
Shak
It's one of the "content sites in Google's Network". Yes I definitely have it all logged. Here's a snippet: "agead/ads?client=ca-pub-123456789blah&random=1067081243970&format=468x60_as&"
I assume that refers to some sort of banner ad, which I don't even have. The money is not really an issue. It looks like I got charged for a couple hundred of these for a total of around $10 so the loss is neglible.
The point is, it seems to be a very simple fraud attempt and I'm surprised Google didn't automatically stop. I turned the campaign off 3 hours ago and the bots are still plugging along :)
[edited by: Shak at 2:57 pm (utc) on Oct. 25, 2003]
[edit reason] removed specific details [/edit]
It's an apparent script, pulling the main page over and over again from two seperate IPs.
A couple of hundred clicks from two ips?
It is either a very incompetent fraud attempt or someone using some kind of bot that follows JS links for checking dead links. Either way, it will be catched by Google if it is from an adsense content site. I am not sure if you will automatically be credited, but I would send an email to adwords.
I assume that refers to some sort of banner ad, which I don't even have.
That code snippet seems to refer to a Google banner format, e.g. Adsense. Can anyone confirm this?
The point is, it seems to be a very simple fraud attempt and I'm surprised Google didn't automatically stop. I turned the campaign off 3 hours ago and the bots are still plugging along
A number of things could be happening.
First off, you've turned off your campaign, so your ads should not be shown anymore? Check if your ad is visible on a) Google, b) partner sites, c) anywhere else you know your ad used to be visible.
If your ad isn't shown, whats probably happened is that the clickbot has found your ad on a page somewhere, has cached the results, or requested the URL some time before, and only now has followed the link through.
As for a Google stopping this in real time. It is possible, given lots of processing power. However, to do this, each click on an Adword would require Google to look back in their logs and see if it was a duplicate. The processing power and hence time, as well as real-time access to click-through logs (even if in a database, which they no doubt are) before deciding wether to let a visitor through or not would be unworkable, to keep the system as speedy as it currently is.
Instead, they probably log the results and do post-analysis in batches, which would be far more workable.
I had a similar problem and I contacted AdWords support on it before. I was getting a number of referrals from a site and when I went back to the site I couldn't find any evidense of AdSense or AdWords or any mention of my site. The woman at Google said it was "possible that I wouldn't seen an ad". I asked her to check into it, she said she would and she would send me an email. Of course, she didn't.
BTW, the user-agent was the same on every request.
Drop the AdSense team a note:
adsense-support@google.com
Let them know the complete referral code (the number after the ca-pub is the publisher ID, the other number I believe relates to the ad information) and all the specifics you have (IPs, keyword ads, etc).
They do have checks in place that will eventually shut this down, but you might be able to draw it to their attention sooner, and get a confirmation of when it is "safe" to put your ads back online.
it appeared that banners were being displayed, but mine (since I don't even have one) wasn't there.
If you are running Adwords, you can allow your ads to appear in AdSense, which is what is happening. Your ad will appear in banners, skyscrapers, leaderboards or inline rectangles as a text ad. So you don't actually give them an actual banner. Here is what they look like on content sites (although they could be in different colors)
[google.com...]
Did you get a referral ID that gave you the exact URL this was coming from? The referral URL is usually just the googlesyndication URL (the AdSense/Adwords default internal tracking URL), not the URL on the AdSense publisher site where your ad appears. Your referral could be from page2.googlesyndication.com/.... but your ad actually appears on joesreallycoolcontentsite.com/....
