Click attack?

[Leva]

I'm honestly not sure and I can't view my logs until my ISP updates them tomorrow morning.

CTR on my main page jumped dramatically today, from less than 1% to 11 times that. Traffic doesn't seem to have jumped more than a little bit.

I'd redesigned the main page entirely and the ads were serving cute shamrocks in lime green -- a color that clashed rather intensely with the color theme of my site. But still, the increase seems particularly large given my usual demographic.

I've pulled adsense off the affected index page (secondary pages don't seem to be affected) and will view my logs tomorrow to see if I need to ban any new IP's. And I've e-mailed google letting them know I think there's an issue and telling them I've pulled the ads until I hear from them.

Anything else I should do?

(If google says this is legitimate traffic I'm turning ALL my ads lime green permanently.)

Leva

[miedmark]

11 x 1 = only 11 percent. I can't see how this could be alarming. You also said you did changes to your layout - maybe it's working for you.

[thegreatpretender]

You did something to improve your adsense earnings. When you saw that you're making more money, you pulled the ads from your site. I don't understand this.

[miedmark]

Sounds like panic to me. 11 percent is really not that bad.

[ganderla]

I am with pretender on this one.
Why the heck would you pull ads when you MAKE more money. Usually people pull them when they do not make money.
Trust me, site get spikes all the time. What happens when there is a yahoo update and all of a sudden you are getting 10k impressions a day instead of 1k? Do you think every single publisher pulls ads?
I don't think so.

I have colleagues who regularly go from $200 a day to over $1000 a day and they certainly don't pull the ads.

[Leva]

Sorry. I'm very new at this and I'm suddenly making more money at it than I do at my day job. I've gotten twitchy because I know it could all go away, poof, if google decides they don't like me ...

Leva

[thegreatpretender]

If I were you I would put the ads back, so you'll know if the sudden increased of ctr was the result of tweaking of your site or a "click attack". If the high ctr holds for a few days, then you did a nice job in re-designing your site.

[StuntasticAudi]

You know you will lose a day or two worth of pay. Google wont answer you on the weekend and they might not even get back to you until tue or wed. But i guess its better then losing your account. See what they say. let us know.