Forum Moderators: martinibuster
If a vindictive spammer wanted to totally mess with the system, it could start having bots and zombies sending fake IP's and click every ad it could find, driving down value systemwide. Right now it's mostly agenda driven. Your competitor emptying your ad spend. Publishers trying to make money from fake clicks. But if someone wanted to do it maliciously, I think it could become very hard to track since it would be a crime(?) without traceable motive... And since the target would be the system, the damage could be considerable.
And both YPN and Adsense publishers are vulnerable to competitors placing their code into myspace or blogger.com w/ bogus content for say a month, then reporting the urls.
Both Adsense and YPN are crying out for the feature of reporting to publishers what domains their code is displayed on.
If I'm getting any clicks for a domain that I have no control over, I want to be able to click in the interface somewhere that those clicks shouldn't count and that no ads should show up.
I know this reporting issue has been discussed before, but how long does it take to get something so simple running?
Like in my first example, what if spammers just wanted mess w/ Google and Yahoo and started scraping sites... and start placing other people's codes onto myspace/geocities/blogger/etc programmatically. It can get so messy.
Give a spammer an inch and he'll use it, just a matter of time.
Just a simple list of the domains which have had at least one impression or click:-
Your adsense code has been shown on these domains this week:
1. www.widgets.foo
2. www.elephant.foo
3. www.bar.foo
4. www.foo.bar
5. 66.12.34.56 (Google Cache Server)
That would enable you to identify where your ads are being shown, and if there are any domains you do not recognise, you could manually investigate or inform Google.
I find it hard to believe something similar to what you describe hasn't been set up yet by Goog.
Both Adsense and YPN are crying out for the feature of reporting to publishers what domains their code is displayed on.If I'm getting any clicks for a domain that I have no control over, I want to be able to click in the interface somewhere that those clicks shouldn't count and that no ads should show up.
This feature already exists.
If you want to add another site to your google account, you don't have to do it. It's done automatically. All you have to do is place your Adsense code on your other site and after certain number of pageviews/clicks, it will show in your account.
If I'm getting any clicks for a domain that I have no control over, I want to be able to click in the interface somewhere that those clicks shouldn't count and that no ads should show up.
This feature already exists.
I think you have misunderstood - the feature requested is not to allow you to run it on multiple domains, but to stop it running on domains you are not associated with.
At the moment you could go to my website, copy my adsense code, and paste it on your website which contains content that breaches the Adsense TOS, change your whois to my name and promptly report me, having me thrown out of Adsense.
i.e., you set:
mydomain.com
myotherdomain.com
thisdomain.com
thatdomain.com
As YOUR web sites. Any other website not on your approved list shows only PSAs. :)
Leva
The click fraud issue is under control and Google is not even counting the bogus clicks. As advertising is being shifted to internet, traditional media is losing lot of revenue. They are taking revenge my running lot of articles about click fraud and scaring general public so that they should never use Google Adwords or MSN Adcenter. Survival tactics.
Reuters reported
U.S. newspaper circulation slid 2.5 percent as of the end of March as readers defect to the Internet and other media outlets, though publishers were able to lure more viewers online, according to industry data released on Monday.
Link to Reuters article [ca.today.reuters.com]
[edited by: trillianjedi at 2:14 pm (utc) on May 9, 2006]
[edit reason] Fixing horizontal scroll [/edit]
Competitor places your adsense code on multiple bogus sites. Creates a click frenzy on the ads displayed. Advertisers see lots of clicks, no sales or conversions and Smart Pricing kicks in for your account or worse advertisers opt out of content sites or worse your site.
One silly reason could be that they are afraid it would confuse new publishers?
I think the only 'silly' reason would be for Google not to do this, is fear that competitors to Google Ad network would grab all the sites and contact them to join them, and leave Google. . .
If I ever see that my overall total is significantly higher than the aggregate of my sites (URL channels), I'll know my ads are being shown somewhere other than on my domains.
FarmBoy
I don't think they're worried about that. The publishers know very well what's out there. Right now it's Google and Yahoo in beta. And Microsoft will have a version in beta soon. We switch depending on which pays out the most.
Farmboy,
That's a good idea in the interim. But hopefully Google/YPN is listening and will do something before spammers turn it into an issue.
Somebody copied one of my pages to their server - adsense code and all. I'm terrified that something malicious is going to happen there - since they NEVER reply to my removal requests.
I too posted a thread about this last year. I wanted to be able to register my domains with Google so that any domains that weren't on my list could just serve PSA's for all I care or better yet, nothing.
Unfortunately, Google didn't/doesn't seem interested in providing this, guess they must have their reasons.
Could one possability be that someone has made a cache local copy of my website and is loading it up locally (with an internet connection)?
OH! maybe its the MONEY.
I have recently run across the issue where my total impressions add up to more than my domain channels as well.
In my prior post in this thread, I was specifically referring to URL channels - making one per site.
If you're talking about custom channels, it's easy to have a difference in the impression numbers if you were using AdSense before channels became available, if you've put up some AdSense displays and didn't use a channel or if you have de-activated a channel.
The question then becomes how much of a difference there is between your total impressions and the sum of your channel impressions.
FarmBoy
Somebody copied one of my pages to their server - adsense code and all. I'm terrified that something malicious is going to happen there
I hear you! I have recoded & channeled EVERY single page that displays an Adsense code and I still get impressions and clicks in my "general" channel when there should be NOTHING there. I know the adcode has been copied as you said, directly for lifted content from the site. I don't even know who has this and it scares the c...out of me!
The click fraud issue is under control and Google is not even counting the bogus clicks.
Are you sure? Can you tell when a click is or is not bogus?
As advertising is being shifted to internet, traditional media is losing lot of revenue. They are taking revenge my running lot of articles about click fraud and scaring general public so that they should never use Google Adwords or MSN Adcenter. Survival tactics.
Actually, they don't need to run any scare tactics. They only need to describe how clicks are charged and how trivial it is to generate untraceable bogus clicks. This isn't news; it is obvious to anyone who understands Internet protocols and architecture.
