Yikes! Stats gone wild .

10x more clicks than impressions?

[toomer]

Wow -- so, a legacy site that we have, that we don't do much with anymore ... just started reporting some very wacky numbers within the last hour or two. I won't post exact numbers, for fear that that would somehow run afoul of the TOS - but it's a very low traffic site ... barely gets a dozen or so hits a day any more, because we haven't updated it in months and there was very little on there to begin with.

But today, the click ratio is 10x the page views -- so, along the lines of 12 "impressions" as far as AdSense is concerned, and 120 clicks currently showing up (not actual numbers, but makes a good demonstration). My CTR on that site is currently showing over 1,200% ....

How would that even be possible? Once someone clicks on an ad - their browser window goes to the new site. To get back to my ad on that page, they'd either have to reload the page or hit "back" in their browser ... each of which should trigger a "re-impression".

Could someone's browser-side javascript gone haywire and kept transmitting a click over and over? Or could something more nefarious be going on?!?

I'm very scared and concerned about what may be happening here. Our sites are 3 months old, and we're just starting to break $1 per day (I know, very small potatoes to most here - but it felt like such a milestone!). Would hate to see something bad happen.

Anyway, just wondering if anyone else has seen strange things like this? I just fired off an email to AdSense to inform them of this anomaly, and that it seems way out of the norm for me (although I can't explain it - the IIS logs don't show much traffic at all).

Oh well, I'll be sweating for the next few hours until I hear something from AS ....

Thanks!

[Endurer]

If I were you, I'd immediately inform google's adsense team by sending them an email and explaining about the unusual activity.

[rbacal]

I'd pull the ads immediately, in addition to notifying google.

[OptiRex]

Have a read through this very recent thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Ricky_G]

Just check your pages. If you are using a Database based script... it might be the case that someting went wrong and only content is showing on your website.

This happened to me sometime ago and Google penalized me for the same.

[crick]

Something definately fishy going on. I would contact Google and do the advertisers a favour and have Google return their their money. 120 clicks on 12 impressions suggests nothing but possible click fraud.

[toomer]

Well, I contacted them and let them know what was going on - offered my IIS logs, etc. They kindly responded that they had noted my input, and would continue to monitor the situation.

Nothing strange happening since then. However, I did check the blog application logs for that site (not the IIS logs) and found that site was being targeted for trackback spam -- dozens of invalid requests for trackbacks -- so maybe they are somehow related.

[crick]

Its good that you made them aware because they might think you might have been reponsible. Now that they know, it means you are in the clear from any possible ban.