Forum Moderators: martinibuster
My plans are that the site will make its money from various affiliate and Adsense advertising.
My worry is, reading all the horror stories, that Google will cancel my account if someone decides to go click-happy on Adsense links on my site.
Instead of trying to convince Google to re-enable my account, are there solutions to block visitors (presumably by IP) from clicking more then say.. three adds within a 24 hour period?
(I am planning to run vB with VBAdvanced.)
My worry is, reading all the horror stories, that Google will cancel my account if someone decides to go click-happy on Adsense links on my site.
instead of worrying about this...what i suggest is that you just play your game according to rules..and every thing wd go fine..and never ever click your own ads...this is what google hates most
best of luck for ur project
Now that I know I should go by the TOS ;), could you provide one for a preventative solution against a "click-bot", or someone bent on downing my site?
(To those who might not be familiar with it, there are software packages out there that you can point at a web site, and will search for Adsense links and repeatedly generate a "click" on them. Repeatedly, as in hundreds a minute... WHEN Google Adsense sees this, your Adsense account will be banished :( )
(To those who might not be familiar with it, there are software packages out there that you can point at a web site, and will search for Adsense links and repeatedly generate a "click" on them. Repeatedly, as in hundreds a minute... WHEN Google Adsense sees this, your Adsense account will be banished :( ) ]
I think in this case would nothing happen, because it's obviouse a click attack.
Maybe You would even not see it on Your stats, because filtered out before.
And since I see all the notes where people got ditched by Adsense after such "marketing campaign", I would presume there is such protection built in.
My purpose with this is to put this prevention in and forget about it. Insurance.
Just my opinion.
EVO
The majority of people who were kicked out of the program got booted for
1) clicking on their own ads
2) violating the Adsense T&C agreement to such a degree that there was no sense in issuing a warning.
First off, most people have better things to do than send bot attacks to other people's sites. Secondly, Google is very aware of the click fraud services that use clickbots, or like those companies in India that are using proxies to attempt to generate income through Adsense clicks, and has been pretty good at filtering them out.
I would spend my time on a lot of other aspects of my sites before I started worrying about this kind of nonsense.
That is Google's department, let Google worry about that. If you have a site with quality content, and don't use any sort of artificial incentives to get people to click on your ads ("support our site by clicking on the ads")
If your answer is yes, I'd like someone to tell me how Google can possibly have this "figured out", so that they know you didn't do it yourself and therefore won't ban you. I just don't see how it is technically possible for them to have any idea whether or not a click-attack was self-orchestrated or not, other than the brain-dead case of using your own IP address to do it.
Let me add to this that, ironically, there is a thread right now wehre someone got their site cancelled and apprently did nothing wrong: [webmasterworld.com...]
Are you willing to gamble your AdSense income that a) No one wants to bother messing with your site via a click-attack, and b) that Google has this problem figured out?
Considering that none us of have insight into the reasons behind any "i've been banned" episodes, I would say the answer to this is yes for everyone running adsense, eh?
EVO
1. Set up one of those AdSense click tracker scripts that logs clicks on ads to a database. Write the IP and time of each click into a database table.
2. Write some PHP that chooses when to return AdSense ads based on IP: If the IP has recently clicked on an ad (say in the last 30 minutes) don't return any AdSense to this user, give them some other ads instead or something.
This doesn't work for firefox or bots because they probably don't work with the click tracker.. most of the click tracker's I've seen only work with IE.
Alternatively, counting how many times Adsense was displayed to the same IP within a time frame could be limited... This would limit the potential of clicking on them till being dropped.
PatrickDeese, no I am not comfortable. I am not comfortable with driving on the road with others driving, so I put my seat belt on. I am not comfortable that my house won't burn down so I put smoke detectors in. I am not comfortable that no one will break into my house, so I lock the doors. I am not comfortable that my health will be always perfect so I go visit the doctor regularly. I am not comfortable that my teeth will be ok forever, so I brush them regularly.
In one word - insurance. I am a firm believer of preventative solutions. If I can spend an ounce now to prevent this problem in the future, then I rather do it now, then spend months and months trying to convince my advertising consolidators that I wasn't trying to cheat them. By that time I will have created a certain reliance on the income, so the loss would be much more devastating.
Let's not forget that we have the 302 error issue going around. Those who are willing to steal traffic that way, wouldn't be willing to attack a competitor, if they know they will not get caught and would increase their money?
Would you bet your income on that?
1. Set up one of those AdSense click tracker scripts that logs clicks on ads to a database. Write the IP and time of each click into a database table.-snip-
This doesn't work for firefox or bots because they probably don't work with the click tracker.. most of the click tracker's I've seen only work with IE.
I've written a script that catalogs every link someone clicks on from any page, and so you could rig it up through that.. but I think that intercepting the click first is, for some reason, against Google's T&Cs. FWIW, my click tracking worked in all major browsers I tested with (FireFox, IE, Safari).. but I don't think this would stop the mass clickers since they'd be using proxies anyway.
If your solution also does not require any modification to the AdSense code you paste in, then I would be very interested to see it... I am always interested in more accurate tracking!
Right now I can accurately track IE users, and then I just fudge and guess that firefox users behave the same way, but who really knows.
but I don't think this would stop the mass clickers since they'd be using proxies anyway
But it could be modified that, for example no more then five clicks per 24 period on Adsense from the same IP. Clearly that is a guess, but that sounds much more reasonable then 500 clicks in 1 hour.
It would not matter if it went through the Vatican or Belize. As long as the clicks did not come from the same IP, then it should not matter to Google either... I see no other way Google would track it.
as an aside: Would using a "click-tracker" script be a violation of TOS?
