Forum Moderators: martinibuster
If you have a CPM Adsense ad on your site, what do you do about checking your own pages or looking at them? This is akin to CPM fraud since each time you bring your own page up an impression is made.
I think a lot of people want to know the answer to this, and Google *must* have thought about this. Webmasters will want to view their pages to see that the site is working, and what adverts are appearing. There will also be some muppets that will repeatedly load the page to get $$.
The two options I can see are that either you are going to need 5 views to get 1 cent and it's not worthwhile counting this as fraud, or they have a mechanism to diss-allow clicks.
But as you rightly say, everyone here gets paranoid about clicking own ads, and wants to know if just viewing your own site is going to get you booted!
Come on Google, please clarify this and put our minds at rest.
ASA
Please define "excessive reloads." I tend to edit my pages 'live' on line. I create a page, upload it and then usually make multiple changes as I edit, reloading multiple times. Maybe 10-12 reloads for each new page.
While I'm asking that, I'll also ask what is your opinion of Adsense on scaper sites? Scraper sites are pretty much pages that have an adsense ad on top and on the bottom, with nothing but links scraped from search engines in between the ads. Does this run afoul of any adsense standards?
This has been a hot topic as it appears that folks who publish scaper sites can publish hundreds or thousands of pages per day and some of these pages receive high listings in some SERPs. Other folks who develop unique content feel threatened by the positioning of these pages in the SERPs, upset by the fact that these pages reuse content without the publishers permission and are so easily produced.
Many publishers have been wondering if they should give up developing content sites when the return on investment looks as if it could be much higher for creating scraper sites.
What do you think?
I wouldn't advise excessive reloads of your pages, but pubs should be able to view their own sites without worry. Hopefully that will put most of you at ease :)
On one of our site, I am having like 20 Editors working (same IP) and during regular week day if they are working on the that particual project, then they are likely to have made atleast 2000+ page views every day for atleast 2 to 4 months... what would be the best way to manage such issues?
Do you think that a few hundred pageviews a day is still OK? I visit my own site a lot to add new content, edit content, browse through the forum, check for new comments, to answer on comments and forum posts, ...
I want to know what system is in place to ensure that geniune publishers can continue to work on, view, and edit their sites (however excessively - it is our right to do so, after all) without fear of getting penalised by the system.
There is not enough information & appropriate guidelines to work to, especially with the impending CPM model to work to, and the only thing that gives me any guidance from Google is their Adsense TOS, which at times needs deciphering by senior members of this forum (thanks, BTW). Come on Adsense, show a little more professionalism towards publishers.
This is exactly what I do as well. It's just a part of my normal editing process. And each day I access my own site just to see if everything is running ok. I easily get a dozen or more reloads just with daily checking. Editing 50 new pages may bring several hundreds of reloads. It would be really cumbersome to have to worry about being accused of impression fraud simply by engaging in the normal process of site maintenance and upkeep.
I also sometimes have friends view my pages to see how something looks at a certain resolution ("Ok, now how does this look at 1024? what about now at 1280? Is the text too small?")
Will this be considered fraudulent?
If you have a CPM Adsense ad on your site, what do you do about checking your own pages or looking at them? This is akin to CPM fraud since each time you bring your own page up an impression is made.
How the heck is checking your pages have any affect at all on AdSense?
OK, so impressions go up minisculely, so what?
You're not clicking, no fraud has occurred, so what?
BTW I actually check my own home pages around once every three months. O.K. Sometimes even longer.
Does it matter?
Stop Navel Gazing....!
I wouldn't advise excessive reloads of your pages, but pubs should be able to view their own sites without worry. Hopefully that will put most of you at ease :)
No, it doesn't.
Why exactly wouldn't you advise "excessive reloads"--whatever that means?
On one of my sites especially, I have a complicated, contextual, semi-random scheme of Adsense and affiliate ad placement. Whenever I tweak the scheme, I need to check each and every page (well, almost all) in order to review whether I have achieved the desired effect or screwed up the layout. This can result in hundreds of additional page views on such days.
This is in addition to page views resulting from normal page and content creation, review, and edits.
Now I have to fret whether 100 vs. 200 vs. 500 own-page views (in times of peak activity happening day after day) steps over Google's vague and arbitrary line?
At ease? No, I'm not.
OK, so impressions go up minisculely, so what?You're not clicking, no fraud has occurred, so what?
The new CPM ads will pay based on impressions, not on clicks. Viewing ads on your own site will soon be the same as clicking ads your own site is now. This isn't navel-gazing; Google needs to either establish trust with publishers that they can view ads on their own site without getting kicked out of the program, or find a solution.
The solution I'd like to see: a toolbar extension that lets publishers specify sites they own or are associated with and have AdSense impressions and clicks on those sites discounted. Any thoughts? Any likelihood?
I too visit my own site regularly (obsessively?) to check for errors, updates, uptime, etc.
I think that I am gonna have to do that discreet "no ads" button sooner rather than later so as not to piss off CPM advertisers.
(Note that TribalFusion tackles this to some degree by allowing advertisers to specify a limit of exposure of any one ad to any one visitor, which in effect is a CPM cap. G will probably have a similar measure at least.)
Rgds
Damon
<paraphrase>Google uses the same sophisticated technology that we use to prevent invalid clicks to prevent impression fraud. AdSense publishers are not permitted to click on their own CPC ads, but are allowed to view the CPM ads on their own websites without the risk of creating invalid ad impressions. We constantly monitor activity for sites displaying Google ads to ensure that no invalid impressions are charged to our advertisers.</paraphrase>
[edited by: Jenstar at 2:49 pm (utc) on April 27, 2005]
[edit reason] paraphrased email quote; actual quotes not allowed as per TOS [/edit]
Google uses the same sophisticated technology that we use to prevent invalid clicksIf that is true then the only logical assumption to make is that the way they detect click fraud is through IP addresses(which doesn't seem very sophisticated to me)
What other means do they have because what information does a banner impression actually give them? Do banner impressions really show referrers (e.g. yahoo, google etc)to a website page?
For one I wouldn't use G as a cpm publisher - use a real network casale, fastclick, tribal fusion, burst - LOTS & LOTS of competition in that area.
forgot to mention. Does no-one else find it quite funny that they have got publishers so afraid of being kicked out the programme that they won't even look at their own site.
Google isn't to blame for publisher paranoia. You might as well blame the police if some drivers won't get in their cars because they're afraid of committing a traffic violation.
Does it matter?"
I think it does. I have sites that I add content to weekly. Not auto generated but real content. Read writing takes editing and error correction. This means multiple refreshes of a page. I also have one site that lists news links on the home page and these are updated several times daily. And, of course, I usually have one or more typos that have to be correctly and typically I don't even notice these typos until the page is "live". So, yes, this is an issue...if you have a site that is heavy on new and orignal content creation.
Obviously they have looked at ways of dealing with the problem or their publisher base would be decimated in weeks. Personally I must view up to 100 of my own pages daily.
The only one who should conceivably be worried is NeedScripts, who apparently can generate thousands of impressions a day from the same location for months on end. Even though that's presumably a small proportion of your total site traffic, those editors should really be doing most of their work offline, or at least your site should be set up not to serve them ads. The point is, that kind of system must generate quite a few accidental AdSense clicks anyway.
With the exception that traffic laws are written and of public record, and when you feel you are unjustifiably acused on violating one you can have your day in court. With Adsense sure there is a TOS but it is purposely vague for Adsense's benefit (hence all of the questions on WW with each change of the TOS) and if you are acused of violating it there is no real appeal process (certainly not a formal one). I think the creation of publisher paranoia is a valid criticism of Adsense and the way it is implemented. You reap what you sow.
pubs should be able to view their own sites
should?
I run a forum for investors. Of course there are a lot of visitor who visits the forum for example once a day. But a lot of the forum members are very active and pay a visit for exaple every half an hour.
When I look in my site stats, the top 10 visitors generate between 3000-10000 pageviews a month each!
I think I have a problem when Google comes out with the new system.
