Is my site being used for click fraud?

Too much traffic might mean something bad's happening!

[TooManyClicks]

I have a relatively new site up and running which hasn't had much traffic. Until today. My earnings are way up, but I'm concerned because looking through my logs I see that I'm getting tons of accesses of my /index.html page from all kinds of different IP addresses and NONE of them have the referer header set. And they all seem to just view the home page and move on. They're not all clicking ads, but some are -- my CTR is at 16%! I'm wondering if my site is being used for some kind of coordinated click fraud, but I'm not sure how to know. Any hints would be appreciated, Google may find this behavior suspicious.

[AbsintheSyringe]

@TooManyClicks O_o?,

Welcome to the community, try using search option before posting posts like these.

Reference:
[webmasterworld.com...]
and search option.

[MediaSpree]

16% is high but not super high. Do you have any enemies who might be trying to defraud you? If not I think you are OK.

[jetteroheller]

16% is high but not super high. Do you have any enemies who might be trying to defraud you? If not I think you are OK.

Why should somebody appear without referrer on his site?

I find it very strange and would wirte Google about it

[TooManyClicks]

The lack of referrers is what really bothers me, and the fact that nobody seems to be exploring the site beyond the home page.

[TooManyClicks]

So the numbers for today, as of 6 am: 297 impressions and 250 clicks, for a CTR of 84.2%! This has to be some kind of zombie attack. I sent mail to Google last night, but no word yet from them.

[blairsp]

why don't you take the code off your site. If the clicks continue you know it is robotic. Advise G and ask them what you should do.

I have just done the same with a mamma media search box in which I think something similar is happening

[2PACroatia]

send us those clicks :)

[asianguy]

TooManyClicks, 84% is way to high. Do you have enemies who tried to bring your site down?

[TooManyClicks]

No, no enemies. The accesses were occuring every 20-30 seconds on a continual basis. Anyhow, early this morning I changed the home page to only display ads if the "referer" header was set and after 2-3 hours the zombies stopped visiting. Either that or they were only programmed to bang at my site for 24 hours. Anyhow, it's annoying because Google will probably declare all those clicks invalid and I'll be stuck with a bill for exceeding my bandwidth.

[moneyraker]

Just out of curiosity, how much did this so-called zombie attack 'earn' you? If Google chooses to ignore your email to them, you might get to keep the money after all. :)

[2PACroatia]

send us those zombies ASAP
:)

[TooManyClicks]

If they let it stand, almost $150 more, which is tremendous for a site that was just created. I expect them to take it away, though.

[jonte]

I have had similar experiences in the past. A low traffic page, and boom, one day the numbers went sky high and no referrers in the logs. I did not know where all that traffic came from. However, later on I was able to figure out the source. Some guy out there had been commenting on my site on a very popular web page, however the link was not clickable, resulting in copy/paste to the browser and that was the answer to the mystery.

Could be the answer to your mystery as well, I reckon.

[TooManyClicks]

Maybe. But this traffic was constant and regular. In that case I'd expect them to be clustered a lot. We'll see what Google has to say, if anything.