Forum Moderators: martinibuster
This has coincided with a recent flurry of people being kicked out for "invalid clicks", not to mention several reports of $0.00 clicks, which I don't recall hearing about until recently. I speculated in another thread about the delay being due to increased integrity/fraud checks. In retrospect I think this might be worthy of a thread in itself.
I'm not a fan of "This happened to me so it must have happened to everyone everywhere"-type threads, but it does seem like others have noticed changes as well. Well is it my imagination or is this a real change?
There has been a pattern in the past that threads about suspended accounts seem to generally pop up mid-month, and seems to coincide to when they do their accounting checks before issuing the monthly checks.
This month, factornumberone [webmasterworld.com] received his invalid clicks suspension notice on June 3rd, which is definitely out of the normal time frame for when most suspensions are issued. Ideavirus [webmasterworld.com] was suspended "very recently" which would also likely put it in this odd time period for suspensions.
$0 clicks were first reported in March, but there has been more "sightings" of them lately. But this could also be attributed to channel reports, which would break down daily stats on a smaller level. So they might have existed before, but because they were mixed in with paying clicks, it would have been nearly impossible to pick them out.
It is possible they have made recent changes to their algorythm for determining fraudulent clicks from legitimate ones, especially with the clickbots out there. If they are doing a screening of all clicks before they show up in the account, it would make sense why publishers are seeing such extreme lags in stats.
It might also help their server load since publishers are not checking stats as frequently, knowing they won't be updated ;)
I agree that the above mentioned reasoning for delayed stats makes sense. How on earth can Google accurately check each click to make sure it is a valid one? I know this has been talked about at length, but it appears that the delayed stats are caused by some sort of click screening process.
First off, if a publisher clicks an ad, returns to my page, and clicks another, how could that be invalid? I am providing a place for Google to place THEIR ADS and share profits with me. If any click is made on my site with the user leaving my site to visit another site I should receive money for that. I am taking my traffic and handing it over to Google for a fee. If the same person goes to 100 different places through my ads, I deserve 100 clicks to be credited to my account. Just because a person "clicked more than one ad" does not make it an invalid click whatsoever. If adwords customers are not happy with too high of CTR, find a new advertising program.
Google seems to ignore the fact that any agreement made between publisher and Google goes two ways. Google has an obligation to provide a specific service to publishers. The Adsense TOS is a great read, but many of those areas in there are way too hazy and would not stand up in any sort of legal challenge. A blanket TOS that says "we are not responsible" or "we can do whatever we want" is not a legitimate one. I encourage any and all publishers to submit the Google TOS to a legal professional and ask what would happen if this TOS was challenged. Doctors make patients sign their lives away before surgery, but those documents are meaningless in any sort of malpractice case. I have seen this 1,000 times.
Any sort of "invalid click" definition must be made clear to all publishers ASAP. It is totally unacceptable to expect Publishers to do everything they can to combat something we don't know about. I could not sit here and tell anyone what an invalid click is, and either can any other non Google employee.
The statistics behind the whole system means that the larger site you run, the more likely you are to trip any sort of "invalid click filter". If a monitoring system is in place that raises a flag for more than 1 or 2 clicks per IP per 60 minute period or blah blah blah the possibility of a flag being raised is proportionate to the amount of traffic you receive, all other things being equal (target audience behavior, etc.). As a result, high performing publishers that make the most for themselves and the most for Google are at the highest risk of getting "the email". What sense does this make? Biting the hand that feeds you is never a good idea Google.
If a system like this is in place, it is only a matter of time before all of us get kicked out, and their is nothing at all we can do about it except eliminate all traffic we have, and make $0.
People are going to click more than one ad, they may have wanted to click one ad and clicked another by accident, whatever. It seems like any case that a publisher is kicked out for having a visitor make invalid clicks is totally out of the control of the publisher, and the Adsense system is at fault, not the publisher. The publisher did not require or request that visitors click multiple ads; it is the fault of Google and the ad sense program designers that a situation existed where an invalid click could be made.
It really bugs me to see the constant "I got kicked out" threads around here when I feel that good people who are doing a great service for the internet and Google as a whole are getting the boot for a problem that adsense created. I am not in control of my visitors, they go where they please. If Google expects that publishers are in complete control of the visitors to their site then they have another thing coming. What ever happened to the free thinking and endless possibilities attitude of Google?
On top of that, I am furious as to why good publishers who may not have done anything wrong are given no explanation of why adsense kicked them out. A generic email with the basic "invalid clicks" schpeel is being totally disrespectful to the publishers that have generated adsense millions of dollars.
As publishers, I think it is about time that we demand more clearly illustrated guidelines and communication with the Adsense team to ensure success on both ends. Running Adsense at this point is a total shot in the dark, where the continued success is based upon the behavior of variables out of your control caused by a flawed system, designed by Google.
Any sort of "invalid click" definition must be made clear to all publishers ASAP.
What, and make life easier for the fast-buck artists who'll exploit any loophole or weakness?
It is totally unacceptable to expect Publishers to do everything they can to combat something we don't know about.
Google doesn't expect publishers to combat invalid clicks. The publisher's job is to provide space for the ads, and that's it.
What, and make life easier for the fast-buck artists who'll exploit any loophole or weakness?
It is totally unacceptable to expect Publishers to do everything they can to combat something we don't know about.
Google doesn't expect publishers to combat invalid clicks. The publisher's job is to provide space for the ads, and that's it.
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I think you are missing many points here.
The publisher (me and you) have a vested interest in remaining in the program. If we did not want to be in the program than we would not be talking about it. I do not know if you have been sleeping for a long time, but lots of our fellow publishers are getting suspended / kicked out for activity that they had no control over. Invalid clicks has obviously spread from just users clicking their own ads to activity from third party individuals. What control do you or I have over these people? What if someone went to your site and clicked 500 times on one impression? What if, as a result, your account was suspended because of this? Would you then decide it would be time to create some dialogue with adsense to try to get out of the situation, or would you like a way to prevent any such occurrence from happening?
Your apparent attitude of sit back now and worry about anything that may happen later is an attitude that many of us find detrimental to adsense. I certainly do not want my account to suffer in the future because of the lack of interest for some publishers when it comes to a way to prevent all possible methods of fraud. Until we know what an "invalid click" is, we have no way of knowing what to do. You assume that Google telling us anything about what an invalid click is will let the millions of people who are using adsense fraudulently know what to do and what not to do. I have a slight feeling that out of the however many thousand publishers there are, not a whole lot of them are trying to fraud adsense. It sounds like you have little faith in society.
I expect a way to combat invalid clicks without kicking out the publisher in question. I have nothing to do with what my users do, and either do you. It is only a matter of chance that some "artist" as you so eloquently put it comes around and clicks you to death. I encourage you to keep your stance of keeping click fraud preventative measures out of the hands of the publishers and wait around until your account is suspended. I have a slight feeling that you will be more inclined to try to cure click fraud on your end or encourage Adsense to develop a way to keep fraud out. Sitting back now and not worrying about it is disrespectful to the rest of us who want to be a little more proactive about ensuring continued success through adsense.
It seems like there should be a way to discount repeat clicks from any given source. Then whether it is kids playing around or a competitor trying to cause trouble it won't hurt the AdWords people or us.
"Any sort of "invalid click" definition must be made clear to all publishers ASAP.
The problem is that if they give that definition, fraudulent publishers will use that information to work around it. If they know how AdSense determines what is and isn't a fraudulent click, they can then come up with a way to click ads in a way that wouldn't be considered fraudulent.
FWIW, Overture does not release this kind of information to their publishers either, nor do most (if not all) of the other contextual advertising programs.
Just because a person "clicked more than one ad" does not make it an invalid click whatsoever.
Any sort of "invalid click" definition must be made clear to all publishers ASAP.
The statistics behind the whole system means that the larger site you run, the more likely you are to trip any sort of "invalid click filter".
It seems like any case that a publisher is kicked out for having a visitor make [multiple] clicks
good people who are doing a great service for the internet and Google as a whole are getting the boot for a problem that adsense created
I am furious as to why good publishers who may not have done anything wrong are given no explanation of why adsense kicked them out.
Everything i said was total assumption, i applogize for not making it clearer at the start of my rant.
As my traffic and earnings are really starting to pick up, i am worried that some action a user takes on my site will jerpordize my standing in adsense, and their is nothing i can do to prevent it. I am stting here waiting for it to happen. Not a good feeling.
If adsense was filtering out multiple clicks on the same ad during a certain period for a single IP than what are all these people getting kicked out for? What else besides click their own ads could be going on here? To many impressions from the IP you log into adsense on? That is against the TOS if i am not mistaken, generating false impressions is a violation.
I just feel pushed up to the wall with no way to preserve my good account status with Google, and that the passage of time will lead to my, and many other publishers, expulsion.
I encourage you to keep your stance of keeping click fraud preventative measures out of the hands of the publishers and wait around until your account is suspended. I have a slight feeling that you will be more inclined to try to cure click fraud on your end...
How can a publisher possibly cure click fraud, even if Google spells out every detail of what constitutes or how it determines an "invalid click"? At best, a publisher can merely be careful not to encourage "supportive" clicking by friends, family, forum members, etc. But I can't imagine how a publisher can be expected to defend against clicks by his own enemies, competitors, an advertiser's enemies or competitors, or people who show up on a site and click an ad out of curiosity because. If Google were to tell you, "Clicks that occur with X frequency according to Y pattern are deemed to be fraudulent clicks," what could you as a publisher do about it?
Two other comments:
1) We have no way of knowing whether a significant number of innocent publishers (or how many publishers, period) are being expelled from the AdSense network. AdSense must have a huge number of publishers by now. Let's say that AdSense has 100,000 members, and a record 100 publishers showed up here in June to complain about being dumped. That would be 1 in 1,000 publishers--an infinitesimal percentage of the total. In the absence of a valid statistical sample, there's no reason to assume that a purge is taking place.
2) As has been discussed on this forum many times before, publishers aren't necessarily removed because they're deemed guilty of fraud: They may be removed simply because they don't generate enough revenue to justify the expense of determining the source of invalid clicks. Google is a business, not a court of law, and it can base its judgments on dollars and cents or even statistical probability rather than legal guilt. For example, Google might notice that a "pro-choice" or "pro-life" abortion site is being harassed repeatedly by clickbots, and it might decide to close the publisher's account if the harassment appears to be chronic. From the perspective of advertisers (who are Google's customers), closing a continually harassed publisher's account might be the sensible thing to do--whether or not it's the right thing to do.
The Adsense TOS is a great read, but many of those areas in there are way too hazy and would not stand up in any sort of legal challenge.
You may choose to follow this, but I strongly encourage other members not to do so. While a contract of adhesion (one that is not negotiated, but simply written by one party in a take it or leave it manner) is strictly construed, that is the very reason why Google has broad, sweeping language.
The broad language, as Google's attorneys have written it, would almost certainly stand up in court in my opinion. If the dollars were large enough, you might be able to successfully fight them on the terms that let them keep your earnings if they remove your account because of the broad clauses.
MQ
What if someone went to your site and clicked 500 times on one impression?
Actually, if I remember right, europeforvisitors' site was victim to a click attack late last year and the story had a happy ending. I tried to find the thread where he reported it, but couldn't locate it (europeforvisitors, you're too prolific a poster!).
europeforvisitors, you're too prolific a poster!
I have what I think is a large-ish site with a healthy chunk of revenue coming from Adsense. I do know there have been several instances of people clicking an ad, returning, and clicking another ad. My last month's logs show that I've had a three digit number of people clicking on more than 2 ads within the space of a few seconds. I suspect Google appreciates the type of clicking patterns made by genuine visitors (on a - ahem- Macro scale, they have a lot of statistical info). They haven't banned me so far - I can only assume it is because they've accepted those multiple clicks within the "normal" parameters they see for my sector... or they've discounted some of those clicks.
But, back to the subject. Yes, the lag is getting worse. I think that the larger sites with tens of thousands of clickthroughs per month are updating even more slowly than smaller sites. I have one small site which averages less than 2000 visitors a day and with only 20 pages (not all pages have Adsense). The Adsense stats for this site update much more frequently during the course of the day.
Actually, if I remember right, europeforvisitors' site was victim to a click attack late last year and the story had a happy ending.
Yes, somebody--a clickbot, presumably--racked up something like $1,200 or $1,300's worth of clicks in less than 24 hours last November. (I.e., $1,200 or $1,300 above normal.) I noticed the massive spike in revenues immediately and reported it to Google.
Recently, somebody commented in another thread that unusual click patterns may be a "scoring factor" without triggering dismissal by themselves. That's a reasonable hypothesis.
The nature of the site itself may affect whether Google gives the benefit of the doubt to a publisher. In other words, Google may be more skeptical of joes-instant-adsense-site.com or freds-dmoz-knockoff.com than of an established site with intrinsic value (whether content or e-commerce) and a good track record with AdSense.
Also, it would be naive to think that revenues might not be a factor: If a site generates very modest AdSense revenues, Google may not be able to justify investigations or dialogues regarding invalid links.
Finally, publishers who constantly write AdSense Support with questions about their stats, reports of "my kid may have clicked on an ad," complaints about revenue trends, etc. may create more overhead expense than profits for Google--and that isn't likely to encourage a long-term partnership.
I have a hard time understanding some that would rather try to correct a situation after it happens rather than press for measures to prevent certain situations. Just because you have gotten out of one event in the past does not mean that will hold up in the future.
I have a hard time understanding some that would rather try to correct a situation after it happens rather than press for measures to prevent certain situations. Just because you have gotten out of one event in the past does not mean that will hold up in the future.
Okay, let's assume that you're right in saying that repeated clickbot attacks will get anyone booted. How exactly would you as a publisher prevent that?
No generalities, please. Tough talk is cheap; we're looking for real-world solutions.
Okay, let's assume that you're right in saying that repeated clickbot attacks will get anyone booted. How exactly would you as a publisher prevent that?
I think Google should address this, as it's obvious that many publishers are losing sleep over this.
I don't want to get too technical (nothing secret anyway, just "techie stuff"):
Google sets several kinds of "tracking cookies" on each visitor. The search engine (google.com) itself, the ads service (googleadservices) etc. It also sets conversion tracking cookies.
Since Google owns about 75%-85% of the SE market, practically all PCs have such a "tag" and G has a search-engine usage history going several months / years back, depending on how often you clear your cookies (most people never do). G also knows your geo-location, which for 99% of the people is static (ie a PC won't be connecting from USA one day and China the next day).
A clickbot would need to flush its cookies often, and connect from many different IPs in order to avoid detection.
G could just ignore/devalue all clicks from users without cookies. All clicks via open proxies. All clicks via legit proxies where no "real" prior history in any of its services (SE, Adsense etc) is available, ie "virgin" PC comes online and starts clicking on ads.
If clickbots tried "impersonating cookies", G can filter them, when history says the PCs they belong to are usually in a different geo-location.
Ofcourse it's doable to do click fraud, if one setup a 100 old PCs in a basement, connected via the ISP's proxy or dialup and appropriate software. And then got in touch with 100 others in different countries doing the same. And had the cooperation of several high-traffic publishers in different, high EPC sectors. And each trusting all the others so they wouldn't cheat the cheaters.
Well, click-fraud is possible, but imho it'd require a mafia-like organisation to pull this through.
On the other hand, this "good scenario" of G being on top of the situation, assumes that Google really implements such things.
For the sceptics, Google is FAR from perfect. Lots of spam in the SERPs. "phony/spammy directories" in the SERPs, with Adsense ads on them. Diluting EPC. And Google unwilling/unable to get rid of them.
Adsene is not perfect either. I got rock-bottom EPC for B2B leads in many industrial sectors. Maybe it was because those leads were worthless. But my investigation proved (to me :-) the exact opposite on several cases.
So it's theory vs practice.
I think the biggest danger for honest publishers is that in cases of small sites receiving false bans, G can't justify (in $ terms) the cost of human review of the banned site. Bad luck...
Sitting around and waiting for something bad to happen is not good practice as far as i am concerened. I would rather let google know that they need to improve fraud prevention at the request of many adsense publishers.
I would hate to see you or me get kicked out of adsense for some clickbot attack orginating in Taiwan that we can not do anything about, but google can prevent by fine tunning a fraud algo to prevent multiple clicks, etc. We as publishers then need to be notified that these measures are in place in order to feel more comfortable with the program. I obviously od not click my own ads, I have been coming here for some time talking with other publishers about the best way to use adsense. Very very few of us, if any, are trying to scam the system, we are interested in using adsense on our sites to the full potential of the program.
I think that it is google responsibility to maintain a program that takes as many unknown variables out of the equation, such as clickbots and users clicking up a storm. We cannot control these people / machines, but google can implement a robust system to really nail down fraudulant clicks effectivly to make adsense a better program for advertisers and publishers alike.
I for one have greatly reduced the adsense presence on my site as i add new pages. I really do not feel as I can truly trust this system anymore. Maybe many of these users who have been kicked out have been for reasons like clicking their own ads, etc, but who knows, maybe some of them got kicked out for a reason beyond their control. Yes, I do greatly enjoy adsense and think it is a good program, but i think much needs to improve before i will feel comforatble using it for 100% of my text based targeted ads. What if am victim of attack overnight and I get kicked out? I am not willing to hedge everything on adsense in the event that I may be kicked out of suspended for activity I have no control over, and have to quickly change everything over to something else. Adsense is not my only revenue stream, but it certainly is a major one, as it is major enough for all of us to be talking about it at length :)
Unfortunately it occurs to me now that this approach wouldn't catch clickbots, as the script relies on the onFocus() event, and I doubt any bot would trigger it even if it was executing the Javascript.
I think because of the delays in updating stats that things are not recorded or indexed in real time, but in chunks over the course of the day. Someone goes to your site, clicks an ad, and goes on with life. This click is stored in a Queue file pending processing. The file (with thousands of other clicks) is processed and added to stats. During this time the processing searched through a file of IPs used to log in for that particular account, if a match up is made, the click is invalid, otherwise it is added to current revenue.
Having a system that blocked revenue ads from showing up for certain IPs if they have exceeded the limit, etc will require that click updates be done in real time, almost instantly. Google gets thousands of impressions and clicks each minute, so updating all of this in real time is a huge task to undertake, and appears to be one that is not occurring at this time.
Since the update is not in real time, blocking an IP after the processing occurs is useless, as the visitor may have moved on or the interim suspension of revenue ads has passed.
In order for any real good ad blocking or other preventative measures to prevent users from clicking too many ads in too short of a time period would require a total redesign of the whole system on Goggles end. This is obviously not something that is going to happen anytime soon, so other solutions must be addressed.
I would think a solution into the hosting of ads could be worked on the domain level, preventing the copy and paste of Google code onto free sites or other domains. When the script is executed a request for that file is sent to Google to supply matched ads, if no file is recognized on adsense computers than a PSA or generic theme ad for that site is shown. I would think a way to block anything but PSA would be possible since the request is being sent to Google in real time. Google looks at the account number, checks a list of allowed hosts (domains) and returns a targeted ad or a PSA (or even better, nothing at all for a non allowed domain).
I would assume that Google takes more of an issue with users clicking many ads or the same ad multiple times rather than people copying and pasting code. At the processing time the duplicate ads can be filtered out and not be counted if the same IP clicked more than 3 ads in 10 minutes or whatever the threshold may be. My issue with this is that not every additional click is garbage and can be thrown away as fraudulent. Someone may find the ads so interesting for a product that he she uses all the ads on the page to find the best price, etc. In this case I would not understand why 4 clicks on 4 ads would not be counted, as I successfully transferred my traffic to an advertiser.
I think the bottom line with multiple ad clicks (if even this is causing headaches for Google, advertisers, and publishers) is that no real solution exists in retroactively filtering clicks based on multiple clicks by the same IP or cookie ID for one user. To be totally fair Google would have to be in the mind of each person clicking more than one ad to see if it is legit or someone screwing around and clicking on a bunch of them.
If this is the case, which we are given indication that it is by the lag in reporting and the continued serving of ads to abusers (indicating updating is delayed and done in chunks throughout the day) the system cannot be improved by blocking out multiple click users in a certain time period. The Adsense system would have to move to a real time updating method to be able to identify current activity down to the exact second time frame, and block ads that are causing trouble in real time.
Retroactively removing ads that "appear" (and appear is very much in quotes) is not at all fair to the publisher, as a transfer of traffic from one domain to the advertiser still took place without any revenue gained by the publisher. As far as I am concerned, this is giving away a service that I expect to get paid for away for free, and that is not appropriate at all for a service of this kind.
It is hard to know what is and what is not possible due to the confidentiality of the whole system. I am 99% certain that "click updates" occur throughout the day or Google would have blocked activity like this already. If this is the case though, I see no reason why Google cannot remove any clicks from IPs that have logged into the account before. Targeted ads can be shown and clicked, but money will not be deducted from the adwords account or added to the adsense account. Many of us who have clicked on an add had so happen on accident. Webmasters constantly scroll through pages, click on links, etc to see if everything is working. Do that 1,000 times a day and maybe you might accidentally click on an ad. No one is trying to fraud anyone, it is simply an accident.
I have faith that Adsense will address many issues the system has and correct them for the better experience had by adwords customers and adsense publishers.
On the Performance report, make a "Updated At" column with the last update time.
That will probably make 30% of posts on this board unnecessary.
That will probably make 30% of posts on this board unnecessary.
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I do not think many people are worried that reports will never be updated or have questions as to if they are old are not, but publishers, including myself, would like the most possible security as to their future in adsense. Publishers here do not want fraud to run rampant on adsense, which could go on and lead to lower CPC, etc.
Anyone really interested in prefromance on their sites will have additional methods of measuring traffic, and do not use adsense stats as the sole way of measuring website peroformance.
Just feeling around, thanks
People are delaying AdSense until the have larger sites, and custom IP filtering, desperate to avoid a penalty the likelihood they cannot judge, and against which they feel powerless. Paranoid publishers can't be good for business. No doubt there are people out there making good money who won't expand their business because they're overestimating the risk of getting booted.
So, please, Google, calm us all down a bit...
Basically, when I called him frantically about lag time a few weeks ago when this rediculousness started, he said not to worry. He said that they are getting so many new publishers that I shouldn't think anything is wrong because of the lag. Just start worrying when your ads stop showing.
So, I just do everything I can to not violate the TOS and know that if my ads suddenly stop showing, there isn't much I can do about it.
