April 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[Mentat]

March was a UP/Down month for many, but was generally a quiet month.

April has "two Easters" (Catholic on 5th and Orthodox on 12), an official Google update on 21 (mobile algo) and probably the doorway pages update.

In the last yeast, Google rolled some big updates on holidays, so it's time to prepare yourself for a rough month.

[nubchai]

I haven't contacted Google since my traffic and clicks have been improving for the past month. I did block the IPs mentioned by others. If this is a mass attack, Google will do their thing. We may see clicks removed, but it would be obvious that the webmaster did not cause these clicks imo.

[alika]

Is anyone seeing attacks from

ukservers.com
IP: 5.101.146.50
Hostname: no.rdns-yet.ukservers.com
Browser: Firefox version 27.0 running on Win8

[Sillysoft]

You still could be clicked bombed but at a lower rate. I had the same issue this morning. High earnings but CTR was in the range of ok. Looked up the ip and saw xlhost, but not as high traffic as the other sites and I looked in GA and saw the highest traffic from any firefox browser was version 27. So I blocked the ips and added htaccess code to block firefox 27 and now the earnings have slowed dramatically.

[nubchai]

It's possible. But after they resolve the problem, I'm sure Google will be screening all clicks and earnings for publishers this month.

[azlinda]

Since I blocked Firefox 27.0, the RPM has gone done quite dramatically. I will just GA and add the other IP blocks you suggested, oliversk.

[netmeg]

Ok everyone should calm down. First thing I'd suggest is that you don't go overboard with the blocking - I would never block a browser user agent myself, as that would block actual users. It's annoying, but Google does stay pretty on top of this stuff, specially when it seems to be network-wide like this one does. Analytics doesn't report IP numbers because they can't - the privacy people are already on fire about what they do report as it is. If you want IP numbers, install something like Piwik or use StatCounter. Nobody will get kicked out of AdSense over this - the worst case scenario is that after they take the money back, they leave the fake clicks and impressions/pageviews in your account, screwing up your stats forever more (yea I still have messes from my bot attacks last year)

When I blocked a few service providers (mostly XLHost and Amazon) it was because it was taking Google a long time to figure this stuff out. They're better at it now, but it still takes a few days (and I'm sure the attack was unleashed on a weekend on purpose) so you probably don't have to worry about reporting it to Google or doing a lot of heavy blocking now. They have a lot more information and technology at their disposal than we do.

[nubchai]

More of my Firefox clicks seem to be coming from 37 today. But it's early.

[RedBar]

Most of the members experiencing this seem to be 5+ to 10+ years at WebmasterWorld!

Nah, I've been here longer than that under various monikers. I've only seen one UK report so far, any others?

You're not all hosted on the same server are you? Hahaha...only joking:-)

[netmeg]

Amazon allows people to run all kinds of programs/bots from its servers, and I guess xlhost must as well.

I also suspect that some of these fake clicks are from bots running on infected PCs. One of my sites has been particularly targeted for this sort of thing (oddly, because it's not my main site or my biggest site or my best earning site. Not sure how it got on the list)

[MrSavage]

As a counter measure in the past, I removed my attacked site from my authorized site list. At the very least I felt I protected my account from being suspended or closed out. I sent Google an email explaining the situation and the action I took, which was removing the site from my authorized ones. It's a fast way of defending against this. This said, I don't think I've ever read of such a blitz. This seems like an incredible event. I'm actually a bit worried about the entire system at this point.

[LilyTousi]

Did most of you guys report the invalid clicks to Google using the Invalid Clicks Contact Form?

[frankleeceo]

It appears that Google has now correctly filtered out the incoming bad clicks. I chose not to do anything since it appeared to be entire system wide attack. (I would've done all the steps that people mentioned if it was just my sites that got hit). I left the sites as they were and simply sent in a report so that Google can use for some data points for the invalid activities.

The rate of incoming clicks and earnings are now more or less back to normal. I think it's worth mentioning since the people who have taken precautionary measures probably wont notice the difference if they had already blocked those invalid traffic from their serverside.

[Ironside]

Can I assume that yesterday's high earnings which are still being shown will stay there? Today isn't looking too bad either, if I carry on as I am I will be quite happy.

[Sillysoft]

More than likely google will take the money back at the end of the month.

[nubchai]

Yeah there'll probably be an adjustment after the close of the month

[Erku]

It is fair if Google takes the money back and gives it to the Advertisers. These are people who advertise and hope to sell a product. If they don't get a positive return on investment they won't advertise and publishers will remain without ad revenues.

[SirTox]

My main clicks are coming through Google Translate. One of the reasons site blocking wasn't working for me on the Adsense site.

[Sillysoft]

Right, they should refund the money. What Im worried about is Google getting overly anxious and refunded more than just the real invalid clicks. Know what I mean?

[worker]

XLHost.com is hosted with EE.net.

The contact information to report abuse by that domain can be found here:
[whois.arin.net...]

(Calling the phone number only tells you to send an email.)

I've reported the XLHost.com abuse to EE.net, and I recommend others do the same.

If every time they pop-up, their new hosting provider is inundated with complaints, they will have to deal with changing hosts regularly...which is a pain.

[Sillysoft]

I went to xlhost.com and reported it to their support team. They told me to send to [e-mail] and they would make a note in their system. That was yesterday. I also noticed they have [e-mail] as the email to send complaints too on xlhost.com website.

[Vader1206]

My webhosts supposedly blocked Firefox 27.0 early this morning but the craziness is still coming through.... even some xlhost clicks, but xertive and "sta005 ip range 1" being worse.

I had asked my hosts to do these blocks server-wide... is there a global .htaccess where they are doing this? I'm not the most tech savvy.

[nomis5]

I've only seen one UK report so far, any others?

One of my sites has been affected and its .co.uk. Same stuff as everyone else, Firefox 27. I'm leaving it to G to sort it out. They will because if they don't, they won't be in business much longer! Wonder how many Adwords people suspended their advertising today because they knew something was up but didn't know what.

[AlexB77]

One thing I can tell for sure is that only US clicks are affected as the rest of the countries are remain in the dark. My UK, Canada, Australia and pretty much the rest of the world clicks are not affected or if affected than not so much as US.

[StevieP]

Hi everyone, I signed up today just because of this issue. :)

is it safe to assume, then, that there is no need to remove our AdSense ads from the affected sites? I actually only have one site but it's been hammered big time by these invalid clicks. I reported the issue to Google, but then panicked and removed all the ad code from my pages, causing me to lose quite a bit of money today (real money, not invalid click money).

is it okay to put the ads back up and just let Google figure this out?

[StevieP]

Even if Google gets around to sorting this all out (which I'm sure they will), I have to think the AdSense network has taken a serious blow to its reputation with advertisers.

[Sillysoft]

I dont think this is a blow to googles rep. This has happened in the past at least one other time.

[Ironside]

Silly question, where in my account so I look for invalid clicks to see if this has affected me? The fact that I made more money yesterday that I have done in quite a few months in a day makes me a little bit suspicious. Nothing is then taken away yet.

[wasconet]

I think its all back to normal.......lets all see whats next

[netmeg]

is it safe to assume, then, that there is no need to remove our AdSense ads from the affected sites?

I think it's pretty safe. Like I said - if it were just happening to you or a handful of people, that would be one thing, but since it's so widespread, the onus is really on Google at this point.

I don't know how they do it, but if it were me, I'd probably profile all the apparently invalid clicks to look for common patterns, and only after that would I start deciding what's valid and what's invalid. Which means they probably had to let it run for a little while first.

I have to think the AdSense network has taken a serious blow to its reputation with advertisers.

Advertisers are used to it. It's happened more than once. I know for all my client AdWords accounts, I get refunds in varying amounts every month. This month there just might be a little bit more is all.

Silly question, where in my account so I look for invalid clicks to see if this has affected me?

You probably won't see it until the end of the month when they do the finalized earnings. I've known Google to adjust same day and end of month, but I've never known them to adjust "a few days after" or whatever. If you have your AdSense hooked up to your Analytics, you could possible play around with some of the metrics to figure out if you were hit or not. But you likely won't see anything in your AdSense account until you get your finalized April numbers (and if it's like they did it before - they just take out the earnings, and not the clicks or impressions or pageviews)

Going forward - if you're not using custom channels, this is another good reason to set them up. When you notice unusual behavior on one or two channels, it's real easy to isolate what's going on. If I notice something like this, I might temporarily disable that ad and swap in a direct ad or a banner of my own until I determine if it's just me or everyone else is being hit too.

[StevieP]

Thanks netmeg, I've placed the AdSense code back on my site. Like you said, it's a widespread issue, not a personal attack on any one of us. Best to just let Google handle it.