A lot of "invalid clicks" this month?

[internetheaven]

Been in adsense for years now and normally there are 5-10 invalid clicks each month that are charged back. Highest amount was something like $25.

This month, there has been a charge back of over 200 clicks-worth. A quarter of my earnings.

We've altered the site quite alot in the past month (new layout, design and more social networking). But the revenue has been almost the same as previous months as the ads are not on all our pages anyway, just the news articles.

The number of clicks have not gone up, just the amount of invalid clicks. So I'm guessing it's not an external source causing the problems?

Why would a quarter of our traffic suddenly be "invalid"?

[jpch]

I would check the layout and make sure nothing you've got on there for navigation is close to an ad or drops down over an ad. People tend to be spastic with their mouse and the closer something to click on is to an ad the greater the chance they'll click the ad by mistake.

[internetheaven]

How is a "mistake" click registered as an "invalid click"? Is that because the user clicks BACK in their browser really quickly or something?

[jpch]

That would be my guess...but that's just a guess as only Google knows for sure. I've personally done that on sites other than my own.

[internetheaven]

Quick extra question:

When are invalid clicks calculate? If I am paid on the 24th-28th of each month and invalid clicks are charged back around the same time ... are the "invalid clicks" from the previous month or the current month?

[jpch]

I don't think there is a particular day they do it. I think it's an ongoing process but perhaps there is a day of the month where they do a final review of the month to process anything there daily checks missed?

[netmeg]

That's probably close to it. I believe that some clicks may take longer to validate than others. For example, if they're dealing with a potentially dicey advertiser (I had some clicks removed one time because the advertiser was doing something against against AdWords TOS) it may take more than an instant to investigate that advertiser and his ad campaigns on all sites to determine whether or not it's okay. Or if they see sudden unusual patterns on a particular site or even a particular ad unit, they might want to investigate further or even do a manual review. Who knows? We probably won't, anytime soon.