AdSense Clicks Sky High -Can't locate cause

Adsense clicks are going up after removing Adsense

[LuckyLiz]

For some reason today, the clicks on one of our AdSense channels on one site started going unreasonably high with corresponding off the charts kind of revenue showing for those clicks in the AdSense reports. It looks like all the unusual click activity is coming from the UK according to AdSense reporting.

Google Analytics isn't showing the same thing. On Google Analytics our earnings for the day are typical, as is our site traffic. There seems to be no unusual traffic from the UK showing in Analytics.

Our site logs show no unusual activity for the day and I'm not seeing any unusual activity from the UK, either.

We turned off the AdSense ads in the channel that was effected, and even after we've turned them off, the number of clicks and revenue keep going up - by a substantial amount each hour.

I double checked in the AdSense settings and we have that set to allow only sites we specify, and only own our sites are showing there. So it shouldn't be an issue of something scraping our content and putting it on another site with the AdSense code scraped, too.

Has anyone had similar problems and solved them? Is this an AdSense issue that won't affect us? Or is there something out there that AdSense can't detect but Analytics knows not to count?

[netmeg]

It could be older valid clicks being caught up (after they've been looked into) or it could be one of the many different types of invalid clicks - only Google knows. I'd drop em an email and ask. If they're not valid, they'll probably disappear at the end of the month, but it might not hurt to see if you can pin any other commonality on the traffic.

[LuckyLiz]

We did send them a note, and as far as it being old,, valid clicks, I doubt it. The dollar amount is too high.

[JCKline]

A year ago I had a similar thing happen to me. I couldn't find the cause anywhere, so I panicked and removed the ads from the page and contacted G. I soon found out the page URL was inside a massive email newsletter. Having no conterol over ir, and now proof for G, I placed the ads back on, and revenue climbed again for over three days. Best check I'd ever received, and nothing even close since.

[Chrispcritters]

Might also be AdSense extortion where someone uses your AdSense pub-ID to drive clicks to your account. Then you receive an email saying you need to pay them a portion of the revenue or they'll get your AdSense account banned by continuing the process.

Make sure that you've got your account set to only be allowed on your domains. (Missed on my first reading that you mentioned this -- I'll leave my response for others benefit.)