How to fix 'invalid traffic' in Adsense

problem with invalid traffic in adsense revenue

[RhonaM]

I have just had 30% of my Adsense revenue deducted due to 'invalid traffic'. I have been doing adsense for 7 months now and never had any deductions before. My source of traffic is 99% facebook, doing boost posts to interests relating to my niche (a sport). I haven't changed anything significant from previous months. This is a big loss of several hundred pounds and I have been through google analytics trying to find the source of the problem without success.
Can anyone shed any light of this problem as I am at a loss how to identify the problem and fix it?

Thanks
R

[LuckyD]

Not 100% sure, but I'd be concerned about redirecting paid traffic to your AdSense pages. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, I think this is breaking the AdSense policy guidelines.

[RhonaM]

Hi LuckyD, you can use paid traffic so long as it adheres to their program policy, which is more to do with where the traffic is coming from. I see loads of big companies using facebook to drive traffic to their websites which include adsense. I would like to think that the two big players Google and Facebook can work together and would like to find out more but it's like getting blood from a stone. Hopefully someone has more insight that they can share.

[netmeg]

Mostly it depends on whether your landing page looks like an adsense page with a little bit of content, or a content page with a little bit of adsense.

Also, there's a lot of bot traffic these days (they says half the total internet traffic is non-human) and some of them click on ads. I wrote on this here extensively last March. This is a very long post, but you might find some answers:

[webmasterworld.com...]

If you are eligible for AdSense support, you can also email them and ask if them for any insights on your traffic. You may or may not get a satisfactory answer, but it doesn't cost anything to ask.

[RhonaM]

Thanks netmeg - much appreciated. I will have a read and see if I can locate the problem.

Regards
Rhona

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld RhonaM :-)

My source of traffic is 99% facebook

And I'll have a 99% bet that this is the problem especially if your landing page(s) are thin of relevant content.

Arbitrage over the years has been a strange beast twixt Google and publishers.

[RhonaM]

Thanks RedBar - I have been following the Adsense Earnings and Observations month by month thread for a while and have found it very useful. I'm new to adsense (8 months) so taking this all on board - I will beef up my content and see if that helps. Typically I usually have at least 100 words of original content and then a video per page so I will add more. This has worked great until December then the big deduction happened.

I know that the rules are constantly changing I just wish they would tell us what they are!

[netmeg]

The problem is, the more specific they are, the more the spammers and scammers drive a truck through it and ruin it for the rest of us.

[LuckyD]

@RhonaM, from my experience, if you want to succeed with adsense, go for organic traffic. It's better to write less often, but longer content. I'm talking 1.5k-2k words. This will get your site into the SERPs and attract relevant visitors AND advertisers. This is what I have been doing for the past 3.5 years and it has never failed me once. Just my two cents.

[pubpolicycomms]

@RhonaM, you mention "I know that the rules are constantly changing..."
This should be comforting to you to know that the rules are not constantly changing. Policy changes occur slowly over time, and our overall policy narrative has remained consistent throughout our history. What can change is our signals that determine invalid traffic, which is in response to the invalid traffic we view. You can appreciate that we cannot tell you in advance of any changes to these signals, or expose too much insight into our signals as this would give the bad actors clarity into how we identify invalid traffic, thus enabling the bad actors to become better at being bad actors. I hope this helps in some small way. -JB

[RhonaM]

Thanks JB. I am just looking to run a decent honest business and I'm sure like many others it is being hit by scammers. Being new to Adsense (but in IM for about 5 yrs) when I don't know what I need to know in enough detail to fix it, it makes it harder to track down the problem. I appreciate it keeps the bad guys guessing but it can be hard work for those just wanting to play by the rules.
Is there any particular reports in Google Analytics or Adsense that I can check to try to identify the offending traffic source? I have checked out the 'network' one for direct traffic sources but it all appears to be coming from Facebook which I would have thought was reliable as I targeted interest groups particular to my niche website.

[ken_b]

@pubpolicycomms

Policy changes occur slowly over time, and our overall policy narrative has remained consistent

That may be, perhaps what is really needed is better AdSense staff training so that all staff communicate the same policies the same way.

.

[Painter]

i don't this is the paid traffic problem...
all the best with identifying the problem

[Ahtesham08]

Hi Rhona,

Even I am facing the same issue, though my deduction is not as great as 30%, but in terms of dollars it's hitting $470. Is your account still intact?

Thanks
Ahtesham.

[IanCP]

Quite sometime back I went through this invalid traffic scenario on sites which:

a) Had no paid traffic
b) Had traffic which was from links embedded in emails, or elsewhere citing me as an authority on "How to paint Blue Widgets Red"
c) Had traffic from links embedded in web sites as an authority - from similar genre sites, educational and some government sites.
d) Traffic from bookmarks where I was used as a text book
e) Search engine traffic

And as Netmeg said, I was :

content page with a little bit of adsense

I worked with AdSense for a few months on this, they may have learned something, I certainly didn't - because I am still none the wiser.

Then the problem disappeared as fast as it arrived. To be fair, AdSense did reward me modestly for my time involved assisting them with an unexpected financial bonus.

I still don't know what happened except for the fact AdSense engineers monitored traffic closely on a minute by minute basis for quite some time. Obviously they wouldn't tell me anything apart from implying I was a "squeaky clean victim".

[RhonaM]

Thanks for the information sharing - much appreciated.
Ahtesham08 - my account is still active but I am more reluctant to send paid traffic to my web pages as I don't want to be stung again.
I have also setup that only my owned sites are authorised to use my ad code.

Regards
R

[ColinPL]

I have also setup that only my owned sites are authorised to use my ad code.

Click spammers use automated software which can execute the JavaScript code in your domain's context.