AdSense ads serving limited

AdSense may have incorrectly blocked ads on my site

[MayankParmar]

Hello,

I’ve been working with AdSense for more than five years now, but earlier today Google paused ads on my site because they’ve “invalid traffic” concerns.

Some background: 4 digits monthly earning, steady CPC/RPM and normal CTR of 1.0 to 1.5%, no massive clawback/invalid traffic issue in past, and the site is popular/well known in the industry with recognition from top media houses, such as C** etc. Traffic is 1-2M a month.

Services I use: Google Cloud Platform and Sucuri.

I am not engaged in any shady activities and I am well aware of the terms & conditions.

The main story:

My Google organic traffic increased significantly between March 10-17. The traffic increased because users have issues with a popular operating system and my articles with workaround were ranking first, so naturally, my traffic improved.

From 30-50K average traffic, my traffic increased to 90-120K a day and it lasted until yesterday night. Traffic is now back to normal.

Traffic sources:

Google
Google News.

Desktop 90%

Locations:, US, EU,

Naturally, AdSense revenue tripled between March 10-17, but unfortunately, my happiness lasted for a few days and I received this email from Google today:

Ad serving limit placed on your AdSense account

It’s quite obvious that I did not click on my own ads, I did not ask others to click on ads, my ad placements never had issues in past, and traffic is from Google, so I am not sure how the traffic is “invalid”. (I had removed link ads, replaced it with responsive ad. Ad placements/site design unchanged in the last two years)

It’s very likely that I won’t get paid for this month’s revenue, so all the money is going to Google or "advertisers"

I have accepted my fate and I have no regrets. I’m not venting out my frustration here. I have created this post to remind others: Reduce AdSense ads and try other networks.

This was completely unexpected.

I’m in process of switching to other ad networks and my AdSense ads will be restored within a month.

I have mailed Google, but I'm not expecting a reversal.

Thank you.

[Niresh12495]

Yeah i know, Ezoic is terrible when comes to speed. But most people claimed that ezoic increase their revenue over time.

[janvitos]

So I've completely removed ALL ads from my website, including the main AdSense script (adsbygoogle.js). At the moment, there is absolutely no trace left of AdSense anywhere on my website. And you know what? Ads are STILL being clicked!

Have a look at this AdSense report: [imgur.com ]

All of those ads have been removed from my website for almost a week, and as you can see, most of them are still registering many clicks, even if the Active View Viewable is at 0% (notice how the ones with an Active View Viewable >0% have zero clicks).

This just doesn't make ANY sense at all. How can you be the biggest online advertising company in the world and let these kinds of absurdities happen on your platform? This baffles me beyond belief.

[lammert]

Do you use an aggressively caching front-end like cloudflare? Your site may not be serving pages with ads anymore, but they might still be served from caches. The same with AMP pages.

[janvitos]

Hi lammert, thanks for your suggestions.

I am indeed using Cloudflare with custom Worker caching, but the cache has been purged many times over the course of the past week.

I don't use AMP, but I am aware Google caches AMP pages. Fortunately, this wouldn't be an issue for me.

If you look at the report I've posted, you can see that the ads are not actually being served since they have a 0% Active View Viewable. If they were being clicked from cached pages, I believe they would trigger Active Views.

[janvitos]

So I made another test last night. I completely blocked off ALL users from Spain to my website through the Cloudflare Firewall, and I'm STILL getting clicks from that country!

Something is definitely broken at AdSense.

[lammert]

Blocking Cloudflare only blocks traffic directly to your site. If the old pages with the AdSense code are still cached somewhere or saved locally on a computer, that block won't help. What are the expiry and caching headers that visitors receive when they visit your site?

[janvitos]

Hi lammert, I understand what you mean.

Browser Cache TTL is set for a pretty long time at 1 year. Maybe I should shorten it to 1 month? This has never caused any problems in the past.

I think it would still be highly improbable that my website is cached somewhere along with the ad code and being clicked every single day by people from the same 3 countries. It feels like this is more an AdSense bug than a cache problem. But I might be wrong.

I have tried to recreate this cache scenario on a local machine by downloading a web page from my website and accessing it locally. The ads did NOT render at all and were throwing errors in the DevTools console.

[friedclyde]

Well i have not managed to solve this completely but I have managed to get the clicks to a minimum. My adsense RPM is back to normal the invalid clicks get wiped out from my account in half hours time. That's probably because i got them down from 300 + to around 15 a day or so. I'm struggling to completely patch it but I have done a decent job so far.

I believe is not completely an adsense problem but its the way the system works that allows a vulnerability to be exploited, cloudflare / sucurri / wordfence / malcare none of them will solve your issue. Infact I noticed a major issue with cloudflare which makes me never want to recommend them to anyone... im going to try to completely block this out and ill then update the thread I started.

It took me 4 months of revenue loss when i say rev loss i was making the min for payment my real life has been messed up because of this. Good luck, the solution is CSP

[janvitos]

Hi friedclyde, glad you were able to get AdSense working again.

Could you please elaborate on how you managed to get rid of the invalid clicks? How did you configure CSP on your server to make them stop? Would it be possible to see your CSP config?

I think many people in this forum (including me) would really like to know how you overcame the issue.

Thanks!

[friedclyde]

CSP config is unique for each website unfortunately, but i would start with the frame-ancestors setting i guess for this issue, are you on wordpress?

[janvitos]

CSP config is unique for each website unfortunately

Yes, I know CSP is unique, but I would still be curious to see what you used because I read setting up CSP for AdSense is really tricky (some even say it's impossible). So seeing your CSP config would definitely help me (and others I'm sure) setup CSP with AdSense.

Are you on wordpress?

Indeed, I am using Wordpress.

[janvitos]

So ads (including the adsbygoogle.js script) on my website have been removed for over 72h and there are still hundreds of clicks per day that are being registered.

I decided to open another ticket with AdSense (my 3rd I think) and sent them tons of information and proof that there's definitely a severe issue going on.

To my surprise, I received a different (and somewhat encouraging) response from AdSense support.

Here's part of the email I received:

I have reached out to our invalid traffic team so that they can take a look at this, I'll be sure to let you know as soon as I hear back from them.

Although I am not hoping for much to come out of this, this is already a step forward from the usual "follow the ad implementation guidelines" email that I've received too many times now.

I will keep you updated with the outcome.

[NickMNS]

Yes, I know CSP is unique, but I would still be curious to see what you used because I read setting up CSP for AdSense is really tricky (some even say it's impossible). So seeing your CSP config would definitely help me (and others I'm sure) setup CSP with AdSense.

There is nothing tricky or special about it. The issue is that if you mix up frame-src and frame-ancestor directive you will block AdSense from serving any ads, or the use of any iframes on your website. So to be clear, to prevent click-jacking you need to set frame-ancestor directive:
[developer.mozilla.org...]

More details about click jacking and prevention are provided here:
[cheatsheetseries.owasp.org...]

RE: adsense support.
In my experience when they start to reach out to other teams for help it generally means that they are taking your support request seriously, it's a good sign.

[janvitos]

So to be clear, to prevent click-jacking you need to set frame-ancestor directive

Thanks for the info NickMNS, really appreciated. I will definitely look into the frame-ancestor directive and apply it as needed.

When they start to reach out to other teams for help it generally means that they are taking your support request seriously, it's a good sign

It is good to know AdSense Support might be taking my request seriously, because up until now, they really haven't.

Although I still have lost pretty much all faith in Google at this point, I sincerely hope these events will bring them to reevaluate how they support publishers. Some of us depend on AdSense to make a living. We need a voice. We need to speak to human beings. Issues like this need to be fixed within days, not months.

[janvitos]

Well I got a rather disappointing answer from AdSense Support today.

Here's the message they sent me:

I spoke with the Invalid Traffic team and they confirmed with me that their filtration process has not run into any errors, meaning that when there was ad traffic on your site they were still detecting accidental clicks.

- They haven't addressed the fact that ads are still being clicked although all ad codes have been removed from my website for almost a week. This should definitely have sounded an alarm on their end.

- They didn't seem to look at anything in detail, only relying on their system and possible errors it might throw. If there's a bug or an anomaly, the system most probably won't report anything erroneous. That's when engineers are supposed to come into play and take a closer look at the issue.

- They haven't offered any other advice than what they already told me four or five times regarding ad implementation. This has already been thoroughly verified on our side.

I guess this is really the end of AdSense for me.

[friedclyde]

[researchgate.net...]

Looks like until Google does something ...

[MayankParmar]

Hello,

After nearly 8 days, AdSense ads have started working again, but I still have the warning on the AdSense dashboard and no emails yet.

However, now it's my time to limit the AdSense ad serving :) I will use one AdSense ad instead of five. The current setup of AdX + other ad networks seems to be working well and they will not suspend my account or deduct money like Google.

[janvitos]

Hi MayankParmar,

That's great news. Is there anything special you have done for the ads to start showing again?

It's been one month since I've had the Confirmed Click penalty, and the archived ads that have been completely removed from my site are still getting tons of clicks every day.

Thanks!

[yaashul]

Mayank,

I think your ad are not hidden properly on mobile and desktop. This might be causing the issue. Invalid traffic sometimes doesn't mean your incoming user. Invalid traffic sometime means some of your ad are not shown to user and are hidden. For Example I was able to see 3 ad on your site but in reality 6 ad were loaded on mobile, this might be causing the issue.

[MayankParmar]

@janvitos Nothing really. I just explained that the ad placements are the same for years and shared screenshots of the traffic rise, and I received an automated response. Two days later, ads started working again.

@yaashul Hmm. That's correct. I'll fix it.

[Lisa01]

I didn't quite get the hidden ad issue? Can you please explain?

[yaashul]

Some user show different size (manual ads) to different platform. But sometime Desktop ad did not hide properly on mobile(not shown to user but loaded by javascript) and mobile ads did not hide properly on Desktop. That can create similar issue. When the traffic is limited google ignore such issue but as soon as traffic increase number of hidden ads which user was not able to see also increase, so google start serving limited ads.

[Lisa01]

Alright. This is weird. I have also disabled a couple of ads from showing on mobile using Ad Inserter plugin. Can it create problems for me?

[yaashul]

Please test it using google developer tools to check ads are hidden properly.

[Lisa01]

But is it safe to hide the ads using such plugins?

[NickMNS]

@Lisa01 you can't depend on a plugin. You can use it, that's fine but you need to verify whether it does what it is supposed to. Blindly using plugins is very risky, not just for AdSense but for exposing you website to vulnerabilities or malware. Read this thread to see why:
[webmasterworld.com...]

You need to learn how to use devtools in your browser, it is relatively simple and will provide you with all kinds of insights about how and or what your website is doing. (Ctrl+shift+C) to open devtools in Chromium browsers.

[Lisa01]

Thank you for tge heads up, NickMNS.
I just came across this blog, where they have advised against hiding ads. So does that mean we cannot show a particular ad on desktop and hide it on tablet or mobile?

[yaashul]

Ofcourse, you can hide ad on desktop/mobile/tablet. But you need to test they are working the right way. You need to test it in dev tools.

[Lisa01]

Okay thank you

[NickMNS]

@Lisa AdSense has documentation to show you the right way to hide ads. I don't have time now to dig it up, but if you do a search on Google for it and it should come up quite easily.