Is this sabotage...

I'm getting abnormally high clickthoughs

[mrMister]

I was hoping someone more familair with AdSense than me could explain this for me.

I have a pew low-traffic pages marked on an AdSense channel.

When I looked at the reports for this channel today, I got these stats:

04 May 2005
page impressions:62
clicks:4
clickthrough:6.5%
USD:0.00
USD:0.00

I thought it's a big clickthrough rate, so maybe the clicks are all from the same person so Google has deemed them invalid, but surely the first click they made would count for revenue?

I wouldn't have thought that they're clicks on public service ads. The pages are themed on a popular subject that advertisers target and I've never seen public service ads on them when I've looked at them.

Does anyone know what it means?

[hunderdown]

If all four clicks are from the same illegitimate source--IP or country--I'd think they'd not count any of them.

[qbert]

weird thing is, I got 2 clicks today, and also no $ for the clicks.

[Zygoot]

I think it is caused because the statistics aren't updated at the same time. Probably a delay on one of the columns.

A CTR of 6.5% isn't extremely high, especially on low-traffic sites.

[Nathan]

There is nothing unusual about your stats. Since you only have 62 impressions and 4 clicks, there is no way you could know if that's high or low. If you had a bigger sample you could tell easier.

For example, if I asked 10 people who they voted for in the last election, 90% (9 people) could say John Kerry. But if you asked 10,000 people it would be closer to 48%

Also, my clickthrough is never less than 13% :)

[Sobriquet]

6.5% is NOT high. 10% is ok too i guess, I have a 10% to 12% rate since many months.

Its not a high traffic site.

[jetteroheller]

When You have a very small sample, anything unusual can happen.

Checking my stats 0:25 yesterday brought the unsual result

0 impression 3 clicks for this day

[sirkei]

For example, if I asked 10 people who they voted for in the last election, 90% (9 people) could say John Kerry. But if you asked 10,000 people it would be closer to 48%

I am not good in maths. Care to explain this?

[Nathan]

All I meant was that if you have too small of a sample, you can't trust the stats. If I had 2 hits and 1 click I would have a 50% click through rate! Does that mean someone is sabotaging my adsense account? No... it just means I don't have enough hits to tell what my real clickthrough rate is.

Also, mrMister said "I'm getting abnormally high clickthoughs"... how is 4 clicks "abnormally high"?

[mrMister]

I am not good in maths. Care to explain this?

"As the sample size decreases, variation decreases"

It's all besides the point anyway. The main issue is that the stats show my earnings as nil for these click.

I'm still waiting to see if they update. With the delays on the stats today, I'm not sure if I've given them enough time.

[mrMister]

OK, update.

Checked today. I've got another 4 clicks. These show earnings.

Does this mean that I'm not going to get anything for yesterday's clicks?

Should I contact Google?

[flobaby]

Give it up on those clicks. For whatever reason Google deemed them unworthy. It happens all the time.

The other day in the morning, I had a few clicks that showed money attached to them, about an hour later, they turned into 0$ and that was that. They must have been invalid. That's the way it is, everybody gets 0$ clicks sometimes.

[mrMister]

Give it up on those clicks. For whatever reason Google deemed them unworthy. It happens all the time.

I'd never seen it before. that's why I'm asking.

So what constitutes an invalid click?

[mrMister]

LOL, just read my older post and it won't let me edit it.

Of course what I meant to say is

"As the sample size decreases, variation increases"

[flobaby]

Do a search on this board for "adsense invalid clicks". You'll find all you need to know about it.

[robsynnott]

Hmm, I had something similar, on a moderately large site. A consistent (For the last three days) doubling of CTR, and approximate tripling of EPC. Not that I'm complaining ;) My theory is that someone is doing an interesting, high-EPC campaign (my niche, which has quite low profit margins, tends to attract spammy, ultra-low-EPC ads).
Rob.

[bumpski]

Adsense has always been miss-counting page impressions. They must have been showing some sum of ad impressions. Your CTR in the past was sort of "per ad" impression. There is now a "Page CTR" stat when showing page data.

It looks like today they finally fixed the page impression statistics, so your CTR should be double or more from now on.

See thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[bumpski]

Had to say it:

I doubt your earnings will be affected, at least positively!

eCPM should be up from now on too on the Page stats.

[oddsod]

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