Uh-oh 4 clicks out of 5 impressions

[brickwall]

I took down one of my new and small 100 pageview per day site two days ago by almost 20 hours because of some "graphical enhancements". It has AdSense on it.

Today, when I reviewed my stats, the site registered 5 impression for the 4 hours it was up that day. And it has 4 clicks! (80% CTR), that site's average is only around 2.2%. I checked my logs immediately and found out that the 4 clicks came from the same visitor.

Am I going to be toast because of this single incident. The amount involved is just about $1.

Iam emailing G after I write this, but am I over-reacting? I have other bigger sites using AdSense so Iam very worried.

Thanks.

[jomaxx]

Yes you are over-reacting.

[Nitrous]

I have a big bunch of small hobby type amateur sites.

The smallest ones with 100 page views daily vary from zero to 100 percent or much more daily.

Its due to the small number of visitors and quite normal.

The bigger sites (thousands of page views) are amazingly constant in click through and earnings.

All are on different subjects, and together are almost always getting the same am total amount earnings monthly. Individually they vary HUGELY!

If you are not looking at MANY thousands of page views DAILY - and on a bunch of sites - then weekly or monnthly stats are pretty meaningless.

To be useful in future all stats should include the number of sites/subjects, as well as the amount earned!

MY sites vary bfrom 225 cpm to 4 cpm.

Nitrous

[Teshka]

I've had times where the clicks are higher than the impressions. Sometimes, it just means Adsense hasn't updated across the board yet. With numbers those small, I wouldn't worry. It'll probably balance out eventually.

[jetteroheller]

Today, when I reviewed my stats, the site registered 5 impression for the 4 hours it was up that day. And it has 4 clicks! (80% CTR), that site's average is only around 2.2%. I checked my logs immediately and found out that the 4 clicks came from the same visitor.

The disease is called AdSense paranoia.

Best You write very big on Your web site

"Any visitor is only allowed to click only on one ad"

Oh, no, this violates TOS, because You bring attention to the visitors on the ads.

So maybe You implement a cookie, that a visitor does not see any ads any more after clicking on one ad?

There are so many solutions, best of all solutions is to deal with the disease named AdSense paranoia.

[brickwall]

Thanks guys.

I decided not to bother Google over this. Iam just over reacting. The impression count is very small to be of any meaning.

I thought I have gotten over the initial paranoia (I only check my stats once every couple of days now =). Seems like I haven't fully yet.

But if I get into trouble over this, I'll let you guys know.

Regards.

[jchampliaud]

I’d be interested to know how the EPC was. That is does it look like you got paid for all the clicks? I’d guess that if you did get paid for all of them, that after the second smart pricing would kick in you’d only be getting a few cents per click.

[Curiosity]

I have several new pages whose subject and design are like catnip to visitors--every day someone clicks two, three, even seven times on one page. Early in the day, CTR for some pages is often well over 100%. However, Google catches many of those clicks and invalidates them. (I know this because the site gets few enough clicks that I can see $0.00 clicks.) Therefore, Google has a mechanism for catching invalid multiple clicks. I don't know how they tell invalid multiple clicks from valid ones--maybe they discount ones that are so rapid-fire that the viewer didn't have time to read the new page-but since they're making that distinction and they did pay you, it sounds like you're in the clear.

(Before everyone asks: The pages are a small directory for a topic that people like to browse extensively before making a decision.)

[Andreals]

I have seen so much obsessive clicking and bizarre visitor behavior while examining my own stats that I'm sure Google is quite aware of this and probably has profiles of it developed.

I think every site will occasionally attract irrational clickers and some subject matter attracts more of this.

I have many pages on my site devoted to teen pop music and goth accessories which attract many odd behaviors, other pages geared toward an older audience attract more rational clicking.

Adsense on pages for smaller children probably get hammered with spurious clicks.

Andi

[dollarshort]

Your toast man, you need to contact G ASAP!