Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Suppose someone dislikes me, and wanted to hurt me, so they purposely click my adsense ads repeatedly to generate invalid clicks and so cause google to terminate my adsense account.
Is there a way for me to do, to guard against such evil acts?
and am I understanding the term 'invalid clicks' right?
A competitor of an advertiser might do the same thing, in order to hurt the advertiser financially or to exhaust the advertiser's daily budget and stop its ads from running.
How do you defend yourself?
1) Have a site with intrinsic value for users, and don't use any shady SEO techniques or questionable AdSense tricks. If your site can pass the "smell test," you're more likely to get the benefit of Google's doubt in a manual review. (To put it another way, what would a Google employee see if he or she glanced at your site for 30 seconds--a site that would have reason to exist without AdSense, or a site that's just designed to make a fast buck?)
2) If you notice a dramatic jump in CTR and total clicks, e-mail Google and let them know. (This will suggest that you aren't at fault, since a publisher who's trying to cheat Google isn't likely to alert them to the fact.)
3) If you receive an "invalid clicks" warning from Google, offer to let them see your server logs. (They'll probably say "no, thanks," but at least you'll have made a positive gesture.)
The above suggestions are based on my own experience as an AdSense publisher who has survived two major clickbot attacks and two other "invalid clicks" incidents.
Thanks for your useful points. But do they send a warning in the event of invalid clicks? that would be much comforting...
but, from what I read here, people say they just got banned in one email.
I log clicks and today I can see 11 clicks from the same IP, and this is not atypical of the pattern I get. In this case as with most other multiple click incidents, most of them will be filtered out under the same user, same advert, 24 hour period rule. But you can't help but worry that it may look "odd".
However I will say that in every case I have read of where someone is whinging about google barring them, the circumstances have not impressed me that they are innocent, certainly not innocent of aiming to make a fast buck anyway!
So whilst I still worry I do tend to think that google would take one look at my overall CTR and see sense. I wonder what CTR anyone who gets banned has?
But do they send a warning in the event of invalid clicks? that would be much comforting...
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Maybe it depends on the "smell test" results.
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
// THIS CODE MUST BE **AFTER** THE ADSENSE CODE
function adsense_log_click()
{
if(window.status.indexOf('go to') == 0)
{
adsense_log_url_image = new Image();
adsense_log_url_image.src = 'http://mydomain/adsense_clicklogger.php?R=' +
escape(document.location) + '&U=' +
escape(window.status.substring(6));
}
}
var elements;
if(document.getElementsByTagName) {
elements = document.body.getElementsByTagName("IFRAME");
} else if (document.body.all) {
elements = document.body.all.tags("IFRAME");
} else {
elements = Array();
}
for(var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) {
if(elements[i].src.indexOf('googlesyndication.com') > -1) {
elements[i].onfocus = adsense_log_click;
}
}
//-->
</script>
you have to write the php to log the clicks to a database. I have a "mambo" component that does all this and creates fancy displays:
http://forum.opensourcematters.org/index.php/topic,1078.0.html
In other words, it's like taking food out of the refrigerator and sniffing to make sure that it's safe to eat. If the food smells bad (or looks bad), it probably is bad.
1) With a larger site, it takes more clicks to generate enough incremental income to justify the scam, and...
2) It's probably harder to disguise a large number of invalid clicks than it is to disguise a few.
Software, click rings, etc. can help to disguise large number of invalid clicks, but they can do so only by raising the number of impressions (since a big spike in CTR will look suspicious in itself). That's probably one of the reasons why Google's TOS have always prohibited artificially generated impressions, not just artificially generated clicks.
Here is a mambo component to do this:
[mamboforge.net...]
Loose lips sink ships!
As has been mentioned elsewhere you can use (carefully selected) anti-SPAM DNS block lists (eg the XBL at Spamhaus) to screen out compromised machines and open proxies. That at least makes it harder for villains to click on your site without revealing who they are. And it's all completely automated. I saved 5% of my site traffic this way too!
As to stopping showing AdSense after a given number of clicks for a given IP range: (1) you'd loose legit CPM ad revenue (2) you'd lose some legit revenue from AOL and other large ISPs who funnel outgoing traffic through a small set of proxies (3) you wouldn't easily be able to monitor "clicks" from non-IE browsers or more robotic critters.
Rgds
Damon
