Adword Problem

Abnormal clicks

[ubiquitous]

Quite suddenly, after a year of bidding on a keyword, I started getting 1000's of clicks a day. The ratio doesn't reflect anything I've ever gotten in the past, and strangely the clicks thrus never made it to the affiliate program I was promoting. If my affiliate program showed this increase I'd be more understanding, but it showed the usual amount of clicks that I normally receive each day.

I can't believe this is legitimate. I know Google has a good filtering system, but somehow I suspect a competitor has figured out a loop hole.

Since my affiliate program showed no drastic increase in click-thrus, I had no reason to be alarmed and I didn't check my adword stats for a number of days. And that's all it took. At a rate of $400 a day my bank account is wiped out.

[BriGuy]

U:

Tsk Tsk for not setting your limits on keywords!

[chiyo]

yes. sorry this happened to you ubiquitous. but its a good lesson to all to always set a upper limit. cant help on the abnormal clicks thing though. Do you allow content ads. Lots of publishers making money here, so obviously advertisers are paying much more!

Maybe your ad has found a very relevant content site automatically. Check your ROI too. As long as your clicks are still resulting in the same number of sales/enquiries/etc per click. then its just as simple as setting an upper limit for each campaign until you get a better ad budget due to the extra revenue coming from it.

Ive heard that Google are pretty good at investigating reasons for sharp upturns in clicks and checking for fraud. Best to email them from your adwords control panel.

[ubiquitous]

None of the clicks went on to the affiliate program, which is even more suspicious. I'm quite certain this is an attack from a competitor using a bot that has bypassed Google's filters.

I'm corresponding with my web host in an attempt to track IP numbers, and then I will seek the necessary authority to press criminal charges.

I've had individuals attack my site before, but Google caught it in the past. This time it apparently squeaked through.

[Robert Scott]

ubiquitous,

I just responded to a similar post so I won't go into details but it is obvious that there is a click bot out there targeting Adwords.

Adwords advertisers be warned! I lost $700 in one hour.

[powerstar]

Google we have a problem. (AdSense?)

[chiyo]

>>Google we have a problem. (AdSense?)<<

I dont see any evidence to suggest this is related to Adense at all at this stage. It looks like its an automated clickbot from the reports here, and they can target google SERPS just as well, and possible much more easily than adsense sites.

Adwords advertisers can also check if these extra clicks are coming from content or SE sites by checking the breakdown at the bottom of each campaign report page, as long as the clickbot is not spoofing these as well..

That would be much better evidence than any supposition..

So are any adwords advertisers reporting here of these abnormal clicks finding that these extra masses of clicks are also being acompanied by a much higher proportion of content site clicks against SE clicks (or CTR inconsistencies)?

[Robert Scott]

These fraudulent clicks are NOT coming from the Adsense program. They appear to originate from Netscape. See example below -

[search.netscape.com...] removed