Google's Adsense Program
Click Fraud
If you think that you may be the victim of click fraud, then contact Google Adsense support as soon as possible. Here is the e-mail that I sent:
I seem to be getting a whole lot of page impressions on the above site, a lot more than I have ever had before. The CTR is about the same as normal.
The site is based on a movie, and I know the movie is being shown on HBO on the days when I get high numbers of visits so it could be due to that.
I just thought I'd let you know in case it starts to appear suspicious. I have nothing to do with any fraudulent activity. If I did want to do that sort of thing, I'd choose another one of my sites with a higher eCPM!
Anyway, I am about to leave on a 5 day vacation with limited internet access and wanted to nip any problems in the bud.
From various places on the web, including:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/index.php?p=408
Ways that Google detects Invalid clicks, from http://adsense.hkessay.com/2006/11/ways-that-google-detects-invalid.html
Most of the Adsense Publishers tend to lose their account due to
invalid clicks, how to Prevent it ? How to report it ? How to monitor it ?
1. IP Address
If the AdSense click is originated from the same IP Address as the one used for accessing your AdSense account, your account is flagged.
2. Cookies
Most home users do not use static IP Address for Internet connection. In most cases just disconnect and reconnect will give you a new IP Address. But don’t forget, Google has set cookies on your computer.
3. Other Google Services
Thinking that you are safe just because you do not access your AdSense account? Think again. This time, consider these: GMail, Google Earth, Google Calendar, Google Search, Google Toolbar, Google Talk, Google Sitemap, Google Desktop, Blogger, and so on, and so on. With the wide range of services they provide, Google can trace the originator of most (or probably almost all) clicks.
4. Click Pattern 1
why this computer / IP address / person is so trigger-click-happy on this particular website but never click on the ads on other sites?
5. Click Pattern 2
And why is it that people accessing these sites direct (type-in URL or from bookmark) tend to be very active ad-clickers compared with those referred from search engine or other sites?
6. Click Pattern 3
And why the ad-clickers like to hit and run, compared with non ad-clickers that surf a few pages before leaving?
7.Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
Your CTR may range from 0.5% to 10%, but if it exceeds a certain point (probably around 10%), you are flagged.
8. Geo-Location
Used Urchin (Google Analytics) before? Then you should know that Google can trace traffics origin down to the small town. Different IP doesn’t mean much. Unless you site is really targetted to one small geo-point, a high number of clicks from nearby location will get you banned quickly.
9.Hardware address
MAC address of the LAN card, modem, and router works almost like a fingerprint. I’m not sure if Google can track this, but probably they do. They have rocket scientist, remember?
10. Advertisers conversion rate
Ad click is one thing. But does it bring value to the advertisers? If none of the clicks on your site translate to conversion to the advertiser, you are in trouble. First the Smart-Pricing hits, then your AdSense account disabled.
11. Search Engine Ranking
Your website is not indexed on any search engine, not linked by any prominent website, but get consistently high traffic? That sounds like something is in play. Regardless of whether it is an adware-embedded software, spam, trojan clickbot, or intentionally installed click-exchange network, it doesn’t sound right.
12. Webpage design
How about the "click here" or "support us"? Google has the best search engine in the world. Is it really that hard to find those words?
13. Combo
Each of these detection methods might seem rather weak. But combine them together, and not many click-fraud can pass-through these filters. Even the smartest clickbot will have a hard time.
In short, it is almost impossible to cheat AdSense in the long term. Instead of spending time, money, and effort trying to outsmart Google, try to improve your AdSense earning.
From an Adsense Google Group came the following way to get someone banned: create a site, and paste
in Adsense code with the targeted person's publisher ID and then do
something really obvious that is violating the TOS (Terms of Service) e.g. displaying more
than three ad units or putting invalid clicks.
Here is someone else's experience:
We have around 10 web sites carrying Adsense banners however on one of
them I noticed that in the past month although there had been an large
increase in page impressions and clicks each week however Adsense
revenue was decreasing at an alarming rate, down by 60%. I contacted
Google and was informed that the site was receiving many invalid /
Fraud clicks and that I should investigate the matter as soon as
possible. They were not able to assist us any further. We have been on
the Net for more than 12 years and have carried adsense banners for
more than 4 years so I guess that Google must have considered that we
were trustworthy and did not cancel our account.
Upon reviewing the Google adsense reports over the past two months I
noticed that the large increase in traffic to the web site started in
December. As an example in November if the site had 400 page
impressions per day then clicks would be around 40 clicks per day
however in December the number of page impressions increased each day
with clicks increasing at a higher ratio. As an example at the start
of January if we had 600 page impressions per day the clicks per day
had increased to 2,000 clicks per day.
I immediately started to check the adsense reports every two hours for
a few days and noticed that at the start of the day the ratio to pages
and clicks was normal i.e. clicks were around 10% of page views however
at mid day there would be the large jump from 300 page views and 30
clicks to 700 page views and 2500 clicks.
I then viewed our web site stats and checked out from the reports which
host ISP's were hitting the web site and noticed that one host was 4+
times higher than the rest. I then went to the web sites daily raw
stats and did a search on the ISP's number and found that they hit
our site around mid day, the same time the adsense reports reported the
large increase everyday i.e. mid day and that they were hitting every
page on our web site over a few minutes time. I guess they had a
programme that visited every page on our web site, we have over 340
pages on the web site, and they hit the adsense banners several times
on each page.
As a result of this, as we knew the IP number of the host that was
hitting us we then blocked the ISP number from our web site last week
and everything has now returned to normal with the ratio between page
impressions and clicks back to normal and revenue is starting to
increase slowly.
http://www.sausagemanifesto.com/the-sausage-manifesto/ is an interesting article on click fraud.
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