Worried About Adsense Clicks

[PTC]

Yah, Hi, PTC here, I have had to edit this post to comply with adsense t&c and not reveal any of my exact stats, so bear with me. I received X amount of adsense page impressions this morning, half of those impression resulted in clicks, so the # of clicks I have today is much higher that it ever has been, let alone the sick conversion rate. This is my only active adsense site at the moment, doesnt get a lot of clicks so this will stick out... it certainly wasnt me, but it worries me that it might look suspicious.

I have been "pinging" some potential advertisers to check out my site and I suspect this might have been from one of them, other than that I am not sure, Ill maybe know more when analytics update tonight, i do suspect that these all came from 1 person who was messing around on my site (thanks though, whoever you are, those must have been real estate ads or something!)

Anyone here know about how suspicious adsense activity is handled? I know there is lots of IP stuff going on, so Im hoping this will protect me since this wasnt me clicking on my own stuff here.

[TheDonk]

Just getting started with Adsense myself I can't tell you what the result will be. However, with a lot of PPC experience with a much smaller & less sophisticated se in the past I would imagine that one of two things will happen.

If the number of clicks is enough to draw a red flag, they'll see the clicks coming from the same ip and simply remove those from your commissions. Otherwise, if the number isn't large enough to draw a red flag, possibly nothing will happen at all.

[Gydian]

If the number of clicks is enough to draw a red flag, they'll see the clicks coming from the same ip and simply remove those from your commissions. Otherwise, if the number isn't large enough to draw a red flag, possibly nothing will happen at all.

This isn't true unfortunately. I had an Adsense account shut down without warning because of this type of thing which was not in my control at all. Apparently some random users decided to bombard my site and just click a bunch of ad links. This flagged my account, and Google terminated it without paying me ANY of my earnings for that month (and I had multiple sites utilizing this adsense account. Cost me close to $5,000)

I no longer use Adsense because there's no safe usage and Google refuses to work with you if there's an honest incident like this. I proposed they just remove the fraudulent clicks, but they refused to do this.

After this experience, I won't touch Adsense with a 10 foot pole.

[TheDonk]

Wow. I guess they're too big to deal with these situations individually?

Is this something that can be eliminated by using lots of channels? Meaning, if you have all the abuse on one channel, will they just shut down that channel instead of the entire account?

This isn't true unfortunately. I had an Adsense account shut down without warning because of this type of thing which was not in my control at all. Apparently some random users decided to bombard my site and just click a bunch of ad links. This flagged my account, and Google terminated it without paying me ANY of my earnings for that month (and I had multiple sites utilizing this adsense account. Cost me close to $5,000)

I no longer use Adsense because there's no safe usage and Google refuses to work with you if there's an honest incident like this. I proposed they just remove the fraudulent clicks, but they refused to do this.

After this experience, I won't touch Adsense with a 10 foot pole.

[Gydian]

Wow. I guess they're too big to deal with these situations individually?

Is this something that can be eliminated by using lots of channels? Meaning, if you have all the abuse on one channel, will they just shut down that channel instead of the entire account?

Honestly, I have no idea. I had all my banner placements tracked individually on each site so I knew exactly which ones performed and didn't. So with that in mind, I'd have to assume that no they wouldn't?

I mean, I know there's millions of people that use adsense and are just fine. I also know there's thousands that have had this exact same thing happen to them. I think what it boils down to is just whether or not they want to keep you or want to remove you, or something along those lines. I just know it sucked not being able to get the money I earned for that timeframe, and the only explanation they gave me was that there was a high amount of click fraud on a couple of my sites. They wouldn't give me details on which site, IP addresses or location of the users, or even which ads it was that were clicked fraudulently.

I guess in the end it boils down to whether you're willing to risk losing a month's worth of income. Then again, the same can be said about Paypal too. It's just what happens when a company gets too big to handle things on a more personal level, and they just lump everyone into the same category with a generic response to fix the problem.

[Gydian]

Also, I must add that this is just my own personal experience with Adsense. Like I said, there's millions of people that haven't had any issue with Adsense in the slightest, so by no means am I bashing Adsense or the program, or suggesting you should or shouldn't use it.

[TheDonk]

Okay, so your adsense account wasn't 'shut down', rather you lost that months income?

[Gydian]

Okay, so your adsense account wasn't 'shut down', rather you lost that months income?

No, it was shut down as well. They locked out the account and refused to pay out the earnings for the month. I guess I could open another account, I just don't feel the need to risk doing so and losing another month of income if they decide that my account has click fraud and close it.