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Saturday, September 8, 2007

Click Fruad

Adsense Click Fraud

Adsense click fraud is very real and very bad! Not only does it harm the advertiser, but it can harm you. Did you know that you could have someone clicking your ads maliciously? Read more about this so you can arm yourself with knowledge.

Is Someone Defrauding Your AdSense Account?

There are lots of different strategies that you can use to skyrocket your AdSense income. Repeatedly clicking on your ads isn't one of them. That's the sort of thing that Google take a pretty strong line on - and rightly so. It's just plain dumb and Google have a strong punishment for it: they can ban you for life.

That punishment's not unreasonable when someone's deliberately trying to con Google's advertisers. But it does leave a golden opportunity for anyone who wants to sabotage someone else's income. If you're making a lot of money using AdSense - and you've also made an enemy or two - there's nothing to stop someone coming to your site, clicking your ads a couple of dozen times and wiping out your income.

Sound scary? It should. Once you get banned, that's it. It's very difficult to persuade Google to let you back in.

But you should also be looking to making sure that no one is trying to deliberately land you in trouble. If you see in your logs that your site received a stream of clicks in a short time - and from the same IP address - don't wait for Google to get in touch. (Their letter won't be pleasant). Drop them a line right away, telling them that you've spotted some suspicious clicks on your site and ask them to investigate. You shouldn't be surprised if they write back and tell you that those clicks won't be counted towards your revenues but at least you'll still have your account and you'll still be earning.

It's pretty rare for someone to go out of their way to cause problems for AdSense users. Most of the people you meet on AdSense forums and other places online are good, decent folk who only want to help. But it is worth remembering that your site is vulnerable. Just as you install anti-virus software to protect your computer so you should take action to protect your AdSense revenue. Track your stats closely and move first if you spot something suspicious.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi how can i see the logs on my site? because i have a poor host and it has no customer support to tell me, i dont have adsense yed , alldough i applied about 2 weeks ago, i guess thet there are a lot of applications.

Sister2brother said...

A very good post about "click fraud". Its a good thing that you didn't mention just exactly HOW adsense can determine some of the ways that people try to click fraud their own adsense. I'm sure a LOT of people would love to know that information!

It is a problem and especially a very bad (and annoying) problem now that there is a legitimate way to make money online - someone(s) have come along to try to spoil it for the rest of us.

Anonymous said...

Google knows everything, so don't even dream of trying to fool it and click your own blog.
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Anonymous said...

how do I track the individual who clicks my site??
you said in the post to track what IP is clicking the ad how many times. I don't see anything like that in adsense panel