3 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
3 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Anyone Else Seen a Huge Surge in Invalid AdSense Clicks?

by brettb
2 replies
I mean last month 70% of my clicks were invalid traffic - yikes . I've had quite a lot of invalid traffic for a while, but nothing like this level.

Since I'm ultimately responsible for my traffic I'll take the ads off the sites in question and re-monetise them with something else, but of course I lose income from this and so does Google. This sucks for Google as Ads are pretty much their only profitable line of business. Why are they being so quiet on the matter? Hmm, I guess I answered my own question there.

BTW we're talking about established sites monetised with AdSense since 2010. The sites are in the dating niche. It's a shady niche but hugely profitable for Google. If I didn't know better I'd say that dating site B is trying to force dating site A out of business, but I guess there's some other explanation.

Incidentally not all the sites in question are WordPress - one is a custom built .NET site.
#adsense #clicks #huge #invalid #surge
  • Profile picture of the author CB58
    Have you contacted Google? ( you probably have) The reason I ask is that the first time I signed with them something went wrong. I had 6000+ clicks in a matter of minutes with no visits to my page. I contacted customer service and said that "something" or "somone" hacked my account. They even said clicks were bogus. I never got a full explaination. Did get a little money back though. Burned and learned
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11001833].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author brettb
    No I've not contacted them as it took a while to find out what was going on. I'm still not sure what's going on lol. Anyway, I've taken the ads off the sites in question so if they ask me about it then I can cover myself.

    I guess they're so used to it that they're not quite so bothered. Yes I'm responsible for my traffic BUT Google are responsible for keeping AdWords/AdSense viable as it's by far their most profitable business.

    I did a bit more digging and this is what I know:

    1. Only sites in the dating niche have been affected.
    2. Unlike forum/WordPress hackers the traffic doesn't come from a single source.
    3. The bogus clicks come from various countries, mostly Western. Germany generates quite a bit of the traffic, but it's pretty random. I guess the bots use higher value IP addresses to get higher click values.
    4. A giveaway is that the bogus users come in directly, not from a referral source or from a search engine.
    5. The bots target a range of pages on my sites, not a single page.
    6. The bots click several (all?) the ad blocks on the pages, giving up to 300% CTR's.

    I still fail to see the motive behind this, other than exhausting a particular advertiser's ad budget or to damage Google. I don't know how somebody could make money out of this but I guess they could extort sites (give us $$$ or you'll get banned from AdSense).

    Anyway, if you have most of your income from AdSense then don't sleep until you've diversified (or at least made a plan B).
    Signature
    ÖŽ FindABlog: Find blogs to comment on, guest posting opportunities and more ÖŽ
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11002247].message }}

Trending Topics