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96.6% CTR in Adsense = impossible!

by lucasbowen
13 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi,
Need help please. Like many/most my Adsense CTR is hoovering around 2-3%. This is fine. However, on one particular day - March 7th - one site had ads with 412 pageviews and 398 clicks. That's a CTR of 96.6%. The CPC was <$0.01.

This simply can't be right. I've sent feedback to Google Adsense and raised a question in the Adsense forum but hope for WF support too.

I do go to very great lengths to abide by all TOS of Adsense and really don't want a possible penalty because of what I regard to be an obvious data capturing error. Or is this a click bomb?

Is there anything I can/should do or simply just rely on data validation later in March?

Appreciate any help.

Thx.

Lucas
#966% #adsense #ctr #impossible
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by lucasbowen View Post

    on one particular day - March 7th - one site had ads with 412 pageviews and 398 clicks.
    That's either someone clickbombing your Ads or you have nothing except Adsense Ads on the page.

    If you would have said the traffic was very low (1 or 2 traffic) then it wouldn't be an issue, since 1 unique traffic per page/Adsense click would have been a 100% CTR.
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    • Profile picture of the author RimaNaj2011
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      That's either someone clickbombing your Ads or you have nothing except Adsense Ads on the page.

      If you would have said the traffic was very low (1 or 2 traffic) then it wouldn't be an issue, since 1 unique traffic per page/Adsense click would have been a 100% CTR.
      That's what I was thinking as well. I had a few times when it was over 100% because of that.

      If you have hundreds and CTR is that high, probably click bombed.
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  • Profile picture of the author supereek
    check your competition websites if they also have adsense on them, could be one of your competitors trying to bring you down. a friend of mine got his adsense account banned because some guy wanted to get ridd of his site on the competition and purchased like 20k hits junktraffic to it trough adfly. (my friend saw that on his statistics page where the traffic was coming from)
    and because so many of those people clicked the adsense he got banned.

    if i were you i would contact adsense about this, act dumb and ask how is that possible and ask if there are any problems with the ads or their trackers.
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  • Profile picture of the author patco
    Over 100%?!? Be sure to remove the ads if you don't receive a reply soon from Adsense because they can ban your account telling that YOU are the reason for this clicking!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author Dicksonkho
    Any possibility or method to avoid click bomb?
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by Dicksonkho View Post

      Any possibility or method to avoid click bomb?
      You don't need to. Big myth.

      That does not mean that junk traffic you insist on getting will not
      bite you in the butt.

      For a normal, average joe using adsense, there are no worries.

      It is the fool and their adsense that are soon parted.

      Everybody gets click bombed from time to time.

      FYI: Everyone should strive to be a normal, average joe with their
      adsense account. That is, until you become a google partner.

      One site I have gets close to 100% CTR, but only a handful of
      visits a day. Nope. I just let it ride. Too many people are too
      quick to kill the golden goose by being stupid.

      Many people blame a ban on clickbombing. Not true.

      That's like saying a heart attack killed someone. Nope. It
      was all those Big Macs, ice cream, bacon,....

      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Lol, a 96% CTR is not typical for 412 page views.

    That would most defiantly mean the majority of the traffic is clicking Ads on every single page they view. Maybe it's a coloring page site & 5 year old kids/traffic are confused & clicking the H out of everything?

    OP what's your average page view count per unique/individual traffic?
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi lucasbowen,

      That kind of activity does indeed deserve close scrutiny. I wouldn't just let it ride without first taking a closer look at the activity.

      If the traffic volume is normal and the CTR jumps that high, then it could be a particularly appealing ad, but if you had a spike in traffic, take a closer look at the locations the traffic is coming from.

      Is it from the usually geographic region you normally see for this site? Are most the clicks coming from a small set of IP addreses, or from unusual geographic locations? If so, start blocking those locations.

      If you are convinced that you are being click-bombed, go ahead and disable ads for a period of time to see if the traffic goes away. When it does, re-enable your ads.
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  • Profile picture of the author Curtis2011
    It sounds like either a reporting error, or someone purposefully clicked on your ads a bunch of times to possibly try to harm your website/relationship with Adsense.

    From what I understand, Google is pretty capable of monitoring actions like these. You might not get paid for the clicks if Google decides they are fraudulent, but hopefully you won't face any negative consequences either.
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  • Profile picture of the author passigagan
    clickbombing is the only cause of so much high CTR
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    • Profile picture of the author lucasbowen
      First of all: THANK YOU ALL! Exactly the kind of responses I hoped for

      Yukon ~ These are high contents pages with limited ads.
      Coloring site/ad - nice one. Wish it was.
      In answer to your question: 1.25 pages/visit

      RimaNaj2011 ~ clickbomb it is (Yukon saying it also convinces me!)

      Supereek ~already did but via feedback. Would you by any chance know if a submission process exists. I still have to check that out but just wondering.

      Patco ~ easier said than done. Site is 300 subdomains and ads on all of them (static template). Impossible to say which but so what what I do know is the route to click (desktop) and the type (300x600 - text). The only think I can do is to switch off the unit but then again it was one day - March 7th - and nothing since. I think I'd take my chances to monitor for that day only. Seems a bit drastic to remove everything when this is a week past

      Dicksonkho ~ exactly my question. Defense (or retroactive action) - options ???

      paulgl ~ I'm close to not commenting because ...... gee! But then again I know you mean well. How many averagejoe's like me with normal adsense TOS approach would you think have had their accounts terminated because of clickbombs! How sure are you that it's none - as you say! Stats/justification - please! Your site with few PV and 100% CTR - how on earth that is Clickbomb relevant is beyond me. Just means you have targeted traffic that does not mind following your ads.

      ... and your metaphor .... off. It is the heart attack that kills. It's however, the BigM etc. that caused/contributed to the heart attack happening. Is it the gun or the bullet that kills?

      dburk ~ you are on the ball. I'm trying but.... for some odd reason by Adsense links dropped off GA. No cross analytics. But, on day in question 3/7 - nothing out of the ordinary viz. the standard GA metrics. Nothings jumps off the charts. Nothing peculiar. I have a hard time establishing if this is down to one page with one ad that's being clicked multiple times or across the pages. Is it one of the majority of the US visitors who spend most time clicking ads or one of the very few South Africans who spend 3 times the time on the site? Or the few people (bots) across multiple foreign locations, who spent 0% of time on the site and had 100% BR? Hard to establish (for me anyways). Any suggestions to how to establish IP to block?

      Curtis2011 ~ I agree and hope so.


      All good and dandy and we have consensus () - but now what?

      Cheers, Lucas
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Is the near perfect high CTR happening everyday, once a week/month, or a one time deal?

    I have no idea If you've been clickbombed (I'm not Google) but 96% CTR on 329 unique traffic is pretty darn high. That conversion is off the charts for anything you could possibly promote (not just Adsense).

    I'll give you $27 for the site/traffic source right now (j/k)!
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    • Profile picture of the author lucasbowen
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Is the near perfect high CTR happening everyday, once a week/month, or a one time deal?

      I have no idea If you've been clickbombed (I'm not Google) but 96% CTR on 329 unique traffic is pretty darn high. That conversion is off the charts for anything you could possibly promote (not just Adsense).

      I'll give you $27 for the site/traffic source right now (j/k)!

      Nice - but gotta disappoint you. It was a one off and near perfect can't be legit. I would like to share the source with you if only I knew :-). But then against $27 would be a rip off with cpc <$0.01
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