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Adsense Invalid Traffic, is this bad?

by Trip12s
6 replies
Hello, I've been creeping for a while but this is my first post. I have had an adsense account for about 18 months now and I noticed a long time ago that the would sometimes debit a small amount at the end the month (usually .10-.50) under the Description:

Invalid Traffic - Adsense for Content

I didn't get to worried until the last two months when the amount jumped from less than a dollar to just over $10 the last two months.

This figure still represents a very small amount of my total adsense payment (less than .4%) but the increase from under $1 to over $10 worries me a bit.

My adsense payments have been growing, but at a much lower rate than that increase. I haven't done anything different with traffic generation, it's 90% organic from Google, no paid traffic.

I have been testing out different ads in different spots trying to increase my rpm, but I have tried to ensure every move is in accordance with the adsense TOC and isn't encouraging accidental clicks.

Has anyone else seen anything like this with their accounts? Do you think this is something I need to be worried about?

Thanks for you help guys!
#adsense #bad #invalid #invalid traffic #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author onSubie
    Google monitors your clicks and will invalidate clicks they deem to be "invalid". This could be for a number of reasons but the most common is you clicking on your own ads and paid clicks.

    You should not be clicking on your own ads but this sometimes happens by accident when you are working on or checking out your website. Google is pretty good at determining self-clicks and will not count or pay these clicks. This is not necessarily deliberate fraud on your part, just accidental clicks but Google still detects them and invalidates them.

    Google is also pretty strict about paid traffic to an adsense site. Sending a bunch of cheap or blackhat paid clicks to your adsense site is not allowed and Google watches for this too.

    If you are getting a lot of invalid clicks and if there was a dramatic change (from less than $1 to over $10 as you say) then you should take a look at your traffic and try to determine where the poor traffic is coming from.

    Google needs to preserve the value of traffic for their paid adwords customers. They don't want to have them pay for advertising that is drawing bad leads or traffic.

    Google is not only protecting themselves, they are also protecting you.
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    • Profile picture of the author Trip12s
      Originally Posted by onSubie View Post

      You should not be clicking on your own ads but this sometimes happens by accident when you are working on or checking out your website. Google is pretty good at determining self-clicks and will not count or pay these clicks. This is not necessarily deliberate fraud on your part, just accidental clicks but Google still detects them and invalidates them.

      Google is also pretty strict about paid traffic to an adsense site. Sending a bunch of cheap or blackhat paid clicks to your adsense site is not allowed and Google watches for this too.

      If you are getting a lot of invalid clicks and if there was a dramatic change (from less than $1 to over $10 as you say) then you should take a look at your traffic and try to determine where the poor traffic is coming from.
      Thank you for your reply. I haven't ever clicked on one of my own ads and I don't use any paid or black hat traffic. Almost all traffic comes organically from Google. I am not worried about the money, if it can from Invalid traffic then I am happy they are taking it. I am mostly worried about it affecting my adsense account since I have read of a lot of people who's accounts have been frozen without much explanation.

      In looking at my traffic I am showing 91.5% Organic, 7.6% Direct, 0.8% referral, and 0.1% social.
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      • Profile picture of the author Graham Maddison
        I would if I was you, look into the type of traffic you are getting as soon as possible. I had my adsense account closed down for alleged fraudulent clicking which i was certainly not guilty of. The annoying thing is that when they make the decision to close your account, you will forfeit any earnings and there is in my experience, no appeal.

        Not wishing to be a scare monger, but you do need to keep an eye on it.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Originally Posted by Trip12s View Post

        Thank you for your reply. I haven't ever clicked on one of my own ads and I don't use any paid or black hat traffic. Almost all traffic comes organically from Google. I am not worried about the money, if it can from Invalid traffic then I am happy they are taking it. I am mostly worried about it affecting my adsense account since I have read of a lot of people who's accounts have been frozen without much explanation.

        In looking at my traffic I am showing 91.5% Organic, 7.6% Direct, 0.8% referral, and 0.1% social.
        Dig into your server logs and see if there are any strange bots showing up that were not there before. Some of the content scrapers will follow any link on your page, including ads. These would definitely qualify as "invalid" clicks.

        If you see bots outside of the normal search spiders (Googlebot, for example), block them and see if it solves your problem.

        As Graham said, if Google decides you represent a "risk to their advertisers," whether you are doing anything wrong or not, they will shut you down and there is no appeal. No successful, documented appeal, anyway.
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  • Profile picture of the author Trip12s
    John,

    Thanks for the reply. I just did some looking into blocking bots and came across this article:

    [How To] - Block Bad Bots from accessing your Website

    It's from 2012, but would that still work? It seems like the simplest way to block bad bots.
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    • Profile picture of the author onSubie
      Originally Posted by Trip12s View Post

      John,

      Thanks for the reply. I just did some looking into blocking bots and came across this article:

      [How To] - Block Bad Bots from accessing your Website

      It's from 2012, but would that still work? It seems like the simplest way to block bad bots.


      Yes, good article. All those techniques still work. The example at the end that blocks all bots except Yahoo, Bing and Google is a good one.
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