Google AdSense by all means is the #1 online income generator for many bloggers and professionals. There are alternatives to AdSense but they are no way near to as a competitor. Being a top revenue generator it can make people to cheat AdSense too. You can cheat small ads network but cheating AdSense will never bring you anywhere. Publishers have been trying out their best to increase their revenue in black hat manner but Google has been smart enough to detect those clicks. We are talking of Invalid clicks in regard with AdSense, but what is an invalid click?
What is an AdSense Invalid Clicks?
An invalid click is an activity involving clicks or impressions that may damage the advertiser’s cost. An easy way to know fraud or invalid clicks in your report is to see the clicks and earning, when there are more clicks and very less earning per click ($0.01 or $0.02 or nil) then those are considered to be fraud clicks.
Google has been kind enough to the publishers and it doesn’t charge anything for invalid clicks, the same in reflected in the publisher’s accounts deduction during the month end earning. Invalid clicks includes publishers clicking on his own ads, publisher encouraging other users to click on his ads, automated click tools, traffic generation or other deceptive software’s. Google says that any method which automatically generates clicks and Google AdSense Program Policies which is updated from time to time without any notice prohibit impressions.
Google Clicks Monitoring
Google Algorithm monitors clicks and impressions very carefully. Google has the best fraud click detection algorithm and it keep track on all the records of an users including features like IP address, Cookies, Google Services, Click Patterns. So if AdSense is monitoring clicks, impressions, and other activities in relation to your accounts, it’s better to keep a day-by-day basis trace on your ads carefully. Doing so would help you understand the invalid clicks generated and same thing you can report it to AdSense to avoid account ban. One good software which is provided in the control panel of your web hosting account which tracks the visitor’s details is AwStats. Google has also launched Google Analytics which helps users to monitor site activity. Google Analytics & Google Webmaster Central is considered to be 100% accurate in recording the site activities. Its collects IP addresses, visitors activity, daily visitors, unique visitors, bounce rate, user’s country, browser used, device used for connection and lot more which are not provided in AwStats.
Google AdSense doesn’t allow any third-party monitoring tools for click tracking which might be an obstacle for Google ad delivery or click logging. So it’s left to the publishers to manually compile the stats.
So Analytics stats help you to analyze your website statistics and the following are the things you should watch out for –
- Visitors with multiple clicks on ads – Let say you have visitors from Virgin Islands. One or two click on your ads is ok if he is a natural visitor. 5-8 clicks or more is probably not OK and its caution of worries. But when you have 10+ ads clicks by one person then you should be panic and you should take measures to avoid such clicks. You have to do two things when you face such problems – one thing is to block that IP addresses from visiting your site so that he doesn’t repeat that and the next thing is to report it to the AdSense through invalid or suspicious activity form. Please note that Google AdSense only respond if then find any significant issue with your account when you submit the form.
- Many visitors from Single IP – This is certainly a thing to worry if you receive a lot of visitors from a single IP address. Report it to the AdSense authorities using the above invalid or suspicious activity form.
- Many Visits from Same Referrer – Google AdSense or Analytics in monitoring considers organic visitors are those which comes through search engines like Yahoo, Google, Bing or any other. And visitors from other sites which use your reference by placing a link on their articles are generally termed as referred sites. These stats are also shown in Google Analytics and in AwStats too. Google doesn’t say that you shouldn’t have visitors from other sites but it’s left over to you whether to allow visitors from that referrer! Now if someone has posted your link on his blog or group or forums, depending upon the purpose, it’s ok to keep it. But if someone posting link to a link farm or link exchange is not a good thing. In Such cases you need to contact the site admin and get it removed.
- Visitors & Clicks from your own IP address – If visitors and clicks come from your own IP address then it’s certainly not ok with AdSense. Even though you are aware that you shouldn’t click on your own ads and you are sure that you are not doing it, it maybe someone in your household or it maybe someone in your neighbor using the same internet provider which uses unique IP address. For any reason you need to visit it out.
So for any suspicious activities you can contact through Invalid click form. Although you are not allowed to click on your own ads but certain times it happen you maybe click on it accidentally. So in these cases it’s not required to contact them every time, further more on clicking your own ads can be studied at Clicked own Adsense Ads by Accident- Prevent Account Ban. Remember that it’s not good to get in touch with AdSense Team many times.
AdSense Account Disabled for invalid clicks may be of the following above reasons. For publishers who have no idea on invalid clicks the email AdSense team sends them would be awakening. Yeah, Google has mentioned and has the page to request a re-instate of your account but the chances are almost nil.
Minor policy violations like no privacy policy or wrong placement might receive a warning notice, which has to be taken seriously and this would be the final warning before your AdSense Account is disabled if the mistake is seen reported next time.
Invalid Clicks Prevention Tips
You can’t stop spammers but certainly your decrease the spamming with preventive steps, the same goes with invalid clicks. Mentioned here are the few tips which can help your prevent invalid activity on your ads & make your understand how to track invalid clicks manually –
- Create reports using channels – It’s useful to divide your reporting into parts using URL or Custom Channels. This will help you in tracking individual sites or ad units and thus clearly says where you have received the fraud clicks. A sudden rise in the stats can be alarm for fraud clicks.
- Be aware of your incoming visitors – Thanks to Google for inventing Analytics which can give you detailed information about your site visitors and thus you can lookout for any fraudulent activity or behavior.
- Partnering with untrusted/low quality parties – Many publishers has issues with invalid clicks when then put low quality ad networks, search engines or paid listing on web-directories in order to increase the traffic.
- Check back your implementation – All publishers must ensure that their ads implementation has no programming errors and it abides AdSense policies.
- Use allowed site feature to prevent unauthorized use of ad code – Allowed sites under AdSense features will prevent any other persons using your ads codes on their blog. Many people who try to take revenge on you would be looking for such mistakes by you.
- Approach AdSense Help Forum – Google AdSense doesn’t have email, chat, or phone support but they only have AdSense Help Forum where advertisers and publishers discuss. If you have a question, it’s more likely that another publisher has already raised the same issue. The forum does have many premium publishers who are ready to help people and your query would be resolved.
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