Forum Moderators: martinibuster
All It says is to contact google the failure of which prevails to nothing, the strange thing is so is my business adsense account got held too.. it's all too much cries.
a competitor is launching robots that connect to hundreds of proxies and clicks your ads.
very likely.. as they are spamming my site with page urls too
I think we're probably talking about two entirely separate issues here:1) The initial sharp reduction in earnings, which easily could be the result of smart pricing; and...
2) The audit and possible ban, which are related to invalid clicks.
Surely it's useful to have a tracking script to monitor possible invalid clicks (IPs, referrers, etc.).
[edited by: Juan_G at 4:11 pm (utc) on Oct. 21, 2006]
They might be related.
Sure, in any given case. But they don't have to be related, and we shouldn't assume they're always related.
At any rate:
It's interesting that the sites we're talking about here (the OP's and the one that Juan_G mentioned) are huge-traffic sites that were earning five- or six-figure incomes until smart pricing and/or click auditing entered the picture.
Is it possible that the clicks from certain types of high-traffic sites don't convert well (especially if the sites are optimized for AdSense), and that the sheer volume of such clicks is enough to trigger an "invalid click" alarm?
Google uses the term "invalid clicks" to cover more than just fraudulent clicks. Could "invalid clicks" sometimes be another way of saying "a massive number of poorly converting clicks that are exhausting advertisers' budgets, which isn't good for AdSense sales"?
Is it possible that the clicks from certain types of high-traffic sites don't convert well (especially if the sites are optimized for AdSense), and that the sheer volume of such clicks is enough to trigger an "invalid click" alarm?
IMO, yes.
Google uses the term "invalid clicks" to cover more than just fraudulent clicks. Could "invalid clicks" sometimes be another way of saying "a massive number of poorly converting clicks that are exhausting advertisers' budgets, which isn't good for AdSense sales"?
As an example, if over some period of time a very large number of clicks show up with no conversions until late in the time period (and few of those), it could very well match an "invalid click" profile.
Out of interest, do you see the same advertisers appearing on your site all the time - or are they constantly changing. If they are nearly always the same advertisers, and a lot of your return visitors are clickin on these adverts - perhaps they see it as a genuine means of arriving at that advertisers page. Maybe a link to the site - or making the adverts less blended might work. I know that sounds a**e about face to the normal advice, but I think your problem lies in too many repeat visits from the same person.
There are studies that show people use search engines as "bookmarks". On repeat visits to the engine, they (nonfraudulently) issue queries and click on the results rather than bookmark the results. Perhaps this is also true on AdSense sites, especially "sticky" ones.
Google uses the term "invalid clicks" to cover more than just fraudulent clicks. Could "invalid clicks" sometimes be another way of saying "a massive number of poorly converting clicks that are exhausting advertisers' budgets, which isn't good for AdSense sales"?
It's certainly "possible", but I doubt that google would find doing that desirable. First, there's the issue of limited and unreliable data about conversions across the system, and I can't see google doing something that can't work for advertisers who don't use google conversion tracking. I'm sceptical about google using conversion data to make decisions about specific sites. It's much more likely the profile sites.
Which I think is a factor with the OP.
I'd also guess that google prefers not to "meddle" to that degree.
One more thing occurred to me... If the site has a high proportion of returning visitors who don't use search engines to get to it, there will be no initial referrer specified for most user sessions.
This kind of traffic could be fairly difficult to distinguish from invalid traffic generated via spam or software applications. Or it could appear that the original source of the traffic had been disguised via so-called "sneaky redirects".
In general, the referrer cannot be trusted, because it can be easily faked. Given G's TOS, they are within their rights to reach any conclusion and act in any means they wish about traffic that does not seem legit to them.
Now since we are talking about many thousands of clicks a month, could it be possible that your site is almost single-handedly draining a particular advertisers budget and not converting? Is it also possible for advertisers to know which sites are costing them money and demand that google do an audit?
I believe site-targeted advertisers may of been happy with my adverts on my site being so lucratively in the header and default coloured by google, I can suspect they probably thought these kids are probably clicking on the ads by mistake because of the menu above which is within 200px in distance from the ads themselves.
However I don't really think this is fair, my site is large, and suppose to be a valued member of google (as said in the googles template for a site-targeted advertise at this site text), however we all know thats false, they don't care if big publishers like me die because of no income and big bills to pay.
On another note:
casalemedia.com denied my request to sign-up, google told them or paranoia of their own company on the adsense ads still on my pages... generating frozen fundings, who knows, either way...
I'm upset with the fact that googles frozen, yahoo doesnt support uk, and other services stink.
[edited by: jatar_k at 12:16 am (utc) on Oct. 23, 2006]
casalemedia.com denied my request to sign-up, google told them or paranoia of their own company on the adsense ads still on my pages... generating frozen fundings, who knows, either way
I think what you are encountering is (fair or not) the result of running the kind of site that is in a "less reputable" topic neighborhood.
I speculate that when there are quirks in the click data, one of the factors google considers to decide what to do (warn, ban, nothing) is the kind of site, and whether it fits any profiles of sites they have developed that TEND to draw bad clicks.
So, for example a site selling "drugs for men", and a business site with lots of original content on a more reputable topic could have identical suspicious click data patterns, one would be treated harshly and quickly and the other... nothing happens.
I'm just guessing. I bet the huge majority of sites that get banned fit these kind of content profiles AND/OR don't have anything on their site that would suggest the business is cleanly legitimate.
It's an advanced "sniff test".
..which is small consolation for you. Adbrite will take anyone, though.
Greedy Player wrote:my account was put on hold the other day (...)
to top it all off my account went from 400-800$ day to 10$ for 500k hits day, at a ctr of basicaly nothing. (...)
I've worked hard for over two years on my niche and it was earning more in the first days, nearly 1000$ a day and then suddenly whack 10$ day smartpricing, ecpm hits rock bottom (...)
(...) the google service of which I've been using since january 2005 (...)
its instant cpc reduction (...)
(...) google sent me a e-mail today, apparantly invalid clicks have been generated on google ads on my web pages, they are currently conducting a thorough review of my account data (...)
(...) this suddenly appeared just recently when traffic has started to pick up over 500k+ daily mark without problems, and this must of triggered some manual review, I have also got troublesome competition that spam my site with their url's trying to steal members for their own Adsense income.
Naturally I can be very wrong about this, because usually the email seems to arrive without that drastic earnings reduction. But maybe that reduction only has time to appear when the email is not automatic but manual and therefore delayed, for example to review invalid clicks on an important account.
Also, we should consider other different possibilities, including smart pricing, etc. For example, Greedy Player reported on another thread [webmasterworld.com] about a fall in CTR after replacing a leaderbord with a banner. You might try going back to the leaderboard, if you didn't do it already.
Just speculating, and of course we cannot know for sure. However, in this case, as a priority I would concentrate in detecting and preventing invalid clicks (IPs, referrers, etc.), and in collaborating openly with the AdSense team.
[edited by: Juan_G at 12:03 am (utc) on Oct. 23, 2006]
It's an advanced "sniff test".
casalemedia.com denied my request to sign-up, google told them or paranoia of their own company on the adsense ads still on my pagesYou've made a few statements as factual based on what seems to be your own paranoia. I doubt google is telling other companies about you. From reading your posts I get the impression your site's main focus is a way to take advertisers budgets at a rate of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with content being considered a necessary evil. While this may be great for you and seem exciting to other publishers it may also be horrible for the advertisers and therefore also not in Googles long term interest.
Google may have simply tagged your site as unfavorable overall to advertisers after deciding in their opinion it's more parasitic than anything else. One possibility is they have received complaints from advertisers that are spending their money on your site, they may see your site as a huge glutton that simply devours their budget leaving very little for other sites.
Consider the possibility that Casale denied you based on your site's style and it's overall feel and their experience with similar sites instead of some conspiracy. For them to pass up 1/2 million impressions a day and their profit of that they must have seen something they found displeasing.
There is a large public backlash against too much advertising on the net right now and a company that's trying to improve it's long term prospects may be cutting the greediest players from the bunch for the survival of the business.
Surely greedy player's hard work and dedication to provide a service to visitors and advertisers alike just demands that high paying ads are placed on all his pages - irrespective of whether it provides a return for the advertisers.
And if Google runs out of advertisers to meet all the traffic growth - well they should just find some more - or maybe advertise on his site themselves - after all they're making lots of money and greedy player would still like a bit more.
Maybe if we all express are view on greedy player to Google it would help resolve this issue. ;)
[edited by: Pengi at 9:53 pm (utc) on Oct. 23, 2006]
Ann
Well I think it is clear, from this and several other threads, that greedy player has been treated totally unfairly by google and all the advertising community.
How can you make a judgment (either for or against) without having seen the site in question?
After all, the site has enough traffic to be well above the radar, and Google is already reviewing the site, so what would he have to lose?
[edited by: martinibuster at 8:02 am (utc) on Oct. 24, 2006]
[edit reason] Site reviews are discouraged. See TOS. [/edit]
My earnings in a week vary from 0.25$ to about 8$, same traffic, same CTR, but CPC fluctuates too much.
Google do not treat adsense publishers properly.
...And i was thinking about going 100% with adsense.
My eyes are opened now, I will never go 100% with adsense, its too unpredictable.
I hope everything gets back to normal for you greedyplayer.
If it does not, use yahoo ads, or some other affliate programms.
Imagine making the same kind of earnings and never having to worry about getting banned or having your funds held? That would be sweeet!
EFV - you're right. I haven't seen the site, and I had formed a view purely from the nature of some of the GP postings and the attidude they show.
Maybe frustration translates and travels as badly as sarcasm.
[edited by: Pengi at 6:39 am (utc) on Oct. 24, 2006]
