Funny you should say that. In my first 30 minutes of the new day, I had 10 clicks. One channel was 350%

I did get paid for mine though.

Exactly the amount of time here, probabbly first 30 minutes of a day.
There is no way of me getting more then 2 clicks in such time span, so my 140 is an obvious fake : P

The clicking seemed to stop now, hope Google didn't ban me already.
Funny, this comes just a day after someone's failed attempt to perform a SQL injection on my database.

I normally have anything between zero and two clicks in that time. The most I had was 48 in the 1st hour - and got a total of a dollar. LOL

It's either a clicker looking for something, or a competitor trying to get you banned. I wouldn't worry too much as google knows what's going on.

[excessive] clicking seems to have stopped here too. Thankfully.

Just filled in an official complaint to Google, just so that they are aware we saw the problem and are worried about it. If there is any common sense in Adsense program, such shady activities should not get good advertising sites banned, cause otherwise that would be crazy.

If you see a sudden spike in clicks like that, with no revenue, it generally means Google has already identified them as invalid for whatever reasons. If there's no pattern of dodgy traffic or clicks for your site, that'll probably be the end of it.

(You don't *need* to advise them, they'll know)

Now, what YOU might want to do is take a look at your logs and analytics to see if you can tell where that spike came from. Look for a traffic spike (it doesn't necessarily have to be the same day, but maybe within 24-48 hours) and see if you can figure out where it came from and why.

Here's the thing. If you get *repeated* traffic that clicks like that, you could have a problem. It could totally not be your fault, but the bottom line is, if Google decides the behavior is putting advertisers at risk, it doesn't matter whose fault it is.

So you want to watch to make sure it doesn't keep happening, and if it does, then talk to your host to see what your options are to block it.

I would definitely write to Google asking if they can help you with the problem.

Make sure they know you are concerned about this because if it is a click fraud attempt happening day after day I'd rather they think I'm trying to stop it instead of thinking I'm a part of it.

I would have thought so, but didn't they put round an email or blog post recently about "you don't have to tell us, we already know" ? I thought I remembered such.

I think you have to take this stuff seriously, but:

I normally have anything between zero and two clicks in that time. The most I had was 48 in the 1st hour - and got a total of a dollar. LOL

I'm not sure how many times its been written here, but statistics are NOT syncronized, numbers during "that time" mean nothing, and it's in the realm of possibilities that clicks from the day before get added after midnight, and/or credited the next day (a click dump).

So it's possible in a rare circumstance, if clicks have been updated, impressions have not been, to have weird looking numbers without anyone doing evil.

Or, if clicks from some period are witheld then released, and aren't credited to the time period in which they occurred.

I think if there was a SINGLE thing to learn about adsense that would save thousands of hours collectively, is how the statistics work. Almost everyday I see people wasting their time looking at numbers that have no meaning at all.

I'm not sure how many times its been written here, but statistics are NOT syncronized, numbers during "that time" mean nothing, and it's in the realm of possibilities that clicks from the day before get added after midnight, and/or credited the next day (a click dump).

This wasn't the case in this instance.

I was thinking the same as coachm. The servers for impressions and clicks aren't always in synch.

True Martinibuster, but at the time, to have 48 clicks would have been the figure for most of the day - not the first hour. The figures at the time were fairly constant. This was out of the ordinary and most likely was a clicker.

All in all I wrote to Google and explained to them what I noticed, when and where. I don't suppose that they will take time to write back to me, but better safe then sorry.

Today stats are back to normal, I guess it was just another angry kiddie who thinks we make a lot of money on Adsense (cigarette pack per week, lol) and just angrily clicked on ads till he got tired.
If it was a dedicated software attack there would probabbly be 1000's of clicks, this guy fired only 20.

Anyway, I believe Google has enough protection against this.
But as some people mentioned here, Google does ban sites. I think this is a bad practice, especially when they have a good algorithm to separate normal from fake clicks.

Because theoreticaly anyone could take competition down with such shady practise.