Monitoring for abuse

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Monitoring for abuse

What's recommended and allowed?

mobitinker

5:50 pm on Feb 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

We have a non-profit site that will support itself via AdSense. We will do our best to educate members that clicking on ads should only be done when there is genuine interest. However, we are very keen to not get banned for invalid clicks.

I believe it's possible to use JQuery to monitor ad clicks. I'm wondering if this is ok. It seems to be unmentioned in the TOC.

Then I'm thinking there are two things to catch: 1) too many clicks by a user 2) too many clicks from the site.

Too many clicks by a user:
* Several close together
* Weekly average exceeds a limit

Too many clicks from site:
* Determine an expected CTR and flag when it is exceeded. Possibly switch over to alternate ad network.

Have others attempted this? Any ideas on what these and other tripwire events? Any best practice tips on what to do when tripwire is tripped unintentionally?

Thanks!

ThatsBoBo

6:04 pm on Feb 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

I would highly suggest NOT mentioning the ads to your visitors what so ever.

Saying "please do not click on the ads unless you're really interested" may be seen by Google as you pointing out the ads. It may also, actually get people to click more to try and "help" you.

My policy is:

to place ads in locations where people will see them, but will not mix them up with content.

To NOT mention the ads at all anywhere on the site.

Check my adsense account once every few hours and if I notice anything suspicious, turn off ad serving to said site and report it to Google/investigate.

Edit: Also, I sometimes get more than one click by a visitor. These "clickers" stop by from time to time and are usually just looking for the right landing page to suit their need. If Google determines some of these clicks to be invalid, they will remove them.

[edited by: ThatsBoBo at 6:20 pm (utc) on Feb 23, 2012]

Lame_Wolf

6:10 pm on Feb 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

You beat me to it, ThatsBoBo.

mobitinker

7:31 pm on Feb 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

Hey thanks. Useful advice. We were coming around to the same thinking too. Any thoughts on how to automate the monitoring?

flatfile

8:22 pm on Feb 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

Any thoughts on how to automate the monitoring?

You would probably need to tamper with the adsense code in order to record clicks, but that is against the TOS. I also think you are trying to do Google's job here, they do a fairly good job at discounting invalid clicks. As one user pointed out, just monitor your adsense account for odd patterns and take it from there.

netmeg

9:11 pm on Feb 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

I wouldn't bother.