Are all the invalid clicks really being caused by bots?

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Are all the invalid clicks really being caused by bots?

Maybe people are just clicking on the ads.

SnowLeppard

1:48 am on Feb 11, 2014 (gmt 0)

Are all the invalid clicks really being caused by bots?

Maybe people are just clicking on the ads.

Shouldn't it be possible to detect if the clicks are really being caused by bots using a combination of ip address data, geolocation, Analytics data, stats from other websites, javascript, cookies, etc, etc.

Ads are being designed with tricks to entice people to click and therefore the CTR should be very high from time to time.

What is seems like to me at the moment is that I have been assigned a personal account manager who looks at my stats every 20-30 minutes or so and then arbitrarily removes just the right number of clicks in such a way (probably assisted by some algorithm) so that I get just about the same amount or revenue each day. Then every month or so it seems like the RPM is set a bit lower than the month below.

Am I being paranoid? I do love Adsense though :o)

netmeg

1:54 am on Feb 11, 2014 (gmt 0)

I can't speak to your situation, but I'm pretty sure my invalid clicks are bots, because I read my log files, pay attention to StatCounter and Analytics, and AdSense Support told me they were bots. My sites are seasonal and I've had them a long time - I know pretty much to a tee how much traffic I can expect in each calendar month. When I get more clicks on a site than I have unique visitors, then something is up.

frankleeceo

8:33 pm on Feb 11, 2014 (gmt 0)

It could also be the same visitor click on the ads multiple times within a short period of time. Like a mis click double click. It happens.

SnowLeppard

9:25 pm on Feb 11, 2014 (gmt 0)

It could also be the same visitor click on the ads multiple times within a short period of time. Like a mis click double click. It happens.

Then Google's algorithms would automatically detect that all the clicks had happened in quick succession from the same ip address.

Every site with Adwords I have visited today (including my own) has an ad, "Mobile Top-up India" ?&%$#@#$&^%$#@!? Why am I getting this ad? I am not Indian and I am not in India.

On my website the main audience is adolescent males. Yesterday I kept seeing an ad for a T-shirt company. It had a generously proportioned young woman wearing a T-shirt. My clicks kept going through the roof. And every half an hour or so were mostly removed. I visited the website by manually typing the URL in a new window. The site looked boring and the T-shirt designs were corny and uncool so if I had clicked the ad I would have hit my back button straight away.

SnowLeppard

9:53 pm on Feb 11, 2014 (gmt 0)

Every site with Adwords I have visited today (including my own) has an ad, "Mobile Top-up India"

And (following up), I have ads from that same advertiser on every page of my website "Send Money2India".

Why on earth would I want to send money to India?

At least I imagine now my "invalid clicks" will stay low.

piatkow

8:40 am on Feb 12, 2014 (gmt 0)

Why on earth would I want to send money to India?

Perhaps there are keywords on the site that match those used when advertising to Indian expats.

On a number of sites that I have managed I have seen seriously off topic ads that could be explained by Adwords picking the wrong words as being the most relevant. Thats without even thinking about interest based ads.