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Am I a victim of click bombing? What should I do?

click, bombing, adsense

housewife

7:19 am on Mar 3, 2014 (gmt 0)

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I am running many small sites that earn 2-3 dollars in average per site.I provide free printable graphics for different occasions so I have small niche sites for every occasion. In last month which was February 2014, my revenue fluctuated a lot like at one time the earning shown was 32$ and the next minutes it was dropped to 13$ and next moment it was 5$ but at the end of the month everything got adjusted.

Yesterday I noticed a weird thing that upon my site that earns most, within 15 minutes the CTR reaches to 180% and the earning was 170$ + from that site, I reported it to google immediately using that form that they provide to report invalid clicks, I got no response. After that I tried to trace an IP that was constantly present on my site and blocked it. CTR kept on increasing so I immediately removed all the ads but the revenue still started increasing. After that I removed that site from the list of Authorised sites. Soon after that, same thing started happening to another of my websites and I finally removed all my sites from the list of authorized sites. It's been around 16 hours now and google is still showing that 200$ + earning and hasn't changed it at all. Neither it has started showing that message that your ads are appearing on the sites that you have not authorized. .. that usually appears. What should I do? When should I open my sites again? Will google ban my account if same thing happened again?

housewife

8:22 am on Mar 3, 2014 (gmt 0)

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Now it is showing earnings and page impressions even from unauthorized sites. Adsense has gone completely crazy

netmeg

12:27 pm on Mar 3, 2014 (gmt 0)

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A lot of this are seeing this type of behavior. You're probably not in jeopardy of losing your account over it, but it's up to you if you want to keep showing your ads. In fact, it's happening so much that AdSense has stopped answering support emails about it (not a good move, AdSense) The biggest irritation for me at this point is that I believe my reports anymore.

They recently bought acquired an anti-click fraud company; I suspect they are scrambling to put that technology into place to see if that helps.

Meanwhile, you can make sure your ad placements are not such that they encourage any accidental clicks.

housewife

12:54 pm on Mar 3, 2014 (gmt 0)

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Thanks netmeg, yes I have sent them an email right now and also searched adsense forum with apparently no satisfactory answer, but found a lot of people facing the same issue. I am really careful with my ads placement plus accidental clicks can not start occurring just at once, usually my CTR is around 3% and yesterday it was 180%. It can not be due to accidental clicks.

Lame_Wolf

12:59 pm on Mar 3, 2014 (gmt 0)

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The biggest irritation for me at this point is that I believe my reports anymore.

Surely, you mean you don't believe your reports.

netmeg

3:09 pm on Mar 3, 2014 (gmt 0)

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Yes I was in a hurry when I typed that and now I can't edit it. I meant to say I *can't* believe my reports anymore.

I think Google is going to have to address this publicly at some point, but they're not there yet. I suspect they won't till they have some better solutions in place.

Swanny007

8:50 pm on Mar 3, 2014 (gmt 0)

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I was hit by AdSense click fraud big time last month. One day, two of my smaller web sites got hit to the tune of about $1K in a day (CTR like 150%).

I took the ads off completely, notified AdSense, enabled authorized sites, blocked a bunch of IPs and bots, waited a few days, then put AdSense back up. So far so good. The earnings are still showing in my account but I expect them to go away at some point.

I never did hear back from the click fraud team. I too have seen fluctuating earnings throughout the day for at least the last month, but a lot of publishers are reporting that.

londrum

12:12 am on Mar 4, 2014 (gmt 0)

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I had three days of crazy numbers too (not all together, but over a month) I did get a reply from google, and they basically said dont worry about it. The money is still showing in my account a month later but they said it should work out alright at payment time

When you are making decent money with adsense it is a bit scary getting crazy numbers. Even though there doesnt seem to be a problem for me, it spooked me enough to apply to media.net. I got my invite this week and i'm just about to give them a long run to test them out. I figure its better to have more eggs in the basket, even if they dont pay as well

If theres a reporting problem then google should be more upfront about it, so they dont scare their publishers off

ankit68

9:34 am on Mar 6, 2014 (gmt 0)

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Same thing going on here. My site usually gets 40-50 clicks daily and today it jumps to 400 clicks within some minutes which clearly indicates that all of that are fake ones. I reported about it to Adsense but no response. Now I have turned all my ads off, but still the earnings are increasing every couple of minutes don't know what to do next?

Swanny007

7:38 pm on Mar 6, 2014 (gmt 0)

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ankit68, read my post two above yours. That worked for me (I didn't hear back from AdSense either so I was kind of on my own to figure it out).

Brian

10:35 am on Mar 9, 2014 (gmt 0)

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Exact same thing happening to me. Lots of random clicks (although no entries show up in my website traffic logs) on individual pages, then during the next period (an hour perhaps), they are deleted, and always it appears that the random clicks are removed and discounted at the end of the day.

I worry about this, and draw comfort from hearing about others' experience. Surely, I think, I'm not about to get barred.

Swanny007

11:44 pm on Mar 9, 2014 (gmt 0)

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I got hit with a bit of click bombing again since posting. Oddly enough this time, the AdSense reporting "corrected" it, and the earnings by the end of the day were utterly normal. Very strange.

sirius

6:01 pm on Mar 12, 2014 (gmt 0)

I have been having strange things happening to my Adsense account as well.

I thought I had it stopped, even though earnings were still going up and down a little. There are 50 clicks on a refresh sometimes.

I've done what I can to stop it.

Just today it started again where users aren't even accessing my website. The Adsense code must be saved.

I received a response after a bunch of emails that said the earnings would even out before payment.

I would just like to know. Can I leave the ads on with my site as authorized and not worry about my check?

Taking the site's off the authorized list makes 0$ earnings, whereas switching to another ad platform would take time for advertisers and rates to go up, etc.

What are you guys doing?

sirius

6:09 pm on Mar 12, 2014 (gmt 0)

It started 3/3 - 3/4 too.