Prevent Yourself Falling Victim To Adsense Click Fraud

Picture the scene, you are earning a healthly couple of thousand of dollars every month from Adsense. The extra money is being saved and now you have quite the nestegg to spend on what ever you want. Life is good. But one morning you wake up and discover this in your email inbox:

Hello John Smith,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks or impressions have
been generated on the Google ads on your site(s) through users of
third-party programs paid or provided with other incentives to visit
your site. Such programs may include, but are not limited to auto-surf,
pay-to-surf, pay-to-read, or pay-to-click sites.

You immediately go through all your sites to ensure they are meeting the terms of the Adsense program and can't find anything wrong. Losing your Adsense account would be a real blow and you may even have to take on some extra shifts at work again to make up the shortfall.

So how can you prevent getting an email like this?

First off, we need to define what click fraud is. It is the act of clicking on the ads for the sole purpose of costing the advertiser money with no intention of looking at what the advertiser is offering. Google actually calls this invalid clicks, but it is probably a spin word because it doesn't sound as sinister as click fraud - but they both mean one and the same thing.

Next you need to be completely clear on Googles terms for Adsense. You cannot, under any circumstances click on your own ads. Whether it be for testing purposes or because you are actually interested in what the advertiser has to offer. Just don't click on any of your ads. This includes members of your family (especially if they live in the same household), your friends and your work colleagues.

It actually might even be a good idea to not tell family and friends about your websites and Adsense in particular because they may start clicking on the ads "to help you out", not realizing that they are defrauding an advertiser and putting your account in jeapardy.

Unfortunately Google is very vague when it alleges that there is click fraud on your account. You won't be given any specific information such as the URL or IP that it is originating from, so you need to take some pro-active measures to ensure you can identify any instances of click fraud before Google comes knocking. To prove how little information Google will give you, here is a paragraph from the email they will send you.

As you know, Google treats instances of invalid click and impression activity very seriously. As a reminder, we cannot disclose any details about how our monitoring technology works or what specifics we found on your account. However, we can assure you that we have thoroughly re-reviewed your account, and have confirmed that your account violated our program’s Terms and Conditions.

In essence, what they are saying is that there is click fraud on your account but we can't do anything to help you.

To start with you need some good click tracking software. Google doesn't provide you with any of this information so you need to be pro-active and purchase some Adsense click tracking software. Do a search on Google for "adsense click tracking" and you will get many results.

The click tracking software will give you information on the IP of the visitor clicking your adds, location of the visitor, what ad or ads they clicked on and much more information than you get in your Adsense account.

If you discover someone with the same IP repeatedly clicking on your ads then this is a sure sign of clickfraud.

There are many reasons why people feel compelled to click on your ads with the sole intention of shutting down your account, far too many to get into in this article. But this is why you need some click tracking software. Armed with this information you can take measures to block the offender and pass the information along to Google.

Other areas you need to be aware of is where you are placing your ads. For a while it was popular to put little images next to your ads to 'draw the eye' but this is now against Google's TOS. Other instances of trying to artificially inflate the clicks that I have seen include using an attrative girl holding a board and the adsense being placed on the board. Very effective, but I noted that the Adsense had disappeared from the page the next time I visited it - probably because it was too effective.

Google offers many suggestions on how to avoid click fraud (or invalid clicks as they like to call it). Using “negative keywords” (this is another Google spin word for spamming) can be used to make Adsense show ads that are in no way related to the page it is on.

Follow Googles terms to the letter and invest in some good adsense click tracking software to ensure you never get the dreaded "it has come to our attention" email. Once Google has terminated your account, there is no way to get it back.