Archive for August 11th, 2007

First let’s answer the what is.  Click fraud is the act of clicking on ads for the purpose of costing the advertiser money. It is simply the same as paying out cash for false leads. Many website owners are aware of this fraud and are sharing the same sentiment that this is the one big problem that Adsense is facing.

Now, preventing it and arguing it when Google accuses you are a very different thing.  So, how exactly do you prevent being involved in this fraud?  In particular if Google thinks you are committing any kind of gaming of their system as an Adsense user they will sometimes send you a warning email.  I’ve gotten this warning email myself in the past.

The hardest part about this is Google does not tell you what you are doing wrong.  You have got to figure this out on your own and reevaluate any marketing that you are doing.  They won’t even tell you which website, so if you have multiple websites in your account you may need to do a large change over everything.  The big “G” keeps this information to themselves as a means to protect how their algorithms work.  Honestly, in my opinion it’s just an excuse to not tell you and keep them in complete control of all things internet, but I’m trying to remain neutral here -lol-

One of the things to think about is if you are involved in any kind of traffic exchange programming, like Blog Explosion where people click and view your page, then click and view another page.  While Google does not come right out and say it, this is a forbidden activity and they consider it gaming the system.  Using Adsense is not an easy game to play.  It can be quite frustrating at time.

Majority of web hosts are offering access logs. Once this is offered to you, it is necessary that you hand it over to Google as well. This allows them to look for any suspicious activity on your site. Problems like this are very serious and giving it to them is saying that you would want to help them in any way you can in solving the problem.

It can also help if you have a click monitoring software. If you do not have one yet, you should try and get one. There is absolutely no major factor preventing you from having one because most of this software is free.  As usual, all the information you have received should be turned over to Google. This is showing Google that you too are fighting against click frauds and is in no way a part of it.  Study your server logs and watch for any activity that seems suspicious.

Be ahead of the game!  Watch your reports and logs regularly.  Report anything that you may find odd, may it big or small thing, but you reporting it before Google looks at it and wonders helps keeps you safe and sound from being banned.

[tags]Google, Adsense, click fraud, reporting click fraud[/tags]