I use adsense as most everyone here does. I constantly see posts asking what to do, or how to stop/prevent click fraud. Here is what I do but keep in mind I only get around 1100 visitors per day and around 50 clicks (Great niche though ). I have caught a few people and reported them to google and I have not had any problems. 1.) Signup for statcounter.com and add your site(im sure their are others but this is what I do) 2.)Before you goto bed for the night check the link in your statcounter.com page that says "Exit Link Activity" 3.) Scan the "Time" column and see any clicks to adsense that are within a few minutes of eachother. 4.) The page you are taken to will show you that visitors total site activity. From here you can see how long on your site, how many and which pages viewed, and how many times that user clicked on an adsense ad. Once you find someone who has clicked a large amount of ads in a short amount of time report their IP address to google and tell them that you are more than happy to share any of your analytic logs with them if they need it. Done and Done.
You are doing a great job to keep yourself safe. And this is one of the greatest sharing i read today
Great thread my friend. this is something a lot of people here including myself needs to track down fraud clicks. thanks for the share... Shelly77
excellent overview, this will really help individuals who are concerned about fraudulent activity. I like the way that you have borken it down into stages. Just out of interest is there a way of doing this using Google Analytics?
One of my friend used to report the fraudulent clicks from his site to google along with the IP addresses and other details regularly. After a week, he got a reply from google saying that the publishers no longer require to report the suspicious clicks as they (google) are constantly watching each and every click and its origin and they will ask clarifications (if you are really lucky!) if the need arises. So, I think there is no need to report the matter regularly to google.
I believe this too... However I would rather wait for them to send the email letting me know it is not needed to report fraud clicks. Better safe than sorry.
Last time i reported abnormal activity they answered me "stay cool, we are the best and we are going to get the bad guys." Just joking. For real, they said i don't need to send them emails whenever there's suspect activity.
Yeah I said this is what I use for my 1100 or so visitors a day.... The exit link activity also tracks the last 500 exit links..... If you are getting more than 500 clicks per day than you can afford to pay someone to have this done. However, the other 99% of us should be able to track nearly every single exit click for free using statcounter
Why wont you use a script that will protect you from fraud clicks? just google it. no need to check your stats all the time