Hello, after reading many posts about banning (invalid clicks), i got uncomfortable about adsense and i think about publisher protection. How does google protect its publishers against click-bombing and similar attacks? I use an other advertiser and i see in my ad-stats many invalid clicks and they are not paid, no problem at all. How does adsense/google handle this unfriendly clicks? AlexFP
I'm sure the next post will say "..they don't protect you - they ban you" .. But in reality, it appears that they simply discount most clicks that they detect as invalid; however in the policies they state that the publisher is responsible for protecting himself from invalid clicks. I think that overall, the vast majority of honest publishers have nothing to worry about.. Occasionally one of the good-guys gets banned and must make use of their appeal process. sure, mistakes are made, but i think that most long-time/honest publishers will tell you that if you play by the rules you have nothing to worry about.. i use adlogger and keep all my raw logs... because i'm more paranoid than most..
..they don't protect you - they ban you Just wanted to show how prophetic Tearabite can be Now that I have that out of the way, I think they have that in the TOS to protect themselves and to give them the option of booting if they need to. I've had occasional high-click rates that simply were discounted. No letter, no warning, I just got nothing for the clicks. I imagine if that happens a number of times they start to take interest in your traffic and clicks. I do not use adlogger but do have a script running which tracks (it's probably very similar to adlogger) whenever I notice anything on, I detail it in a log book just in case. That way I can show that I'm at least keeping an eye on thing. Tearabite is right on with this one...try to get access to your raw log files. They can tell you a lot more than just summaries can.
raw log looking is ok, but calling adsense-js directly with spoofed referrer is easy. blackmailing publishers is a new sport and income. i got blackmailed and ddosed few times, what if the bad guys will expand their biz? AlexFP
Then Google will be forced to react. Adwords/Adsense is Google's main (virtually ONLY) source of income.. you can bet that they will protect it as best as they can. If there is any real or serious threat, they will react....eventually.. probably.... i hope..