Somebody has been clicking like crazy on one of my adsense websites. I know because it has 100 clicks and zero earnings. I went to cpanel and looked at the stats. I only had 21 unique visits but 400 hits. How can I prevent being banned by Google due to this?
First remove your ads, then send the logs and whatever info you can gather to Google Adsense and tell them of this problem.
Wisdomtool, I couldnt have said it better. Make sure you remove your ads, and tell google exactly what has happened. Dont worry, things'll be fine. But do let us know how things go.
Use the mail id to contact the google and don't forget to tell them the ip from which the fraudulent clicks came, date and time of click. You can track the adsense clicks by using the free tool adlogger.
Thanks, guys. Right now, I'm suspending the website and will try to remove all ads in the next few hours and email google when I'm able to gather all the info. Can I see the IP of this person in my awstats?
Sorry but this is all new to me. When I go to raw access logs in my cpanel, it's a downloadable zip file which contains a file that I can't open. Is this the one I should send to google? Wisdomtool, I really appreciate all your help.
You need to unzip it, then check which are the IPs that are clicking your pages, you can just send the zip to Google, I doubt they will bother. You will need to check and give them everything presented neatly for them to take action. Don't expect them to lift a finger to help with these.
I tried opening the file inside but it just gives me a dos prompt error. For the meantime, I have sent an email to google detailing the problem and asking for their advise but not disclosing any information YET for fear that they instantly deny access to my account. As I can't open the logs (MS DOS Application file), do you think I can get a screenshot of the awstats information and send that instead?
I think for the time being this is the only approach, one thing is to convince them that you are doing your best.
Keep you ads on the site and don't do anything. If I was to suspend my sites for click fraud, I would be out of business in no time. If you are going to take the "scary" approach, a notice to Google should be sufficient. Remember, if you are not part of the activity, there is no reason why you should even contact them. Peace,
^ Not entirely true. I had a friend whose members tried to "help him out" by clicking the hell out of his ads. He was banned, no warning, and it was a young account (eg: no prior violations). Just be careful. If you're only doing 21 uniques a day and plan to build a busy site, I'd take the ads down as a good-faith precaution with them until you hear back.
Yes, I was thinking about doing the "just-ignore-it-it's-not-your-fault" approach but I know that google has been known to just automatically ban accounts for click fraud suspicion. So I think the pro active approach is needed here.
Keep your ads, but report it to Google. Why should they ban you for being honest? Of course not unless the rep who will check your account is drunk or stoned