AdSense fraud - enough is enough!

khushal, everyone has the right to make money. I also consider myself a kid - and probably will 'til the day I die.
What you do find is that a lot of kids simply don't read the TOS and simply think 'Well, I'll just get some of my mates to click on the Ads'. Obviously this is wrong and not a good way of trying to make money.
Granted, not all kids are like that. But many simply come into these forums complaining that google banned them when a) they tried to cheat, b) they didn't read the TOS, or c) they didn't understand the TOS.

 

Adsense fraud is the same as shoplifting or bad debt. So, If the PPC companies can keep the fraud low enough everything woud be just fine.. I am not going to waste time fraud hunting or anything of the like.. that time can be spent earning. My major concern is getting banned for fraud because of someone elses stupidity.
Also, I have had excellent customer service from Adsense.. although I may be the only one from what I read.
Saying all this I just started an failrly large adwords campaign for someone and the results are not going well.. If anyone has a good idea how to get better results feel free to PM me.

 

of course 'kids' can make money, but it's not even legal for someone under 18 to have an adsense account, they have to sign up in another name. There are reasons for that as well.

 

lol ... I've just learned something new!

 

care to share? lol

 

the age restriction I meant, so noone under 18 is supposed to have adsense?

 

It's what I remember reading, and Josh had to sign up under his parents because he was underage...but i'm off now to go double check, it IS rather early here and I just woke up, there is always the possibility that I'm wrong

 

these kinds of threads are everywhere now, I feel some changes coming soon
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=43822#post43822

 

This is silly. You're all complaining about something you don't have to use. If you don't like the adwords structure then don't use. Spend your money on a commercial or magazine ad, and see how the converts

To say the requirements should be to "strictly review every site" is completely stupid. Why do you care if your clicks come from a site that looks like crap or a great site? How does that change the quality of a customer??? If a spammer can make a spammy site rank 1 and get all your potential customers on their site, do you not want those customers to see your ad and come on over to your site to buy?

You're all complaining about click fraud, but where's your proof that it's so bad? Your low converting site? Thats hardly proof your clicks were invalid. . Besides tons of clicks from one IP address or clicks on your own sites, how do you suppose google can tell whats a valid click and whats a fraud click????

Just b/c a potential customer clicks your ad and looks at your site for 2 seconds, does not make it fraud. I've personally searched for hard to find products (shoes, cds, etc) and clicked the ads on the google search, only to find a cheap looking site that i would never trust to buy from, and leave immediately..

I personally know people who have been banned from adsense for "invalid clicks" when they never even clicked their own ads or cheated in any way and had barely made a few dollars. So Big G is obviously taking some kind of initiative in stopping it.

I've noticed my average payout per click drop nearly in half because of the new "smart pricing" thing, considering my car payment and insurance rely on my adsense earnings every month (which i work very hard for) I'm constantly worried I will get screwed over for doing nothing wrong.

 

Ok, mornings are evil, I actually read the whole long legal TOS before I just decided to search their help section. Anywhere, here is the link for it

https://www.google.com/support/adse...n:search&query=age+requirement&topic=0&type=f

Yeah, you need to be 18, but they come out and say if you're not, have a parent sign up, seems to me that might be part of the problem as well.

 

The only thing completely stupid here is all the nonsense you are posting. Not even worth replying to, just read again and try to understand what we are discussing, since it seems you have no idea.

 

While I understand what you are saying, I don't agree. There are a lot of things that people 'don't have to use' in life, but that doesn't mean that those programs, etc shouldn't strive to be better. If the attitude was always just don't use it, then nothing would improve anywhere, and what sense would that make?

 

do I start good threads or what?

 

Every thread i read now your complaining about adsense in some form or another. "my checks not here soon enough" , "theres too much fraud" blah blah.

I've never seen you post what you think the solution to anything is... you live in a third world country with a less than dependable mailing system, yet you blame google for not getting your check there timely.

Next you blame them for click fraud. How do you know for fact you were ever frauded?? And what's your solution to stop it? only count clicks that made you a sale?? Or maybe a site using adsense that sent you click didn't look pretty enough to you? Or they were too "spammy" in your eyes? That makes them fraudelent?? NO.

If google had to rigoriously inspect every site before allowing it to use adsense the wait to get a site approved would be 18 months long and then you'd be complaining how slow they are.

I'm only being realistic. I've used both adsense and adwords and have no complaints. My checks come on time every month just fine. Yes G should do everything it can to make it's program as good as it can be, but considering their sizeable growth and the type of problem at hand, you have to bear with them instead of complain all the time. It's not in their best interest to ignore click fraud.

 

Correct. The problem is a lot of kids manage to wriggle their way into an Adsense account with the help of a parent, guardian or legally aged sibling.

Some (it's arguable how many) will inevitably get a clicking campaign going with friends or try hiding text or whatever. Then they get banned and that's them stuffed for at least until they can figure out a way of getting another Adsense account, which may or may not be possible and can take years, and can be disabled at any moment since they were banned the first time around.

Then there is Adsense clicking software available, although as far as I know Google managed to squish that fairly quickly.

And not forgetting the Adsense Armies out there who are paid (very little) to do nothing but click on Adsense ads on a huge network of sites.

Click fraud isn't going to go away anytime soon. I do see it as very similar to shoplifting. As long as there is a way to do it, it will be done.

Best practice is probably the only way the effects can be minimised. This includes screening out urls, advertising on search only network for higher cost terms, limiting the search network exposure to only low cost terms and being vigilant.

 

As I already said, yo-yo, you seem to have no idea of what we are talking about and just replying without even reading previous posts. We have already discussed many potential solutions (not accepting every site on earth, hiring more staff, being more strict with the underage webmasters, etc).

And, since you are such an expert on tracking me down other forums, if you read carefully you will see that I have clearly stated that I receive my checks via express secured delivery. Mailing system has nothing to do with this.

 

This may be what needs to be done since fraudulent activity seems to be getting more rampant every month.

 

Actually I read every post. We're talking about Click Fraud.

Suggested solutions that have no possibility of working:
1. Not accepting every site - this won't stop fraudelent clicks in any way shape or form. If you think it would lets hear it? What criteria are they going to use? where the site is hosted? how pretty it looks?

2. Hiring more people - to do what? Do you want a person assigned to every click to closely inspect it? Software can track clicks far better than any staff of people.

3. Underage webmasters - I agree no one under 18 should be permitted to use adsense, with a parents permission or not. However the best click frauder's im sure, are experienced programmers with many years under their belt. A few kids are not the majority of the problem.


The reality is that click fraud is impossible to stop from happening. 1 click from 1 computer to your own account is untraceable. The only thing to hope for is the minimization of fraud. They already do this... they can tell if you click your own ads from the same computer you login to your account from. They discount tons of clicks from the same computer/IP address...

There's not really much more that can be done. Besides that, I'd still like to see any REAL statistics on what makes you think click fraud has gotten "so bad".

Considering how currupt the police system in mexico is i can't imagine anything close to a "secure" mailing delivery. Are you saying there's no possibility of the mailman stealing your check? Or losing it, or being really slow? Mexico must have one hell of a great mailing system, because the most expensive delivery in america still never has 100% delivery rates.

 

The only way you are going to see this in my opinion is when so many people disable "content" from their CP that Google doesn't have enough ads to display for most keywords. Obviously ones like Web Design will always have plenty but for a lot of the smaller keywords I have seen less and less ads showing vs. "search"

I would love to know what percentage already have content disabled. I certainly am one and I've done way better without it.

 

Please explain what a "manual review" of every site that wants to use adsense is going to do to stop click fraud?

Are you saying that spammy or ugly sites are frauds? Or you want them to check for the "please click our sponsors" texts? While they may be unethical I don't see how they're frauding anyone unless they're clicking their own ads, which no manual site review, will ever stop.

However, I do have a suggestion. . Put a hold on all payments to any country that does not follow american laws/penalties and manually review them. So that if a company overseas is frauding the hell out of the system, they can't be paid and then never be brought to justice. But then you have to descriminate against a whole country for a few bad people...

Another suggestion, is to check accounts that seem to make an usually high amount in the first month, or increase their amount by alot in a short period of time. Also to review accounts that have an unusually high CTR.

But then again what do i know