On AWStats, it says I'm getting traffic from sites like: http://www.facegames.com/ http://www.mindclip.com/ http://www.gamebbb.com/ Which all obviously have nothing on them. Normally the traffic shows up as getting referred through googlesyndication. I'm worried though, because it looks like adsense and adwords is the only paid advertising I use. Should I filter out these sites, or are the clicks legit?
The sites in question are parked domains running adsense - one with Network Solutions, one with Sedo.com and I'm not sure about the other one. Well, let's have a quick look at the history of the domains: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.facegames.com/ Domain history since 2001 Seems to have spent it's life as a parked domain The only possible type-in traffic I can see that might legitimately result in a user trying the domain, facegames.com and typing it directly into the browser, is in looking for an out of print book from 1987 called, facegames. Unlikely, imo. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.mindclip.com/ Domain history since 2001 / 2002 - nothing by way of a site Seems to have spent it's life as a parked domain. The only thing I can find that may account for anyone typing this domain directly into the browser would be someone looking for a Youtube user known as 'mindclip' who is running under the Youtube title of Mindclip Production. Again, seems an unlikely source of type-in traffic, imo. If it was me I would use the ban option on your adwords account to stop your ads being displayed on these domains; unless of course, you can see an excellent reason your ads would show on these sites and you are happy that the traffic is legit.