Okay, I'm not going to freak out quite yet (I have already sent google an email about it), but one of my sites has some issues. With no change in traffic it has spiked to almost ten times the normal CTR. In the last hour I have had more clicks than I have had in the past 7 days. What should I do other than contact google?
The only thing you can do other than contact google is to ban the ip addresses from accessing your server. The problem with publically open proxies is that there are so damn many of them it's impossible to manage to ban them all. It's in situations like this that you become greatfull for the fact that you actually check your stats - imagine (if like some people here) you only checked at the end of the month. You'd likely not know that something weird was going on, the first thing you'd know was an email from G. I am a firm believer that being proactive and contacting G before they contact you is a good thing. It's all about taking your business seriously (imho).
Now I'm just angry... Just looked at the first update of the day for me and guess what? More clicks in the past 3 hours than I have had in the past 6 months. This guy won't stop and there is no way for me to block all of these proxies. It looks like he planned it out, there are 1000's of them (without a repeat). Google better get back to me today.
Or you can put the adsense unit in testing mode. Either modify the value of google_ad_client to something like "pub-googleIamTesting" Or add another line to Google Adsense code google_adtest = "on"; Don't forget the semicolon. Details here - http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/09/precautions-before-testing-google.html
I dont think that is a great idea, as I know there are ISP providing multiple proxy to serve a client ... so either you block the IP or even proxy. No use! Imagine that millions of user coming from 1 proxy, blocking few proxy will make you nothing good! Believe me, that Adsense team will be working on it and get back to you soon!
Okay, I put adsense in test mode when I went to bed last night, this morning I woke up and turned it back on. Someone is going to die. In the 3 hours since I have been up, it has started back up. Pushing my CTR to over 90%. I can't imagine that someone is just waiting around for me to get up and turn them back on... this must be some sort of script or a group of people. I am out of ideas and google has yet to respond to me.
ha. Here is the IP of one of the people beind this: tp-s2-c33-3.router.hinet.net He was lazy and stopped using proxies for a while. Not that it helps much... Also it looks like this has sent my entire account into smart pricing... I hope it doesn't stay that way.
Do you have a lot of pages? If it were me, I'd be so livid! I'd probably take the ads off my site for 24 hours. I don't think you can expect to earn anything from them while this is going on anyhow, can you? I wouldn't want to risk my G account, even though you wrote to them.
Well, it's only one site that is getting hit (and I think I should remove it from my sig.)... but it is the entire account that just got slapped with smart pricing. Oh, I don't know... probably about 4000+ pages of content with adsense showing. Believe me, I AM pissed. Very. It's obviously someone who went to my site and decided, "Screw this guy, I don't want him living off of adsense! If I can't do it neither should he!!!1". I really hate to think that it might be someone on this forum.
It has happened to me also but on a much smaller scale and only for a couple of hours. I contacted G but not heard from them yet. Does anyone know if they have a system in place to ignore these clicks? My account only got credited 1c a click when this happened if that. They should not disable the accounts of innocent people for this. How do you know which is the ip doing it? What should I look for in the logs? Thanks! Google responded and the message was very encouraging. I think you should contact them if you see any suspicious activity.