Someone is DEFINATELY trying to sabotage me

Ok, this is crazy.

My CTR TRIPLED yesterday. I didn't make any changes in placement of the ads, nor have I ever asked visitors or friends to click on my banners, so OBVIOUSLY something was wrong.

I sent G an email explaining it, and this was their vague response:

Even though they weren't really clear about taking any actions or making sure they understand I'm not behind this, I shrugged it off since my conscience was clean.

Then today it happened again. This time, my CTR was over FIVE TIMES higher than it usually is.

(In a normal day I make around 10 bucks, and today I barely broke two dollars, which also struck me as odd)

So at this point I'm firmly convinced someone is trying to sabotage me.

I'm sending G another email right now. This is what it says:

Needless to say, I'm very concerned at this.

My website is of... well, let's say, polemic nature. I made my share of enemies over the past 10 years I've used the internet. I suspect certain stalkers found out about Google's click fraud policy and are trying to "frame" me.

What else could be done?

 

I put the banners down until I hear from Google. Better to stop this now.

 

I'd ban you just for being annoying.

 

C'mon Rob, not this again, ok?

Taking your trolling elsewhere man.

 

I think it is the right thing to do to drop them a line when something like this happens.

One word of advice is I would be a bit more general. Telling them that there is NO WAY that 64% of your visitors are clicking on ads is a bit alarming. No need to say anything like that.

Just tell them you noticed significantly high CTR for the last few days and you have no idea what might be causing it. Leave it at that.

Don't freak out on them.

 

How can you tell them that no way 64% of visitors are clicking ads, when they obviously are

Check your referral stats and see if there is a arge jump in a phrase referral. It might be that you have just appeared for a phrase that is not being answered on your page, but is getting the click through rate.

 

>Clicks or impressions deemed by our monitoring system to be invalid will
>appear in your reports, but because advertisers are not charged for them,
>no associated revenue will be shown. Please rest assured that your account
>is being properly credited for all valid clicks and impressions.

Good info, it appears this is the answer for all those posts, "Many clicks, no revenue"

later,

tom

 

You could also try and put some click tracking script on your page that will show you the IP of anyone who clicks and ad. Then it's just a matter of seing who has an abnormal high ammount of clicks and blocking them from the site.

There are several commercial scripts that will do this, but I'm positive there must be some free ones around too.

 

Yeah, that's for sure. I wondered if it was just happening to me.

 

It's a good idea, but the thing is I run my website on a free server. It is actually a weblog. So I don't know how to implement this.

 

Oh, I'm totally blank when it comes to blogs, but can you include javascript? then the actual logging can be done on another server.

 

I guess I could just put some money aside and buy some hosting already. With that, I could have complete control over who visits my website, and then permanently ban the IPs who are trying to "set me up".

The thing is, if I learned anything from past experiences with stalkers, finding a proxy and hiding your IP isn't hard at all... I had a guy once run a macro for 2 days flooding my comment box, and no matter how many times I'd ban him from Haloscan (my comment system), he'd come back in less than 10 minutes with a brand new IP address.

All just because I wrote an article bashing Dragon Ball Z. Some people really have no life.

 

Sorry that happened to you. What you might do id ask Google to please examine your account, because you believe a user was making clicks to sabotage you. Then ask them to oversetimate in their favor, as you value your long term relationship more than getting paid for something silly like this.

 

Good idea.

I'll wait to get a response from my last e-mail, and then I'll sugest that.

 

its better to stop displaying adds till they don't give u satisfied answer.

 

Huh, what?

 

On a tangent, does Google count clicks from known proxies?

 

You could also redirect your site for a couple of days, unless you can't effort that.

 

yeah but u cud host it on another web server..free of course...edit the index.php and place the tracking script ..i think it will work

 

Free servers = tons of pop ups and banners, not good.