I think I'm in the middle of an attack on my adsense account - I've been having a rather heated discussion with some git from... well doesn't matter, anyway today my adsense numbers are through the roof - already my highest day ever and I know nothing new has happened between yesterday and today - our page views are still the same. I've tried looking at my IP hits but my stats software is crappy, and google analytics is down. Will send an email to google, but in the meantime any advice would help. Thanks
ooops... But according to goooooogle no competitor can bring you down by malicious intent... But then again,,, loads of folk fall even if they are not under attack. Maybe you got lucky and are just getting quality traffic or great ads!!!
If your traffic remains the same but your Adsense clicks are through the roof, that's a major tip-off that someone's trying to sabotage you. This is one reason why I will never ever give out a link to one of my sites on forums, even this one. People know how to hurt you -- right in the Adsense wallet. Good call on the email to Google. Meanwhile, find out if this person you've been having an argument has Adsense, and why not hit them back? Sounds fair to me.
If you're really concerned, you can take adsense down for a while. But I really wouldn't worry about it.
the "git" is not from a forum... well he may, but that's not where the "discussion" started... I have to believe in a greater good... (and karma) will wait and see what google says... might think about pulling my ads if my numbers continue to go up... Hey crazyrob new avatar If my numbers keep going up at this rate I'll double my best day! Maybe I should send him a nice bottle of red wine?
Surely that comes down to the same thing if one individual at the same IP address is intent on clicking? I don't reckon google ask or seek a personal association, wouldn't they would just see it as fraud? Its a grey area probably not-this-thread-related but a serious concern. If the 'chap-out-of-favor' has a hit-bot set against his ads, google will surely shut him down regardless of who's fault it is...?
If you could take down another site by over-clicking their ads, don't you think people would be doing that to their competitors all the time? Google might disallow the clicks and might even disallow that person forever if they can, but I doubt they bother the site owner - unless its collusion, of course. You might just be having a good day. I had an unusual number of clicks this morning, - no patterns looked unusual except for the ctr percentage. The articles that carried the ads were older and were found by Google search rather than direct access so as far as I can tell, it was legitimate traffic..
Absolutely agree that a 'good day' is more likely. However, google probably do not get to asking politely if the clicks were by collusion! I reckon its a major black-hole that folk don't want to talk about. Malicous intent is not something that google can not possibly detect without proper human intervention, interviewing and detection, yet they frequently pull sites down for click-fraud based on IP or whatever. There is no way they can decide what is, or what is not setup up by friends or foe... Anybody, with too-much-knowledge of the website in question who happens to have a grudge could manipulate google's own TOS/rules and bring down a competitor (or grudge enemy etc) adsense accounts if they were intent on doing so, if the information available ref banned sites and TOS is to be believed. If you have a partner and he/she knows as much as you do about your site, google could be fooled by an attack into thinking you had something to do with it.
Yes, a partner or a ticked off employee could ruin your life. However, that kind of problem is easy for Google to deal with: just roll-back the clicks if they see an unusual grouping. It's the bots that are the real danger to them and their advertisers, and there's little defense imaginable: if 10,000 bots each do one click per day on fifty different sites, that's a fair pile of "money for nothing". If it's 100,000 it's serious cash and there are estimates that there are millions of bots out there - heck, some of the people reading this could be doing so at the keyboards of compromised machines.