Hello, The last weeks I see a lot of "invalid" clicks on my website (high quality content website in tourist information branche) The amount "Today so far" at the homepart of my adsense account is constantly corrected to lower amounts. Sometimes I see 10 clicks on my website and an hour later it corrected to 1 click for example. Although this occured in the past sometimes it's now extremely often and also with bigger corrections. Another 2 remarks questions: - Why report invalid clicks in the first place by google. If they are corrected within an hour. Why they just don't report only the final clicks - I see even more clicks in statcounter. Sometimes 25 clicks in one day and only 1 or 2 clicks is finally acknowledged by google. Although I am aware of many different reasons for invalid clicks. it looks too me 5% is a valid click, sounds to me extremely low. My visitors come at my website with very different keywords, very different locations, with long visiting times. - Could it be for example google changes the minimum time to spend at the website after the click? I've heard something like that. The effect could be enormous with these kind of changes. Thanks in advance website2014
There have been an increasing number of reports in the last week or so re an increase in deductions for invalid clicks. I don;'t think anyone is yet sure what is going on, yet done any sort of analysis of it yet. To say any more would be guessing.
Although no one (except Google) knows why right now, you should at least take steps to reduce invalid clicks/clicks from low quality sources. I would recommend you track them in Google Analytics rather than StatCounter - I can't imagine that SC can be accurate to track clicks, but rather guess if a click occurred. I would also recommend you ensure you are serving an appropriate sized ad (or a responsive one) to mobile/smartphone customers (they can account for a large percentage of visitors and if an ad is big, miss-clicks can occur). Although this will only help if your site is responsive, too (it should be by now, it's 2014!). Also, only serve AdSense ads to "relevant and quality" traffic sources. For example, if your site is in English then limit AdSense to be shown to USA and UK visitors (and other English-speaking countries). Or if the topic (and adverts served) are very much focused on one country then only serve AdSense ads to visitors from that one. Good luck!
Google Adsense does track the clicking behavior of the visitor after they have 'clicked' on the ad... for example, if your visitor clicks on the ad and within the next 3 seconds they decide to click on 'Back' button to go back to your site... you will see that as invalid click and the value changes (this is implemented to compensate their clients to make sure that there are some good eyeball on what they have advertised). And if you are asking why did Google not report the final numbers? This is because machine and algorithm need time to react as well... the moment it is clicked... that click is recorded instantly after which the actual reaction time will kick in.
Thanks for the reactions! I will take a look at google analytics instead of SC. Very good tip concerning to limit AdSense to be shown to USA and UK visitors at an english website for example! Although english is one more of the difficult languages to filter I think, instead of dutch for eaxmple (english is also spoken in India, Australia and so on) dexterc --> If they change the minimum time to stay on a website after a click it can have a enormous influence.
Yes, it is widely in India, but that does not mean they are suitable for the ads. It's easy to filter using a country to IP system (don't rely on HTML5 for location as it is at users' discretion whether they share it). You need to do some research on who the advertisers are, what they are offering and the demographic they are trying to target. You might find that the adverts for Indian (or UK, Australian, Canada, etc) IPs are garbage, or seem good but when viewing the offerings are not suitable for that demographic, and can be replaced with something else. For example, an Indian company's ads so that they are more targeted and convert better. I use geo-targeting on some of my sites, so that advert/affiliate link relevancy is better depending on location and it works out well. I also (in AdSense) disabled interest-based ads, social ads and third party ads in order to improve relevancy in relation to the content. All the best!
I've found something really strange with regard to invalid clicks, when I look at "sites" in my adsense reports. The invalid clicks are always at the domain: domain.com (so without the www-prefix) and not at www.domain.com (so with www prefix) Sometimes I've only 2 impressions at the domain.com with 40 clicks for example (and a incredible CTR of 4000% or something) This disappears after half an hour (so invalid) At the www.domain.com I see normal results, a couple of hunderd impressions a day with some clicks and CTR of around 1-2%. Very very strange
Odd. is this mystery "domain.com" yours? Either currently or previously? If it's current, does it redirect from domain.com to www.domain.com?
It might be one of the ads...I was having some huge chargeback issues a few weeks back; thankfully on only one of my sites but it is my biggest Adsense earner. It was quite disheartening. Still seeing some but nothing like what I was seeing then. I was on my site and saw an ad from a site/company that would normally be a good match for my site. Problem was their ad looked like a giant search box. It matched my site fairly well. Too well. It seemed obvious what was going on. People were thinking they were searching on my free site, only to be taken to their paid site. I hated doing it but I added them to my Competitive Ban list. Within a couple of days the chargebacks were way down and things seemed much more stable. It's hard with the tracking that Google does and the way ads are served to see exactly the same advertisements our visitors might see. But, it might be worth your time to take a look and see if your site is getting any ads that might trick or confuse your visitors into clicking. All the while it was happening I kept wondering if Google will just assume the publisher(me) is doing something shady or will they look at the ad in question to see if it is somehow misleading or the cause of the problem.
Are any of you who are seeing these issues - purchasing traffic at all? I know of a lot of people who have experienced these issues from purchasing junk traffic and as a result google literally revoked earnings and banned them.
It could be because of same type of bot or conflict within code. Either way you should be good because for each ad that is clicked Google tracks down the I.P. address and location.