Invalid clicks email

[Leeky]

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Just got the following email from google, I havent got a clue what they are talking about and have not participated in anything which could generate invalid clicks or impressions, now what do it do because I know emailing them seems to be pointless.



> It has come to our attention that invalid clicks or impressions have
> been generated on the Google ads on your site(s) through users of
> third-party programmes paid or provided with other incentives to visit
> your site. Such programmes may include, but are not limited to
> auto-surf, pay-to-surf, pay-to-read or pay-to-click sites.
>
> As a reminder, any method of generating invalid clicks or impressions
> is strictly prohibited by our Terms & Conditions and programme policies:
>
> https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_GB
> https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_GB
>
> If we continue to detect invalid clicks or impressions from these
> services on your ads, we may disable your account to protect our
> advertisers.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> The Google AdSense Team

[munchkin]

I got this email from them too a few months ago. It turned out I was advertising on traffic exchanges which apparently is not ok.

They were a little sketchy as to what they will allow and won't, but I am assuming that banner and text link exchanges are ok.

Drop them a line and ask them, just explain your not sure why they have contacted you and could they give you some indication as to why they think you've been logging invalid clicks or impressions. At least you will then know and not make the same mistake in the future.

Good luck!

[Shane]

"Drop them a line and ask them"

good luck with that.. I sent 4 emails the other month and I'm still waiting .. they don't have a customer support dept or if they do it's called "apthetic email handling department" instead

waste of time trying to get anything diffinitive out of them, the more you push the vaguer it gets most of the time

[Leeky]

I haven't bothered to contact them because it will be a complete waste of time, although I think I know what the problem is.

On my site www.pagerank10.co.uk I had google ads, due to the nature of the site the participants try cheating and send loads of traffic using the same ip numbers to try and generate more referral counts. The side effect of this could be the invalid impressions.

Im sure the problem can't be invalid clicks because the amount of visitors who clicked on the google ads is very low for the amount of real unique visitors the site actually gets.

[mateypeeps]

I got this email from them too a few months ago. It turned out I was advertising on traffic exchanges which apparently is not ok.

They were a little sketchy as to what they will allow and won't, but I am assuming that banner and text link exchanges are ok.

Drop them a line and ask them, just explain your not sure why they have contacted you and could they give you some indication as to why they think you've been logging invalid clicks or impressions. At least you will then know and not make the same mistake in the future.

Good luck!

I agree, ask, and ask again until they cough up the info.

It took them 6 months to finally tell me what the problem was, with one (and only one of 20+) websites I had.

Turned out that some sites I was using to show my site to others, framed my site, so flagging the website as "indeterminate" subject matter.

[adam]

I can only say that when I was at a Merchant we experienced a little, but very clear cut, click fraud.

An unpopular keyword suddenly got around 2,000 clicks in 2 days across 2 different accounts / products. It just sucked up £1,000 until there was no money in either account. The keyword would normally cost around £2 per month.

It’s nice to see one of the companies actually trying to cut down on click fraud.

Of course it doesn’t help when they don’t tell you why / wrongly accuse affiliates.

After a number of emails and phone calls we got a whopping £50 refund.

It’s definitely a mess that they need to clear up. Both for merchants and affiliates.