Three Types of Click Fraud

Even though I only talked about two click fraud scenarios in the book, there are actually three basic types of click fraud. I use the following terminology to distinguish the different kinds of click fraud when discussing the topic with others:

* Enriching click fraud occurs when AdSense publishers click ads (or hire or otherwise entice others to do so) on their own sites to increase their AdSense earnings.
* Depleting click fraud occurs when a competitor actively targets another company's ads and click on them to deplete that company's ad budget.
* Disbarring click fraud occurs when someone uses fraudulent clicks to force a publisher out of the AdSense program.

Each type of click fraud is problematic, but the last one is particularly pernicious for AdSense publishers. If someone gets expelled from the AdSense program because they were engaging in enriching click fraud then they're getting what they deserve. An AdSense publisher expelled through no fault of their own — because they were specifically targeted by a competitor or someone with a beef against them — is truly unfortunate. While Google does not generally terminate publishers without first warning them, there have been publishers who've been banned and yet claim total innocence.
How to Handle Click Fraud

There is, unfortunately, not much you can do as an AdSense publisher to prevent click fraud by others, even when they're using your site to do it. Here are a few things you can do, however:

* Monitor your AdSense earnings regularly for suspicious activity. This is a no-brainer: every AdSense publisher I know checks their earnings on a regular basis. Once you've been in the program for a while, you should have a good feel for what's normal for your site. Increased traffic by itself is not an indication of click fraud, especially if you've been actively trying to promote the site, but watch out for high CTRs (clickthrough rates).
* Save your server logs. You should have the ability to see the raw Web server logs for your site to see who's accessing the site and which pages they're accessing. Suspicious activity warrants a good look through these logs for unusual behaviors. Again, this is something you're probably doing anyhow, to see where your traffic is coming from.
* Report your suspicions to the AdSense support team. If you think there's been click fraud, email adsense-support@google.com to let them know. They may not get back to you for a while, but they will investigate. Chances are they'll come calling on you anyhow, so it's best to be upfront about your suspicions.
* Temporarily turn off the advertisements if necessary. If there are no ads on your pages, your site can't be used to commit click fraud. Not a great solution, but it may save you from disbarment.

Whatever you do, of course, don't engage in click fraud yourself.

This site has been the subject of click fraud, though I can't tell if it's for depleting or disbarring purposes. All I know is that every few days the home page gets accessed at regular intervals (about every 20 seconds) by machines across the Internet. I noticed this initially because my CTRs went through the roof. After reporting it to Google, my solution has been to turn ads off the home page when there is no referrer header telling me how the browser has made it to my site. This seems to work well. It is, however, annoying for an AdSense book site to be subjected to this — which makes me think it's disbarring click fraud.

Eric Giguere
June 22, 2005

http://www.makeeasymoneywithgoogle.com/click-fraud.html