AdSense is the best and the worst of online advertising. It pays reliably, but it can also close an account overnight. In spring 2013 many bloggers saw a wave of invalid activity: clicks rising fast while earnings stayed flat, sometimes with US clicks paying only $0.01 to $0.04, a sure sign they were not genuine.
Why invalid clicks are dangerous
Google answers to its advertisers, so it disables accounts that show suspicious click patterns, even when the publisher did nothing wrong. Well-known bloggers lost accounts that were ten years old. You cannot stop someone clicking your ads, but you can spot it early and act.
How to find where invalid clicks come from
- Log in to your AdSense account and open the performance reports.
- Switch the report to Countries and compare clicks, CTR and CPC.
- Look for a country with a CTR far above your average and a CPC far below it.
- Check the same period in your analytics for unusual referrers or very short sessions.
What to do
- Report the activity to Google through the invalid clicks contact form, with dates and countries.
- Temporarily hide ad units from the suspicious traffic or the affected pages.
- Never click your own ads, and never ask anyone else to.
- Keep ads away from buttons, downloads and navigation, where accidental clicks happen.
- Do not buy cheap traffic. Low-quality traffic sources are the most common trigger.
Don't keep all your eggs in one basket
Many publishers who lost AdSense accounts discovered how dependent they had been on one partner. Spreading revenue across networks, direct deals and affiliate programs protects you. Publishers in the sports and gaming space often rely on gambling affiliate programs instead, because they pay by player rather than by click, so invalid clicks are not an issue at all. See AdSense alternatives and casino affiliate programs.
