How to Protect from Google Adsense Click Fraud

No matter how sad it sounds but many site and blog owners are getting their Adsense account terminated without doing anything against the rules.

The biggest reason for that is click fraud. Click fraud in simple words is clicking on ads for the purpose of costing the advertiser money.

Surely a site or blog owner would never do a click fraud, because the account will get terminated and money on it lost. But 3rd parties can do that, for example, to kick you off the business for a while.

How to prevent click fraud?

Check your access logs. For any suspicious activity you should contact Google directly and instantly. You can do it from their official page that accepts invalid clicks reports from the AdSense users - https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact=invalid_clicks_contact

The sooner you do that, the better. You must make Google team sees that you are:

- not affiliated with these invalid clicks

- you do not want money from this illegal stuff

- you are ready to any kind of cooperation to stop that stuff

What can be a suspicious bulk of clicks?

For example, too many clicks from the same IP over a short period of time.

But today click frauders went further and use special solutions that automatically put different IPs. Then even try to hind behind the search engines. It can look that 100 people came to you from MSN or Yahoo using one and the same search term - look for the search term, because it can tell a lot.

If you are not 1st page for this term in the search engine that 'sends' you clicks - fraud is possible.

Also disable ads for your own IP address and local geographic area. This can prevent accidents and will not make Google mistake another user as you. This can be done through a htaccess file.

Also keep your ads off on pop ups and pop unders.

Do not put ads on content sites that promote illegal activity or tampering of the legal rights of other people or business.

And the rule of a thumb - be the first to contact Google. Even if you did a mistake and the clicks were not fraudulent, still it is better to make Google see that you do your part of the job.

Useful Info About Ways To Identify And Tackle Click Fraud

The 1st step to eradicating the problem is identifying and tracking examples of click fraud is. Click fraud is an enormous drain on the resources of advertisers operating on a national and international scale. Also estimated to occupy around 30% of all pay per click advertising spent.

One way in which Search Engines and other pay per click program providers have attempted to curb the growing click fraud problem is through introducing IP address repetition algorithms. These formulae are designed to pick up on suspicious click patterns emanating from a singular IP address. As well as identifying potential fraudsters at source, this can help to uncover the existence of click farms and competitor-led sabotage.

Anyway, there is an array of problems with this method of attempting to identify the fraudsters. So, fraudsters logging on through a dialup modem, DSL line or cable modem can almost completely bypass this check, as with every new online session, a new IP address is generated. Cookie and session tracking are other methods by which search engines can attempt to uncover potential fraudulent activity, but for the fraudsters there are ways around these. More software is developed which profiles and reports on the browsing habits of each click-through to enable companies to track and monitor suspicious behavior.

Prompting Google to offer $90million as a potential settlement the problem of click fraud recently hit the headlines with a class action raised against Google. Maybe an acceptance of their responsibilities, Google's offer goes some way to suggest the extent of click fraud.

The first of self-help remedies that can be implemented to keep an organization out of trouble is remedies the reliance on search engine optimization and organic listings. It could eventually realize a ranking that another site is willing to pay $2.50 a click for, if a site is well and fully optimized. With organically high rankings there is no click through rates. The costs associated with PPC are not applicable. Although the process is significantly more laborious and takes significantly longer to see results, the SEO process is much cheaper in the long run, and with an estimated 25-30% of all clicks being performed fraudulently, an organically high listing can save money which would otherwise be drained by click fraud for more beneficial reinvestment.

Surely click fraud will follow suit, as the pay per click advertising market continues to grow and expand. Unless an effective means of preventing click fraud is developed and successfully implemented, buyers will steadily lose confidence in the advertising medium and turn to more effective.