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Ask HN: Adsense Fake Clicks

3 points by Ardit20 17y ago

For the past 4 days some persons or perhaps a bot keeps coming to my website and clicking on the ads. I went through the logs yesterday and they all seem to be different IPs from what seems legitimate businesses, yet on google analytics it shows them all under one network location. Am I able to stop this bot or people visiting my website through blocking it somehow by using network location? If not what can I possibly do since they seem to use different IPs all the time?

ScottWhigham 17y ago
You can report the fraud but #### - Google is just not usually going to say, "You're right and we're wrong" in my experience. I've reported fraud many times and, although I can't be 100% certain due to years of advertising, but I don't recall Google ever once coming back in my favor.
- Ardit20 17y ago
  I have reported it already. Google is able to detect that the clicks are fake, so in adsense it shows 0 earnings and ecpm. I do not know if this will effect future legitimate earnings though and I do not know how to stop it.
makecheck 17y ago
You might be able to obfuscate things a little on your end, if you can change the source code used to generate your ads. For example, the bot is probably searching the page for links matching specific URLs, but it might be fooled by selective use of URL encoding. Say, if you replaced the letter "o" with %6f in your ad hrefs, the links should still work, but they'd no longer match in a simple text search.
- Ardit20 17y ago
  Perhaps I should have mentioned that I am not a programmer. I have read your comment a few times and from my understanding it seems that you are suggesting to replace a letter o with %6f which doesn't seem to work. The ad code is in script language, javascript, so there is no a=heref, only http:// http:// and the address. You did remind me though that I use both contexad and adsense. Context ads give you the option of entering a back up ad provider, so I have entered adsense for that. It seems that most of the clicks are targeted at these ads, as the two adsense slots which have the original google adsense code, have not been clicked at all.

3 points by Ardit20 17y ago

ScottWhigham 17y ago

You can report the fraud but #### - Google is just not usually going to say, "You're right and we're wrong" in my experience. I've reported fraud many times and, although I can't be 100% certain due to years of advertising, but I don't recall Google ever once coming back in my favor.

Ardit20 17y ago
I have reported it already. Google is able to detect that the clicks are fake, so in adsense it shows 0 earnings and ecpm. I do not know if this will effect future legitimate earnings though and I do not know how to stop it.

makecheck 17y ago

You might be able to obfuscate things a little on your end, if you can change the source code used to generate your ads. For example, the bot is probably searching the page for links matching specific URLs, but it might be fooled by selective use of URL encoding. Say, if you replaced the letter "o" with %6f in your ad hrefs, the links should still work, but they'd no longer match in a simple text search.

Ardit20 17y ago
Perhaps I should have mentioned that I am not a programmer. I have read your comment a few times and from my understanding it seems that you are suggesting to replace a letter o with %6f which doesn't seem to work. The ad code is in script language, javascript, so there is no a=heref, only http:// http:// and the address. You did remind me though that I use both contexad and adsense. Context ads give you the option of entering a back up ad provider, so I have entered adsense for that. It seems that most of the clicks are targeted at these ads, as the two adsense slots which have the original google adsense code, have not been clicked at all.