Internet Marketing Tycoon

**FreddyMcV** · 05-27-2006, 08:44 PM

When it comes to PPC ads, all I can ever find is Google-this and AdSense-that. So I signed up and put it on my blog. Within a month I had earned my way up to their initial payout minimum of $100 and, boy, was I excited. I mean, it was so easy. Too easy actually. I soon recieved an email saying that due to suspected "click fraud" I was not entitled to any money. I filed for appeal but was denied. I know for a fact that a friend of mine followed an ad from my site and, in turn, purchased the advertised program. My ads were effective, not fraudulant, but nothing I did convinced Google. So, basically, I gave their advertisers a months worth of free traffic...God, I hate Google!!!

**thetruedarkone** · 05-28-2006, 02:37 AM

Wow, i've been hearing alot of this

**vangogh** · 05-28-2006, 02:59 PM

How many other ads did your frend click? Was your friend responsible for most of the $100 you earned? I know it happns sometimes that people are dropped from AdSense through no fault of their own, but more often the case is they were doing something to generate invalid clicks like having friends and family click on the ads.

Your blog is a PR0 site which leads me to believe that it doesn't currently generate the traffic required to earn $100 in it's first month of AdSense. You certainly don't need PR to get traffic, but my instinct says you earned that $100 with a lot of fraudulent clicks.

**DRP** · 06-12-2006, 07:05 PM

http://clickbank.com/overview.html

**Loungeplace** · 07-03-2006, 02:23 PM

Google did the SAME thing to me! Except for me - it took MANY months to reach the $100 mark!! I have about 150,000 page views a month and it still took a long time to reach the mark...! When I inquired what the "fraudlent" clicks were they NEVER even responded to me!

**ADAM Web Design** · 07-03-2006, 02:37 PM

Freddy: no offense, but I don't believe your claim either.

Your own counter on the site suggests otherwise. 1,185 visitors, in order to generate $100, would need to click at least once every 12 times (assuming $1.00 per clickthrough, which is becoming increasingly rare). That's the low side.

So something is horribly wrong with your story.

**FreddyMcV** · 07-08-2006, 02:07 PM

After reading many of your comments I realise that it was too easy for me...therefore, I wish to change this thread's title to "Someone Screwed Me". I made no clicks personally, and I don't know of any fraudulant behavior toward my ads...but it obviously happened. But the fact remains that not all the clicks were fraudulant, so, in my opinion I am still entitled to some money. I understand google needing to protect their advertisers, but it's still far too easy for anyone with a grudge to click like crazy at your website and, in turn, get you banned from the program. Moral of the story would be to leave your visitors with no grudges, and also to attact your adsense to enough pages so that your excess page views will ballance out anyone attempting sabotage.

P.S. A 1 in 12 CTR isn't that unreasonable on my site. I have a lot of "boring" content and a surfer's only choice is to click their way out of there. Also I was only at 86 total clicks when I hit the $100 mark, so my average rate was actually more than $1.00.

**vangogh** · 07-08-2006, 03:52 PM

Do you know if your friend who made a purcahse went back and made more clicks? I would think that even just a few clicks in a short time particularly for a new site might be enough for them to be considered fraud.

Did you do anything on the site to encourage people to click on the ads or make modifications to the AdSense code? The ban could be from something other than simply people clicking on the ads. I would tend to doubt that it was one of your visitors, but you never know.

I think though that if Google bans you then they've decided you're not entitled to any of the money.

**XpIndia.Com** · 07-08-2006, 05:05 PM

Google does this to many people.
But fraud invalid clicks also do occur.

**JGiannotti** · 07-10-2006, 03:48 PM

Hypothetically - if you went on a random site that is running AdSense and you clicked their ads hundreds of times, would their AdSense account get terminated?

**vangogh** · 07-10-2006, 05:27 PM

Google is pretty secretive about why they ban certain sites from the program. I would hope that they wouldn't just terminate publishers accounts when because of the actions of others, but I suspect they do.

In your hypothetical case it might depend on whether they could connect the person doing the clicking to the site in question. I;m sure they're aware of the potential problem and have some methods to determine who is doing the clicking, but my guess is that people have lost their account over just the kind of thing you descirbe.

**stOx** · 07-10-2006, 06:14 PM

I once emailed google a few months ago asking them if i could get banned from adsense because of someone else clicking my adverts with the intention of getting me banned, They said it wasn't possible, But i don't believe them.

**sweetdesignz** · 07-11-2006, 02:08 AM

What was your click through rate (percentage) when you reached $100 ?

**amedno1** · 07-16-2006, 02:38 PM

so is a CTR of 7.53% abnormal ive had only a total of 2299 impressions

**Numbah1** · 07-18-2006, 08:37 PM

I believe Google stops counting clicks of anyone suspected of spam clicking your website but after a couple of ip addresses to the same they suspect foul. Also I think that's how they catch those autoclick scripts. Plus no one can expect google adsense to be accurate 100% of the time people make mistakes you just have to make sure you point it out to them if this is the case. And freddy just wondering did yoru friend clcik and use the ad on his own terms or did you urge him to? If this is tru then you've already violated the TOS.

Thank You

**ajit29** · 07-29-2006, 05:51 AM

I guess this is happening to a lot of people noow

**agent14** · 08-02-2006, 09:32 AM

Stay away from Adsense! Sure it is the best contextual program but I made $130 in 5 months and they banned me for invalid clicks. WTF?!