How to protect your Google Adsense account from ‘Accidental Clicks’
May 31, 2006
Many site owners get their adsense accounts terminated due to ‘invalid clicks’ arising from accidental clicks by the site owners.
Whereas it’s much easier for Google to detect invalid clicks from the Site Owner’s geographic location, its very difficult and sometimes almost impossible to assign blame when the fraudulent clicks emanate from malicious competitors or individuals with political or personal vendettas wishing to harm the site owners revenues from adsense.
Invalid clicks arising from your own accidental clicks or those of your family members or office workers can be prevented very easily. Download this PDF file(zipped) for detailed information.
Malicious and other fraudulent clicks are much more difficult to prevent, but it’s recommended that you arm yourself with tools with which to defend yourself should Google suspend your account.
1. Be on the lookout for fraud - Log into you Google account as frequently as you can(I check mine at least 3 times a day) and try to match your day to day click patterns with your web server access logs. A sudden spike in clicks should warrant a thorough examination of you server log traffic patterns. Report any anomalies to Google promptly and if you can track the offending IP address ban it in your .htaccess file. I have banned a whole range of ip’s before and in one instance a whole country. Either way do what you have to do to protect your account.
2. Be on the lookout for third party web-based solutions. Many organizations in collaboration with the major advertising networks are working on tools which will enable advertisers and publishers to detect and prevent click frauds more vigorously.
The click fraud issue will never be totally resolved in the near future unless the current advertising model (Cost Per Click) is maintained and not overhauled radically. Just like it is in the case of spammers vs users and site owners vs hackers, online advertisers and fraudulent thieves are locked into an endless race to outsmart each other.
Related Articles
- A Hard Look at PPC, Click Fraud and the Alternatives (By: Bill Platt)
- PPC Management on the New Big Three (By: Tyler Huston)
- 10 Worst AdWords Campaign Management Mistakes (By: Tyler Huston)
- Other PPC Articles
How to master CSS [Cascading Style Sheets]
May 30, 2006
Still creating websites using tables?
Who else wants to make more money, save more time and create websites with less headaches?
Whether you are a newbie or an accomplished webmaster/developer, this ebook is tailored for any person looking to learn how to use CSS for building better and more flexible websites. It covers nearly everything you need to know to learn Cascading Style Sheets.
Here is what CSS can do for your website:
1. No more time wasting by creating layouts using tables?
2. Create websites that automatically gain better search engine results?
3. Gain total control of every aspect of your website by placing objects pixel perfect at places you want to have them? And do that in seconds?
4. CSS is a means of separating the content of an html document from the style and layout of that document, resulting in more lightweight and less “clogged” pages.
5. Re-design of your website becomes a breeze.
- OTHER CSS RESOURCES
New MSN tool: detecting online commercial intention
May 30, 2006
The new tool lets you check URLs and search terms for “commercial intentions”. Enter a search term or URL and get their Commercial Intention and the confidence score.
This tool can be useful for keyword research because non-commercial keywords usually don’t lead to results. The tool only works with MS Internet Explorer.
According to MSN, you input a search term or URL and get it’s Commercial Intention and the confidence score. For example, if users are searching for query: LCD monitor, it is very likely that they want to purchase a LCD monitor, therefore the commercial intention is strong with confidence = 0.74. For Web pages, MSN defines two levels of commercial intention: informational and transactional.
What Google knows about your domain name
May 30, 2006
There’s a lot of speculation about the information that Google has about domain names. Last year, Google became a domain name registrar but they haven’t offered domain registration services in the meantime.
There must be another reason why Google decided to become a registrar. What does Google know about your domain name and what do they not know?
