Tips to Prevent Invalid Click Activity

This post was most recently updated on September 14th, 2021

“Invalid Click Activity” sounds light and simple. But this is one of the things most publishers would not want to have on their site. One can get banned for this reason without even being aware of it.

Google uses both human effort and automated systems to recognize invalid action. Thus, constant website traffic monitoring and inspection of ad implementation are essential to keep the website free from click fraud.

Here are some suggested practices to steer clear of invalid click activity:

• Understand your traffic and site visitors by separating your traffic reports into significant sections/channels.
• Be extremely cautious when acquiring any activity, and review the traffic provider checklist to help manage your exchanges with any activity supplier you’re considering. This will give you a rundown of proposed things to ask when you begin investigating how you and a traffic provider can cooperate. This will also help you see precisely the sort of activity you’ll be accepted before buying the traffic, and you can abstain from collaborating with untrusted/ low-quality parties.
• Always check your implementation to make sure there are no programming errors and it fits in with Google’s policies. Encouraging accidental clicks is prohibited in Ad Exchange. So if your ads are properly implemented, your site will be secured against inconvenience caused by accidental clicks.
• Utilize the authorized sites feature to prevent unauthorized use of your ad code.
• Never click on your own ads, this is also prohibited in Ad Exchange. Use the Google Publisher Toolbar to check on your ads.

Related Read: What is the Google Publisher Toolbar?

Source: Google Adsense – Ad Traffic Quality

Publishers’ responsibility

Publishers are responsible for monitoring the source of their website’s traffic. In most cases, a heinous activity source that creates invalid clicks on your ads may prompt your record being disabled. Suspicious traffic may violate various AdSense program policies under “traffic sources” such as:

• Usage of automated bots which imitate user behavior
• Purchase of unrelated traffic from unknown networks
• Participating in paid-to-click programs
• Receiving traffic from unwanted email or software applications.

A few publishers have requested data about particular movement sources that are known to send invalid activity. Unfortunately, Google does not provide information on this to maintain the effectiveness of its detection systems. It is important that publishers understand their traffic to effectively protect their account from invalid activity. Consider getting a web analytics tool to track website activity.

Publishers may report any suspicious activity which they’ve detected on their site via the Invalid Clicks Contact Form.

Update (2019)

Although the information mentioned above is a great place to start when it comes to protecting your publisher business from ad fraud and invalid traffic, times have changed. These days it’s not enough to take all the measures mentioned above. You need sophisticated technology that can prevent invalid traffic from serving to your ads in real-time.

MonetizeMore’s Traffic Cop can do just that! Through machine learning, fingerprinting algorithms, pre-bid analysis and more we can effectively detect and prevent invalid traffic from serving to your ads. Start protecting your ad inventory, ad network accounts, and business by signing up to Traffic Cop today!

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Related Reads:

• New Google Double Verify Ads to Avoid Invalid Clicks
• How to Improve your Site’s Traffic Quality
• How to Use the Adsense Referrers Report for Publishers
• Avoiding Invalid AdSense Activity
• What is the Google Publisher Toolbar?