How to deal with AdSense Click Bombing

Click bombing is one of the biggest nightmares for many AdSense publishers. To maintain the high quality of their AdSense network, Google monitors all click activities very closely and take strict action against the publishers who click on their own Ads or encourage others to click. Since Google pays per click, many new publishers are tempted to click on the Ads themselves to see few extra dollars in their AdSense account. But Google has very sophisticated systems to track such clicks and if you are caught, your AdSense account will be disabled.

If you look at the popular webmaster forums and Google's official forum for AdSense, numerous people have reported that they lost their AdSense for invalid activity like repeated clicks on their AdSense Ads. Most of them claim that they never clicked on their Ads but it was someone else doing it intentionally doing it with the intention of getting their AdSense disabled (which is called "click bombing", if that term sounds Greek to you).

How to deal with Click Bombing on AdSense account

The best option is to avoid chances of click bombing, but you can't completely avoid it. Here are some AdSense tips to deal with click bombing:

Always keep an eye on your AdSense reports and monitor the clicks and CTR. If you see any unusual activity like too many clicks in a short period of time, pay close attention to it. Are they keep increasing? Is it happening in short intervals?

If the number of clicks are unusually high and if it continues, it indicates someone is repeatedly clicking on your Ads and most probably his intention is to get your AdSense disabled. It could be one of your competitors or someone could be doing it for no reason.

There are few things you can do to protect your AdSense:

Option 1. Remove AdSense Ads temporarily from your account so that there will be no Ads for them to click on.

Option 2: Keep the Ads but login to your AdSense account and remove your site from the list of authorized sites to show Ads.

I suggest you use the second option for many reasons. In case of option 1, when you remove the Ads, the person will know you have removed the Ads. He would stop the work but would come back and repeat it when you put the Ads back. In case of Option 2, he will never know you have unauthorized Ads in the site since he will continue to see the Ads as usual. He will keep clicking but the clicks are not counted by Google and so your site is safe from getting disabled. The click bombers will eventually get tired and without seeing any results, they would stop trying (hopefully).

What to do if invalid activity is confirmed

As I mentioned above, the first step is, un-authorize your site in AdSense so that your clicks will not be counted. Next step is, to gather all possible information about the invalid activity since Google will ask you for that information.

1. Record the date and time of the invalid activity.

2. Analyze your Google Analytics (or other stats) and look for suspicious traffic. Record the IP address of suspicious visits to various pages which recorded invalid clicks. (If you have created url channels and custom channels, you will be able to figure out which pages received click bombing)

3. See if you can figure out from where the suspicious request came from. I have seen cases some bloggers have posted a public thread in a forum saying "Site X copied my content and not responding to me when I asked them to remove the content. Can you all go and click on his AdSense Ads so that it will get disabled?". Check out if you can trace the origin of the clicks to any such sources.

Once you gather all such information, prepare to report the activity to Google.

How to report click bombing to Google

If you have found that there were lot of invalid clicks, it is a good idea to report it to Google so that Google will know that you are not the culprit. But before you go to Google, make sure you are following all the policies and guidelines from Google. You may not want Google to find that you are violating some of the AdSense policies. When you report invalid activity to Google, there is a chance that Google AdSense team will review your site and check how cause of invalid activity. To be on the safer side, make sure your site comply with all AdSense policies and quality guidelines.

Once you are ready to report click bombing or invalid activity to Google, go to Invalid Clicks Contact Form and provide all the information.