Invalid traffic and digital ad fraud have become a huge problem for online publishers. Not only is it costing them money, but it’s also putting their AdSense accounts at risk of being banned. As stated by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), over 50 billion dollars will be wasted on digital ad fraud. It’s high time now for publishers to be ever focused on combating Invalid traffic. In this post, we’ll share some tips on how to fight invalid traffic and keep your publisher account in good standing. Stay tuned!

Click Bombing: The most common type of IVT

Invalid Traffic (IVT) has been impacting publishers for over a decade now. When you google IVT, the examples that pop up are:

• Malicious bots/botnets & fraudulent app services selling inventory automatically
• Refreshing the ad units multiple times hinders the user’s chance to engage with the ad.

In almost 90% of cases, AdSense suspensions and bans occur due to AdSense Clickbombing.

What is Click Bombing?

Click bombing or Click Fraud is what happens when the AdSense ads on your website get an abnormally large number of clicks. Let’s say: if a user visits a page on your site and clicks on an ad over 50 times. BOOM! You get an alert from google for IVT activity. There is no denying that Google is very serious about invalid click activity, and the most common cause of this is when users click their own ads repeatedly or ask others to do so on their behalf. The first step to fixing any problem with your Google Adsense account is to spot any kind of risky or spammy activity.

How to detect IVT and Click Bombing?

By monitoring your Google Analytics & server weblogs, you can determine whether someone is intentionally sending invalid clicks to your website.

• Audit where the visitors are coming from (data centers, etc) & user activity on your website.
• Use Invalid Traffic Solution tools like Traffic Cop to detect and classify normal, suspicious, and invalid traffic and stop it for good.
• A big spike in ad clicks is a dead giveaway for this type of invalid activity. Investigate further in this case.

In order to avoid AdSense account suspensions in the future, you can immediately report invalid clicks to AdSense, as well as investigate and stop invalid traffic coming to your site using solutions to fight IVT.

How to report IVT to AdSense?

The most important action that a publisher needs to take for IVT is to report invalid clicks to the Google support team. You might feel that telling Google about this is riskier due to the possibility of getting a permanent AdSense ban. However, Google prefers that you inform them about any unintentional ad fraud activity your site might be experiencing. Note down your IP and report the AdSense IVT activity to Google by filling the Invalid Clicks Contact Form. In most cases, Google won’t reply back but simply remove the ad revenue that was generated through click bombing and counts it in the ‘invalid clicks’ activity.

How to stop Invalid Traffic in AdSense for good?

Use tools that help detect and mitigate Invalid Traffic

With tools like Traffic Cop that detects and stops Invalid Traffic, you are letting Google know that you’re taking ad fraud prevention matters seriously and protecting your AdSense account against IVT. Tools like these are mainly used by large publishers who’ve taken action to keep AdSense bans at bay. So whenever a suspicious user visits your page, they will have to get verified first through CAPTCHA and browser integrity checks.

Never click on your own Ads

Google doesn’t ignore unusual click rates caused by publishers themselves while filtering out ad clicks. Some publishers click on their own ads to inflate their AdSense revenue. This only results in their AdSense getting disabled since Google prioritizes advertiser protection first and foremost in these cases.

Stop buying Traffic

It is also important to ensure that your website receives only legitimate and quality traffic; so that your AdSense account is safe from IVT & click bombing. Never buy cheap traffic (pop traffic, exchange traffic; etc) for the sake of views as these bots will only cause AdSense account suspensions. Never partner with untrusted/low-quality parties. It has been reported that many publishers have experienced invalid traffic when partnering with low-quality ad networks; search engines, or directory sites while trying to increase their ad revenue.

Restricting Traffic

You can restrict traffic and choose to block users from your site through your .htaccess file. This will work if you’re technically savvy and your site’s not WordPress and is running on an Apache server. You can follow this guide for more details on .htaccess.

Check & Report on the AdSense Help Forum

You can read about others’ experiences or ask some of the Top Contributors on the AdSense forum for help with the problems you’re facing.

Bottom Line

With a projected $500 billion to be spent on programmatic advertising in the near future, invalid traffic is growing at the same rate. In the same way that every traffic source needs continuous re-evaluation, publishers need to be aware of how to identify and remove invalid traffic and click fraud for good. In order to combat ad fraud, we all have to take on the responsibility. This means understanding what the problem is, how your site can impacted, getting certified for IVT filtration, and using the best ad fraud solutions to never face AdSense suspensions ever again. Leave a comment below if you’ve got more tips or find this post helpful.