YJL

Seriously, who is going to hold cute kittens as hostages?


"Rescue" + "Kitty" is not a good combination for Google AdSense. ;)

On February 24, a few hours after I posted Google Search's Blocked Sites, I noticed ads clicks increased in abnormal rate.

• 2012-02-25T01:10:00Z - 0 clicks - Blog post posted.
• 2012-02-25T07:06:07Z - 25 clicks - The first time I noticed the situation.
• 2012-02-25T08:28:11Z - 31 clicks
• 2012-02-25T08:44:19Z - 34 clicks
• 2012-02-25T08:59:54Z - 35 clicks
• 2012-02-25T09:14:10Z - 39 clicks
• 2012-02-25T20:47:37Z - 62 clicks

I knew this could cause problem when there was only 25 clicks. Yes, only, the final is 62 clicks. I googled "Someone is clicking on my ads" right away and found out how to Keeping my account in good standing when invalid clicks shows up. I reported those invalid clicks when there was only 25 invalid clicks.

Needless to say, this might do some damage if I didn't report and I was really scared because I had never thought someone would target at my blog and AdSense has no real way to tell if that's made by account holder or not.

I believe these clicks were done with malicious intention. I have few possible theories about why the person did this:

1. Someone wants to get my AdSense account terminated.
2. Someone thinks this can make money for me because he or she extremely appreciates my works. (I extremely doubt this)
3. Someone wants to poke for AdSense's response by clicking on other's AdSense ads. Read and Check the other's website, if the site posts any updates.
4. Someone is competitor to this blog. (My blog isn't popular at all)
5. Someone hates me. (I am sure I didn't piss off someone recently)
6. Someone is sociopath, he or she just want to make people some troubles.

I believe #1, #2, #4, #5, and #6 is not the case. Since I believe it's #3, so I deliberately postponed posting this post for a week. I do not want the clicker gets the information I am about to say. Hopefully, one week is long enough.

When I was filling out that report form and prompted for any information about the clicker is helpful, such as date/time, location or IP.

I have Google Analytics and AdSense account linked, so I can read the revenue in Google Analytics reports. From there, I know the exact amount ad clicks on that blog post and the city of the clicker from, which was Horsham, Pennsylvania. I also checked all visit from that city. There was only three in January and the rest were those invalid clicks. So I was 100% sure, the clicker's location was in Horsham.

Unfortunately, I didn't have IP address since Google Analytics does not provide such information. This is a Blogger blog, I have no webserver access log. Later, I knew I could get IP from Google App Engine access log, becaues the JavaScript, stylesheet, and webfonts are hosted on App Engine.

I wrote a simple code to find out the locations from IPs on GAE, but none of them was from Horsham. Which only makes me believe more that someone was using not only the ads on my blog but also computer program to emulate clicks, because:

• There didn't seem to have requests on other resources (JavaScript, CSS, etc).
• It seemed to be two ads clicks per pageview. In that blog post, there is two ad units.
• The clicking rate is not so irregular to me, it doesn't seem to be possible to have a human sit in front of computer, hit refresh, then click on ads.

So, what have AdSense team responded with? That's one I am not going to tell, but remember there is a note on that form: AdSense team may not respond. I am not confirming nor denying anything here.

Beside the fear of being terminated, I wanted AdSense to remove those revenue from my account since it's not the money I earned. No contest from me, I would like some pocket money, but not this money.

This post is written for people who might encounter the same situation, I hope this will help people to find out clicker's information and to know where to report the invalid clicks in order to protect yourself.

I was wandering around the settings section and found out I can not only turn off sharing on Google+ but also have Google Analytics support from Blogger. I recall I had read it long time ago on Blogger Buzz.

I want it because the pageviews from View will be also tracked. I can not touch the code of View, so this option is very helpful if I want to have complete tracking statistics. I have put View link on top of navigation bar for really long time and I probably lost some data.

I wrote my own Layout template, so it won't work by default in my own layout. It is actually very simple to have it, add the following line before </body>, e.g.

  <b:include data='blog' name='google-analytics'/>
</body>

I also removed the tracking code from my main JavaScript script, so I wouldn't have duplicate data.

This is probably the second of third time I use View mode on Blogger, not only on my blog but entire Blogger blogs. I don't really like View, it looks good and nice, but I am just not a fan of it.

Maybe because it create unique style over different blogs. I like variety, diversity of styles or layouts or designs. Pretty or ugly, doesn't matter. The important thing is the style of the blog's owner. With View, it doesn't reveal of that much.

Since I hardly check the View of my blog. I just realize there are two ads units. One at right side, the other at bottom. I roughly check with FireBug Net tab, I think they are belong to me, my Google AdSense Publisher ID, I believe. (It's long ID, but looks like mine)

As you may know, I put two ad units in my template, so I don't object for the such convenience. Just I don't see any setting options I can adjust size or location for my View. So it probably also a unique setting all over the views, I guess.