Make Money from Blogs » Fraud

Accidental clicks on own Adsense ads – What to do

ashish — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:00:21 +0000

The Google Adsense Program has made it quite clear over the years that click fraud is something that they will work real hard to prevent. If you think you are being real smart and will make a lot of money by clicking on your ads yourself, or by asking friends and relatives to click on the ads, thing again. This is one of the fraud techniques that is a very important target for Google, and you can be sure that you will be found out and possibly your account terminated.
However, there are sudden cases when you can accidentally click on your own ads, and the first time I did this (I was clicking on something else, when Internet explorer suddenly moved the page down and I clicked on the ad), I was worried stiff. After all, I had just started writing blogs, and there is no alternative that is as good as the Adsense program. So, I started reading more about this, and came away with the feeling that an accidental click in something that the Google Adsense program allows, but deliberate sustained clicking will get you banned. You still need to make sure that you do not get stuck in the trap of clicking on the ads in your own blogs.
Here is the link from the Adsense blog that describes how an accidental click is something that is tolerated by Google.
Here is a Google post that talks about click fraud and invalid clicks.

If you want to report an accidental click, consider this line:
I accidentally clicked on my own ads. Will this cause a problem for my account?
Although publishers are not permitted to click on their own ads for any reason, we do understand that accidental clicks may occur. We therefore don’t require that you contact us every time you click on your ads. Rest assured that your account is being properly credited for all clicks and impressions we consider to be valid.

An anti-spam plugin for WordPress: Peter’s Custom anti-spam plugin

ashish — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 07:48:10 +0000

Comment spam is one of the biggest nuisances that blog writers can face. You write an article about something you like, your blog starts getting more comments, and are over-joyed to find that there are a large number of comments on your posts. You review these comments, only to find to your disgust that these comments are nothing but advertisements for different types of porn (and mind you, don’t click on these ads even if you are interested in porn , since a large number of the sites you will reach are actually sites than install spyware or other bad things on your machine), or for medicines (bogus or otherwise), and for selling other sort of things. You certainly don’t want such comments listed on your blog (they will make your blog be unattractive, or even reduce your Google PageRank if you have a large number of such comments). So what can you do besides reviewing and deleting such comments (something that can take a lot of effort):
1. You can install a plugin for WordPress called Akismet (it is shipped by default with WordPress), and activate it by getting an account with WordPress.com. Akismet does not prevent spam comments from your reaching your blog, but prevents them from getting automatically posted. These comments are put in a special spam moderation queue for reviewing, and if you don’t bother to review, they are deleted at regular intervals. I have already written a post on Akismet, you if do a search, you will be able to find the relevant psost.
2. The other way is to make it more difficult for spam bots (a lot of the comment spam is done through the use of scripts rather than humans doing it); how is this done ? This is done by something called a ‘captcha’, where before writing a comment, there is need to enter a text that is right there in front of the user. Spam scripts will typically fail at this point and the comment will not be entered. Captcha is viewed by irritation by users to some extent because it is an extra step, but it is a great help in reducing spam. It also fails for some of the visually handicapped users, but there are many captchas that allow the user to listen to the text rather than having to see it.
This post is about one of these plugins, called Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam Image Plugin for WordPress (current version 3.0.7). The plugin is located at the following page (Plugin page for WordPress.org) or at the site directly (link). You need to download the plugin, install it in the plugins directory of your WordPress installation, then activate it from the plugins page of your WordPress Admin page.
Features as per the site:
- Toggle whether registered users need to enter the word
- Random font display
- No cookies required
- No JavaScript required
- Auto-generated audio for visually impaired users
- Easy-to-read
- No mapping of words from the code — words are used once or removed after 24 hours
- Reminder of what was entered if you get the word wrong
- Selective blocking of trackbacks, pingbacks
- Easy to translate
Cons:
- Purposely no obscuring techniques so that the anti-spam word is easy to read
- The more people who use this plugin, the more motivation for spambots to target it
If you want to see an installation of this plugin, refer to the following site (link). So, if you are worried by spam comments on your WordPress Blog, then give this plugin a Swirl along with the Akismet plugin.

Prevent others from causing you damage (by copying your Adsense and posting it in an appropriate location)

ashish — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 06:39:40 +0000

When you have placed Adsense code in your Blog, you get Ads. That must be pretty clear to anyone who has used Adsense functionality to get Ads from Google. However, not too many are concerned about or realize that when your Blog is viewed by anybody, they can simply do a view Source in their Browser and pick up your Adsense code. Should you be worried if people copy your Adsense code ? After all, if they for any reason use the same code in their own sites, the money from these Ads comes to your account; so what’s the harm ?
Well, you would not like to think that anybody could do you harm, but it is possible to cause harm to you this way. Suppose your Blog starts becoming more popular, and an increasing number of people start visiting your blog. That would be good for you, right ? But for somebody who is trying to create a blog on the same subject, or for somebody whose people are switching to your blog, it would make sense to cause trouble to you. And what better way that trying to use Google’s strict Program Policies against you.
What can they do ? They can copy the same blog onto another site, and then click the ads repeatedly, or put this on another site that is strictly prohibited by Google from subscribing to the Adsense program. When Google will find this, they are liable to take action against your account. Far-fetched ? Yes ! But not if your site is becoming popular.
How do you prevent such a thing from happening ? You should refer to Google’s help page on this subject (link). Exact steps are as follows:
- Log in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense.
- Click the AdSense Setup tab.
- From the links below the tab, choose Allowed Sites.
- Select the option to Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account.
- The resulting page will display the URLs currently included in the Allowed Sites list for your account. – - If this is the first time you’ve used the list, the text box will be empty.
- In the box, enter sites or URLs that you’d like to allow to display your AdSense ad code.
- Click Save Changes to add these sites to your Allowed Sites list.

Sites or URLs that are not on the Allowed Sites list will not report clicks or impressions and you will not receive earnings from them, so please be sure to keep your list up to date. So, the ad will appear, but they will not report any earnings, and hence you are safe.

This may take some initial effort, but it is better to be safe than sorry; you should not have to wonder later as to why Google suddenly banished you from the Adsense program.