Today I will write about a topic that has been brought to my attention in an interesting way.As you well know, I created the niche website hub where I openly asked all readers to suggest topics I should write about.This page has been active for over 9 months and contains over 110 comments.No one ever suggested writing "Click bombing".

Then I came across a post on a different blog and somehow my name appeared in the comments, oh snap!I found it a bit amusing that one of the readers commented that he was a bit upset and was calling me because I had never written on the topic of "Click bombing".They were somehow implying that I was avoiding the topic.

Well, all they had to do was ask and I'd be more than happy to write about it!

That offer is still valid.If you have a topic you want to write about, just submit it to the niche website hub and it will be added to the list already there.

Anyway, that individual never asked me, but I'm going to write about it because I had other readers expressing interest in the topic on the Niche Pursuits Facebook page.

WHAT IS CLICK BOMBING?

So, first of all, what is Click bombing?Essentially, click bombing is when your adsense ads get a click MUCH more than normal. For example, if an attacker goes to your website and clicks on one of your adsense ads 100 times, it would be a click bombardment.  

This attacker is attempting to send tons of invalid clicks in hopes of banning your Google Adsense account.This is a worst-case scenario.

The reality is that Google is very serious about invalid click activity.By far the most common occurrence is when users click on their ads multiple times or ask others to click on them.Google is smart.They manage to detect it quite easily, and there is no quicker way to close the account.So, don't click bombs yourself!NEVER click on your ads.

Overall, I personally never had any "click bombs" on my account.I have been using Google Adsense for a long time and have not encountered the problem.However, this does not mean that it does not occur.

Accounts are closed by Google and a bombardment of clicks occurs.As I said, it's never happened to me and I don't know anyone personally that ever happened to, so I suppose it's pretty rare among the millions of Google Adsense users.If you want more information from Google on the topic Invalid clicks, I suggest you read here.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU SUSPECT A BOMBING

However, if you suspect that your ads are being clicked a very unusual number of times, you should report them to Google immediately.Google has set up a contact form for invalid clicks right here.This will essentially allow you to reveal what you think is going on with your account and let them know that you're not familiar with click generation.

Ideally, you would be able to prevent invalid clicks on your account from ever occurring.Remember that most invalid clicks on Google Adsense ads are created by people who click on their ads or who somehow try to play the system.So, as simple as it may seem – this is the number one preventive measure – don't try to artificially increase your revenue on Google Adsense.

DETECTION OF INVALID CLICKS AND TROUBLESHOOTING

HOW TO DETECT IF SOMEONE CLICKS TO BOMBARD YOUR ACCOUNT

If you suspect that someone is clicking to bombard your account, you can try to verify by looking at Google Analytics and other web logs from your server.You can use Google Analytics to see where visitors are coming from and what kind of activity they are doing on your site.

Also, your web logs on your server can help you see if 1 IP address is sending all the traffic or is spending an unusual amount of time on your site.Overall, use your analytics or any other monitoring tool to find out if you're getting unusual traffic.

Of course, your first sign will likely be a huge spike in clicks in your Google Adsense account.So, if you notice something unusual in your Adsense account, it might be worth digging into.

However, there are a couple of tools available to prevent an attacker from repeatedly clicking on your ads.

HOW TO LIMIT WHO SEES ADS

Now, there are actually a few ways you can prevent people from seeing your ads.For example, the Who Sees Ads plugin will only allow you to show ads to visitors from search engines or other criteria you've set.If only search engine visitors see ads, you're much more likely to get valid clicks because it's high-quality traffic.

I've never used this particular plugin, so I can't say much about its effectiveness.However, it looks like it hasn't been updated in a couple of years, so there may be better options out there.

But here is an option for hard code that only shows ads to search engine visitors here.

Finally, there are ways to program your site to prevent multiple clicks from the same IP address.If you search around you can find both the code to implement it yourself and the products that you can simply install.I didn't use any of the options, so I can't give a reliable recommendation on any of these.

BOTTOM LINE – BE CAREFUL!

Overall, people are banned from their Adsense accounts.I think it's very rare for your account to get banned unless you're producing invalid activity or otherwise manipulating your revenue.

However, it can happen to legitimate Adsense editors as it did with Jef Ponskanzer as discussed on SErountable.com.But even then Jef was able to appeal the fact that his account was banned (only after 3 attempts).In fact, he wrote a post about it here… which is very interesting.It turns out that the amount of clicks he was getting increased by a factor of 8, while his page views remained unchanged.

Either way, you should be very careful about how you interact with Google Adsense, and hopefully, the post above has provided you with useful methods for both detecting and avoiding the bombardment of clicks in the future.

What are your thoughts on the subject?Have you ever been bombarded with clicks or detected other invalid activity on your account?Or if you have other ideas to prevent invalid activity, we'd love to hear about them.