Adding CTR

Adsense Click Fraud

Adsense click fraud is very real and very bad! Not only does it harm the advertiser, but it can harm you. Did you know that you could have someone clicking your ads maliciously? Read more about this so you can arm yourself with knowledge.

Is Someone Defrauding Your AdSense Account?

There are lots of different strategies that you can use to skyrocket your AdSense income. Repeatedly clicking on your ads isn't one of them. That's the sort of thing that Google take a pretty strong line on - and rightly so. It's just plain dumb and Google have a strong punishment for it: they can ban you for life.

That punishment's not unreasonable when someone's deliberately trying to con Google's advertisers. But it does leave a golden opportunity for anyone who wants to sabotage someone else's income. If you're making a lot of money using AdSense - and you've also made an enemy or two - there's nothing to stop someone coming to your site, clicking your ads a couple of dozen times and wiping out your income.

Sound scary? It should. Once you get banned, that's it. It's very difficult to persuade Google to let you back in.

But you should also be looking to making sure that no one is trying to deliberately land you in trouble. If you see in your logs that your site received a stream of clicks in a short time - and from the same IP address - don't wait for Google to get in touch. (Their letter won't be pleasant). Drop them a line right away, telling them that you've spotted some suspicious clicks on your site and ask them to investigate. You shouldn't be surprised if they write back and tell you that those clicks won't be counted towards your revenues but at least you'll still have your account and you'll still be earning.

It's pretty rare for someone to go out of their way to cause problems for AdSense users. Most of the people you meet on AdSense forums and other places online are good, decent folk who only want to help. But it is worth remembering that your site is vulnerable. Just as you install anti-virus software to protect your computer so you should take action to protect your AdSense revenue. Track your stats closely and move first if you spot something suspicious.

Adding CTR

Once you know you are going to put adsense on your website you’re going to have to consider where to put it. If this is new site it’s easier, if it’s an existing site it’s more difficult. While there are some people who will be able to do it, in most cases I’d say if you just slap the adsense code in, you’ll end up with a frankensite monster (props to Tedster of WMW for the buzzword). While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. Now I’ve done really well by placing it on the right, but you should know why you’re doing it that way before hand, and be prepared to change it if it doesn’t work out.

Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

* 336×280 large rectangle
* 300×250 inline rectangle
* 160×600 wide skyscraper

From the sites that I run, I do really well with the 336 rectangle and 160 skyscraper. My next best performing ad size is the 728 leaderboard, I don’t really use the 300 inline rectangle too often. So really it depends on how well you integrate these into your site. Placement can have a dramatic effect on performance. TIP: When working on a new site or new layout you may want to give each location it’s own channel for a little while until you understand the users behavior.

Another ‘trick’ that can increase your CTR is by blending your adsense into your body copy. For example if your body copy is black, remove the adsense border and make the title, text, and URL black.TIP: Try changing all of your page hyperlinks to a high contrast color (like dark red or a bold blue) then change the adsense title to the same color.