I can’t tell you how many times I have seen a blogger’s AdSense account out of the blue get suspended or out right-banned. It’s a frustrating situation for those bloggers who are following all the rules, which is not only possible – it’s quite common. To avoid finding yourself in this position, here are a couple of things you need to be doing. If you are using AdSense, you need to be pro-active to avoid getting suspended or banned.
Get to know your AdSense numbers.
Most bloggers don’t pay attention to their numbers. The only factor they pay attention to is how much money they have earned. Paying attention to only the money you have made is a colossal mistake! You need to be paying attention to the underlying numbers as well. Not only are they essential to help you understand your traffic to help you make more money. They are also crucial in helping you keep your AdSense account out of danger from either suspension or termination.
Invalid Traffic
The first number you need to be looking at to tell if your AdSense account is in danger is your invalid traffic. “Invalid traffic includes any clicks or impressions that may inflate an advertiser’s costs or earnings.” Invalid traffic covers fraudulent traffic as well as accidental clicks.” Every month you need to be keeping an eye on how much Invalid Traffic your site generates. If you are creating a large number of invalid traffic compared to your valid traffic earnings. Your AdSense account may be in danger of either getting banned or suspended.
Now to be clear, every site generates invalid traffic. There is always going to be some invalid traffic, no matter what you do — covering people who are inadvertently clicking ads to random bots crawling your sites. You’re going to get some. However, if you earned $100 in a month and a large portion of that is from invalid traffic. That is a problem! You’re going to want to address it before it’s too late.
I would love to tell you what percentage of invalid traffic to valid traffic you should be comfortable having. However, Google does not release such numbers. They feel that it would be giving those looking to cheat the system guidance on how to do so. The only thing you can do is keep a close eye on it. A large number of invalid traffic compared to your valid traffic is not a good thing. You should disable your account temporarily. Until you can find out what the problem is and where your invalid traffic is originating.
Invalid traffic is located underpayments in your Google AdSense account and calculated on a per month basis.
AdSense CTR (Click Through Rate)
The next thing bloggers and website owners should be paying close attention to is their CTR. CTR stands for click-through rate. If an ad is shown 100 times on your site and only one person clicks on the advertisement. Your CTR would be one percent. It would be best if you protect yourself from having a high CTR rate.
Ads based on my research in general across the broad spectrum have a 2 to 3 CTR rate on average. So your website CTR should be following along those same lines. For example, the image below is the CTR rate for the last three months for Bloggers Traffic Community.
As you can see, the last three months Bloggers Traffic Community CTR is 1.02%, which is down .57 percent from the previous first three months.
Furthermore, you can view a more detailed report by clicking on Reports on the left side Panel when logged into AdSense. You can look at CTR for your ad units, by country, URL, and so much more. Knowing these stats helps you immensely to help you understand if Is your Adsense account in danger.
How to Access Your Detailed CTR Stats
To see your lifetime CTR for individual sites or sites.
1.Log into your AdSense Account
2.Select Reports from the side panel
3.Select the date range in the upper right panel
4.Select sites under All Reports in the left panel
5. Click on the Tab Clicks
If you wanted a complete breakdown by the country, you would follow the same steps but instead of selecting sites in step two. You would alternatively select countries.
There a wealth of information contained your AdSense account analytics that can help you in other ways besides keeping track of your CTR. Nothing is, however, more important than guarding against abnormally high CTR. High CTR is a major red flag that something is amiss with your site. It can and will lead to your site getting banned.
How does abnormally High CTR happen?
High CTR can happen for a lot of reasons, but here is a brief rundown.
1. The website owner is openly (against AdSense Policy) and is actively asking for others to click the ads on their site.
2. The website owner is trying to drive traffic to their website by using services that claim to be AdSense safe. (Hint: None of them are)
3. Malicious behavior from coming from outsides forces. Some bots and scripts target AdSense accounts.
Three is most scary for AdSense users because it’s out of your control. However, if you keep track of these two numbers, you should be able to stop it and catch it before you get banned. Even if that means Temporarily shutting down your AdSense account until you can sort the problem out.
AdSense in Danger Conclusion
While nobody knows all the ways on how to keep from getting your AdSense account banned, only Google knows that, and they are not sharing. However, having High Invalid Traffic and High CTR rate are undoubtedly the most common ways that your AdSense account is in danger of getting banned. Knowing and keeping track of these numbers will significantly reduce the chance of this happening.
Any questions, please come and join us in the community. We have lots of people who know this stuff backward and forwards. They will help you understand as well.
Thanks for reading and happy blogging
Related
Set up your Youtube videos for success
So you want to be a successful YouTuber? Have your very own Youtube channel with a large following? Today we are going to talk about
Beginning of the End for the Amazon Affiliate program?
Pinterest Twitter Just like many other bloggers, I use the Amazon Affiliate program as one of my income streams for my blog. I just received
Top Five Blogging Mistakes
Pinterest Twitter Facebook Reddit Linkedin So you want to be a blogger? Well, let me give you a break from all those rose colored articles
Set up your Youtube videos for success
So you want to be a successful YouTuber? Have your very own Youtube channel with a large following? Today we are going to talk about
Beginning of the End for the Amazon Affiliate program?
Pinterest Twitter Just like many other bloggers, I use the Amazon Affiliate program as one of my income streams for my blog. I just received
Top Five Blogging Mistakes
Pinterest Twitter Facebook Reddit Linkedin So you want to be a blogger? Well, let me give you a break from all those rose colored articles
What does it take to be a successful blogger?
What does it take to be a successful blogger? Pinterest Twitter Facebook Reddit Linkedin What does it take to be a successful blogger? I read
Great read! I am a new blogger and new to adsense. So glad I read this!!
I am not very familiar with how Adsense works, so this was quite useful information.
Thank you.
Nice write up. Quite an eye opener.
This is a very helpful post with regard to Google Adsense. I hope every google adsense user, will learn some important tips from this post. Thanks for sharing.
Being an Adsense user I will definitely be more aware of this going forward, great information!
Brilliant tips, I have Adsense but never understood how the numbers work, but when they deducted $50+ from my account one month, I felt I needed to learn more to stop this from happening.
I can’t even get my ads.txt to work for it
Excellent advice! Definitely helpful for adsense user and all other bloggers CTR is important not just to Adsense but as well as the status of engagement rate of your site and others!
This is really helpful post. I am planning to use Adsense and these tips will help a lot.
I wish I know these before my account was banned. Glad at least now I am aware of what it is exactly. Thanks for this post!!
Great read. If i had known this earlier before my 8 months account was banned maybe i would still be using it. Adsense is one of the best in monetising any website but lots of strict rules if not properly informed you get banned.
I never knew there is such a thing as invalid traffic! There is so much to learn! Thanks for sharing this.
someone just invites me on FB Messanger call “c4c” and I notice they make some exchange click on an ad. I’m glad to find your article regarding how Adsense works. Anyway, thanks for the great article.
I never knew there is such a thing as invalid traffic! There is so much to learn! Thanks for sharing this.
Have most traffic from google. Analytics shows abnormal huge CTR, but almost nothing in Adsense – very confused.
Thank you for this, helped me understand AdSense a little bit better!
really useful
thanks
Wow, just surprise to know that there is invalid traffic. One needs to be very careful while operating adsense
Very interesting article, and I tend to agree with the majority of what you say. One thing I would add, somewhat of a caveat regarding the CTR percentage oh, it has been my direct experience that the average/acceptable range for CTR is largely dependent upon your niche / vertical and of course ad placement and optimization.
For example, most of the sites I have operated have performed similarly to how you described, roughly 2% CTR or slightly below. However, in one particular vertical (while following all best practices and being completely compliant with AdSense TOS) a couple sites I operated consistently had a CTR between 8.5% – 10% for the entire 3 years I operated them (later sold them off) and at no point did it ever appear to raise any flags or form of suspicion (nor should it have, as it was compliant)…
I guess my main point is that there are no hard-and-fast rules or even loose ballpark ranges of what a ctr should be, it is a metric fairly unique to each individual site, the main thing to watch for on that metric is any major deviation from your sites historical average performance.
If you normally average roughly 8% give or take a percentage point each month and somebody else only averages 1%, you don’t necessarily have a problem. However, if you have been averaging around a 1% CTR for the last year and this month you jumped up to 12% CTR oh, you may have a problem.
someone just invites me on FB Messanger call “c4c” and I notice they make some exchange click on an ad. I’m glad to find your article regarding how Adsense works. Anyway, thanks for the great article.
Have most traffic from google. Analytics shows abnormal huge CTR, but almost nothing in Adsense – very confused.
I never knew there is such a thing as invalid traffic! There is so much to learn! Thanks for sharing this.