Invalid traffic: What is it and how to stop 

Publishers certainly have some nightmares, and one of them is called invalid traffic. But what is it and which actions can we take to reduce it? Keep reading our today’s article that these two questions will be answered. 

You will find in this article

• What is invalid traffic 
• How can a publisher stop invalid traffic 

Sometimes a publisher can get banned for these two little words, “invalid traffic”, without even being aware of why this is happening, that is why it is so important to learn as much information as possible about this theme, especially if you are a publisher. 

• What is invalid traffic? 

According to Google Adsense, “Invalid traffic includes any clicks or impressions that may artificially inflate an advertiser’s costs or a publisher’s earnings.” In other words, these clicks have no value because they come from bot activity on a website, instead of real traffic, that is generated by real human beings.

There are two kinds of invalid traffic: 

• Sophisticated Invalid Traffic: It is a more “worldly” kind of fraud, that requires advanced analytics.

• General Invalid Traffic: This one is referred to as non malicious traffic, it is a non human kind, like bots, spiders, engine crawlers. Usually, the traffic is fake but the browsers are real. 

• How to stop invalid traffic? 

Publishers are responsible for the traffic their sites have, they must track. Here are some suggestions of how can you reduce it: 

• Get to know your traffic and users: Analytics can help you with that, it is possible to track location, devices, channels and much more about the users. 
• Never click on your own ads: It is a rule, publishers are forbidden from clicking on their own ads, Google Publisher says that it is no good. 
• Blocking bot activity: There are some services on the market that can identify non human traffic and can also block it. 
• Don’t Purchase Traffic: This is a golden tip, because purchase traffic will never be good to your image, you better invest on good content and making a wonderful user experience.
• Stay away from wrong partners: Don’t you even think about making partnerships with low-quality ad networks, because they will accumulate your invalid traffic. 
• Utilize the authorized sites feature: this way you will prevent unauthorized use of your ad code.

We can finish this article with one last tip: everytime you see any kind of suspicious traffic, pay attention to it, because many publishers get banned because Google is extremely careful on any kind of invalid activity. Once they notice it, they will notify the publisher that this is a kind of violation. 

Here you can find some tips from google to help you prevent invalid traffic on your ads.

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