HubPages incapable of Protecting Your Adsense Accounts

1. 76

   sunforgedposted 13 years ago

   A few weeks back my hubpages account was "clickbombed" an abnormal number of clicks happened in a small amount of time.
   
   
   This isnt incredibly unusual as competitors online often try such dirty tricks to beat out those who outrank them.
   
   When it happens on a professional and well managed site, one simply looks at their server stats finds the ip that has visited an abnormal/comparative number of times and then block it. I could do it in ten minutes on any of my own sites.
   
   Then one reports the problem to adsense and  can then share server/ip logs to help google to fight the fraud on their end.
   
   
   When I emailed Hubpages about the problem they informed me they were incapable of discovering or fighting the problem.
   
   
   Yesterday, it happened again. I sent off an email requesting a better response . No response occurred at all. None, Zero.
   
   YieldBuild must not be very advanced if this is not a simple operation for them and HP are proving once again that they do not have the manpower , expertise or desire to respond to problems that effect writers on their sites.
   
   It seems that one has to make public statements to ever get a response and that is quite tiring.
   
   
   So Be Aware - Hubpages is technically inadequate to protect your interests as an adsense publisher.

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      Thrillerposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Did you by any chance ask or hire someone to click your ads? Be aware these are STRICTLY prohibited practices by Google and there's no point whining on HubPages and ranting against HP for your follies.

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      1. 65

         theherbivorehippiposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         ...that's quit an accusation. Sunforged would be the last person I would assume such a stupidity level from. Have you actually read his articles or visited any of his websites? He's not some rookie who would be ignorant enough to get caught up in such behavior. Perhaps you should know what you're talking about or...who you're talking to before you insinuate such things. No point whining on HubPages? Clearly you don't have a clue.

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      2. 76

         sunforgedposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         No, I did not. That is an interesting supposition to make from the content of this thread. I have trouble believing you actually read this conversation.
         
         Thanks for the helpful speculation.

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2. 76

   sunforgedposted 13 years ago

   How long would you wait for a response?

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3. 76

   sunforgedposted 13 years ago

   Is 3 weeks long enough to wait for a response?
   
   So Be Aware - Hubpages is technically inadequate to protect your interests as an adsense publisher.
   
   Currently, the above is true - hopefully, they can prioritize and fix this pressing issue quickly

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   1. 63

      bgamallposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      So can we opt in to the ads only and will they run more if we don't use adsense here?

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      1. 89

         wildernessposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         No.  You must have an adsense account to use HPads, and there will always be at least one adsense ad on your hub.
         
         You can, however, run adsense only without the use of HPads.

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      2. 76

         Wesman Todd Shawposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         WOW!  That's a thought I'd never had, and a great question.  I've always wondered why one had to have an adsense account to be approved for the HP ad program - it seems like they shouldn't be related at all.  Also, there's lots of people who would like to earn with the HP ad program that have lost their adsense accounts for one reason or another.

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4. 89

   wildernessposted 13 years ago

   This seems strange to me.  You are far more knowledgeable than I about this kind of thing, but if you had a clickbomber, won't HP see the same thing on their 40%?  Or will it just disappear in their vastly larger pool of clicks?
   
   I would have thought that adsense could and would pick up these extra clicks from HP on your hubs regardless of the total number.  If so, how will HP protect its own account?  Can they not help you out at the same time they protect themselves?

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5. 73

   AEvansposted 13 years ago

   I am lost within the discussion, although it sounds interesting. Do these companies hire employees to click away at someone's article? I have never heard of this before. I am sure HP will have a response to this situation, but it is the first I have ever heard of clickbombing.

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6. 60

   carpesomediemposted 13 years ago

   This is not the way Google wants you to fight click bombing occuring on a content site which I believe may be the issue at hand, especially since you’re dealing with a content site as opposed to your own privately owned site.  I know this first hand as I fought the very same issue on another well-known content site about a year ago or so.
   
   The first step is to use the Allowed Sites function in your AdSense/AdWords account to stop earning money here on HP.  This is the only way to prove on Google’s end that you are not click bombing yourself and you have not hired someone to do it for you.  The burden of proof is on you and your word is not good enough for Google.
   
   From there, you want to contact Google to open up an investigation and explain that you are writing for a content site.  They will then contact HubPages and get the information they need to do an investigation.  HubPages cannot, and should not, just be handing you the IP information of anyone using the site.  This is an abuse of their privacy policy and could open them up to lawsuits if something malicious happened because you or anyone else did something improper with that information.
   
   Particularly, if you look at the HP Privacy Policy it says: “We may release collected information if required to do so by law, or if we believe that such action is appropriate to comply with state and federal laws or respond to a court order, law enforcement request or demand, subpoena, or search warrant.”
   
   If you go through the proper channels with Google, you will have no issues taking care of this problem.
   
   This is how I fought my own clickbombing issue, and these are the steps Google gave me to fight it during the investigation.  It took maybe a month to sort everything out, but in the end Google did right.

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7. 80

   Danette Wattposted 13 years ago

   how would you even know someone is 'clickbombing' your site? Where do you find that out? As someone else said, this is the first I heard this term.

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8. 60

   SunSevenposted 13 years ago

   No site is capable of protecting itself from click bombing, except adsense itself.

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9. 38

   Greg Sageposted 13 years ago

   This is not a concern for me yet, but it will be soon, and it's something I've been thinking about lately as I will undoubtedly ruffle a few feathers with new site coming out.
   
   Are there any tools in particular being used to determine BEFORE Google shuts you down that this is happening?
   
   So far, Is it the analytics that you're looking at?  I've logged into my adsese a few times, but don't remember seeing anything that indicated where clicks were coming from.
   
   What's the quickest and easiest way to check for this?  Is it just server visits to your site?  Wouldn't they likely be coming via proxies?  Does that really indicate where the CLICKS are coming from?

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   1. 75

      livewithrichardposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      It depends on the type of site you have.  As mentioned above it would be pretty difficult for a site like HP to provide this type of protection as they have a rotating script and revealing ip addresses is against their privacy policy.
      
      On your own sites there are services like clickaider that can track ppc for you.  And, if you are using wordpress, then there is a plugin that can protect you as well. You can find out more about it here:  http://planetozh.com/blog/my-projects/w … e-display/

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10. 38

    Greg Sageposted 13 years ago

    Oooh!
    
    Very nice.
    
    Thanks.
    
    Yeah... WP/thesis site.

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11. 76

    sunforgedposted 13 years ago

    I wont bother repeating what I typed originally, but carpesomediem seems to follow the HP tradition of never reading a forum thread before responding and the rest seemed to have followed. I dont believe we operate on the same levels though as I have hundreds of sites, using "allowed" sites is not an option nor should it be necessary for a simple issue.
    
    1. It is very easy to stop and combat clickbombing on any site you operate. The unusual traffic is very clear in your server stats.
    
    2. No one requested any private data from HP - simply requested they handle a problem on their end - so far they have failed to even respond by email.
    
    
    The first simple issue, is a complete lack of customer service and communication at HP for anything but the most trivial of concerns
    
    The second issue is a technical inability to protect the publishers at this site when necessary.
    
    They already provide zero assistance in plagiarism, even when its at a mass scale. Between these two factors, HubPages is starting to look like a pasture where anyone can come and steal and copy and abuse and HP has no protections or teeth in place.

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    1. 91

       thooghunposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       Carpe also mentioned tracking unusual activity and reporting it via monitoring your URL channels, this seems like a sensible suggestion to me Sunforged. 
       
       I agree that HP is not able to protect my Adsense though, but I never really expected them to.

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12. 76

    Wesman Todd Shawposted 13 years ago

    Well, Best Wishes to you, Sir - I find that no one wants to compete with my material, for good reasons.

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13. 76

    sunforgedposted 13 years ago

    Thoogun, Wow you dont expect HP to be able to protect your adsense account?
    
    I sure do.
    
    At least at the level I would be able to using my own platform. It really puts a new spin in all the "my adsense was removed" posts here. I always assumed they were fraudulent publishers but they very well could have been new users who didnt realize what was happening to them here.
    
    
    I dont need any advice on what needs to be done, Thanks for the thoughts, but most were naive suggestions anyway that combined with the heat is just irritating.
    
    It was a statement, not a question. HP does not have the technical ability to combat clickbombing on their platform. Just like they do not have the technical safeguards in place to stop automated posting to this site .. hence the continued stream of spam after 4 months of "clean ups" the front door is still open. But, I digress
    
    
    Carpe - thanks for the allowed sites info - in most cases it could have been useful, in my case it would be a headache. My response to "allowed sites" was to simply remove my adsense id from this site which means I no longer have any method of earning. HP ads isnt allowed w/o adsense association, Amazon and eBay have been disemboweled, a great many aff sites are banned and even the "backlink juice" from HP is garbage now.
    
    So its pretty important to me to get HP to simply state we will fix the problem via a quick check of our traffic logs, an ip ban or a server rule that prohibits 100's of visits from one ip in minutes.
    
    I was seeing in excess of 100-175 clicks within an hour and approximately 40% ctr rates. That would be childs play to combat on their end. But they chose not to do anything nor to even respond

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