Getting traffic from paid source

October 14, 2005

Hello all,

This is happening to one of my sites today. Checking my morning logs I have found that I’m getting traffic from what looks like a paid source (which by the way, I didn’t buy). Look like somebody decided to buy that traffic for me? … the only thing I can think of is that ’somebody’ want me out of AS or so which is the only source of income for that small site, but why? I don’t know.

The traffic comming is not much but I’m affraid that if GG looks at the referrals I may get suspended, I do not see any change on clicks so far just impressions, but I’m guessing that whoever is sending the trafic expects to hit me with clicks also.

I already send a couple of emails to the contacts that I could find using whois ans ip reversals for the traffic source (they use a php redirect looks like) but the domain is hidden under a protection service so I don’t know if I’ll get a response back.

I guess my question would be if GG is aware of the referrals for my traffic, I know they know the IPs and geolocation but not sure of referrals because I think they get my site as the referral, am I right? should I remove my Ads to be safe?

Thanks,
CS.

Author: caspita

Yes I would remove them. How are you ever going to be able to prove that you didn’t pay for them?

Hi blairsp,

Thanks for your advice.

Well yes, I was asking that my self also, the thing is thay I don’t know how long this is going to take, 1 day? 1 week? 1 month? … and I haven’t get reply from the emails that I have sent so far :-(.

This is nuts! … having to remove my Ads just because I’m getting hits

How is this possible that people can just buy traffic and send it whereever they want to and the provider does not care?

Tooo bad

Yes, Google can see the original referrer page. This was discussed here and eventually demonstrated several months ago.

If it’s a reputable source, then I wouldn’t worry about it. Overture for example will flesh out its paid listings with free listings.

If it appears to be a dodgy source of traffic, then you can remove the AdSense code from the landing page, not show AdSense to those visitors by using PHP, or ban that traffic altogether via the .htaccess file.

Hi jomaxx,

Yes, that is what I just did, quick solution, removed Ads from just the tageted page by now. I’ll keep watching and if it takes so long I’ll implement some php filter based on referral or so.

[edited to add]

I just don’t want to ban the whole traffic as it looks like comming thru some kind of redirect and who knows, some people may bookmark or user my internal links to go into different pages whit Ads, I think at that point I’ll be safe beacause my own site would be the refferal.

[end of edition]

Thanks.

CS, are you sure someone didn’t link that page on something like a paid membership site or private members forum? (or something similar)

I get surges of traffic to certain pages and articles all the time that come from private member forums, or news sites if I’m mentioned in a subscribers-only article.

No offense but it seems to me you may be overreacting. Links and traffic surges are a good thing.

K

I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that anything malevolent is going on; there are just too many crazy things happening on the Internet every single day. But if your investigation leads you to suspect that you are being deliberately targeted with poisoned traffic, then I would inform Google ASAP. An ounce of prevention.

Hi kokaroach,

Well… the referral URL does not look like a link from a forum or discussion board, even the domain name sounds like a traffic provider and visiting the root domain does not give me any web site and they even have a robot.txt to deny all the spiders, etc.

So… the traffic could be real, but the source? not sure of this being a good thing.

CS.

jomaxx, you’re absolutely right. I should have mentioned to keep a cautious eye on the traffic in my post.

k

then I would inform Google ASAP

mmmm .. .well .. I think I won’t do that, they could ban me just in case you know? .. I play very clean with AS but all these many “I got banned and didn’t do anything” posts just scare me away.

99% of the time when people get banned it’s their own doing or neglect.

Another thing, it just occured to me that someone could be framing your page and pulling it into their site. That may explain the cloaked main page and funky referring url. They could be using the domain as a script server.

Anyway, have a look at the nameservers for the domain. Sometimes larger networks of sites or people who have their own server, use one of their main sites. You may find that the dns domain is associated with the site in question in some way.

K