Phantom Adsense Cash… Is It A Good Thing?
I was checking my Adsense stats recently and noticed that the “total earnings” didn’t equal the sum of the separate domains I have listed.
Hmmm, free extra Adsense income… can’t be bad, right?
Well, hold on a minute. The Web is pretty cut-throat when it comes to cash… lots of people will sell their grannies for a shiny dollar bill… so where is this unknown Adsense income coming from? Let’s look at some of the possibilities…
- It could be an old site I own that I hadn’t listed as one of my domains which has suddenly got lots of traffic.
- It could be a new site I added Adsense to, but forgot to list as one of my domains.
- It could be a “smart” person ripping off my webpages, putting them on their domains, but leaving my Adsense code intact. (not so smart)
- It could be someone who accidentally put my Adsense code on their pages.
- It could be someone trying to get me in trouble by putting my code on adult pages or doorway pages.
OK, so enough of the wondering… here’s what I did…
In my Adsense account, under “AdSense Setup / Allowed Sites“, I listed all of my domains that had got impressions in the last month and clicked on “Save Changes”.
According to Google, this will allow me to see which ads are using my code, but aren’t on the Allowed List.
“How can I tell which sites are using my AdSense code without my permission?
By visiting your Allowed Sites page, under the AdSense Setup tab, you can see the URLs that are using your AdSense code but are not on your Allowed Sites list.” (source)
If I recognise the domains using my code, I’ll add them in and “legitimately” earn from the clicks. If I don’t recognise the domains, I’ll leave them out in the cold, forfeit the revenue, but be sure my genuine Adsense income is safe and secure.
What do you think? Have you got “phantom Adsense cash”?
November 1st, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I get this all the time. Unfortunately I can’t use the Allowed Sites list, as it only allows 100 sites, if I remember it correctly. And I have over 700 sites. For the same reason I can’t use a separate channel for each site, since Google AdSense accounts are limited to 200 channels.
I know spiders are scraping my sites, but I don’t worry too much about it, as Google would block each URL it can’t crawl or doesn’t like. I haven’t got into any troubles so far, though I usually see half a dozen blocked URL’s in AdSense that don’t belong to me. And often I can’t browse those URL’s either, to see what was actually in there… Cached pages?
BTW, can you recommend a good solution to track AdSense clicks outside Google?
Thanks for the post.
November 2nd, 2008 at 6:19 am
Wow, so it’s a double sided sword yeah? I guess keep it safe is better in the long run.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Hi Neal,
I’ve noticed a little phantom cash in my Adsense account once in a while. Using your method, I found a “smart guy” (duh) who’d copied my page and my Adsense code too. Sometimes it makes you wonder where these guys were the day brains were passed out. Absent? yeah, probably.
Anyway, thanks for the tip. Your information is always useful and appreciated.
Cheers!
David
November 5th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Wow,thats a bonus
November 6th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Hi Neil,
I attempted to follow your directions but when I clicked on Allowed Sites, here is what came up:
Choose your site settings:
*Allow any site to show ads for my account
*Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account
with a Save Changes Button
Needless to say I am confused.
Don P
November 6th, 2008 at 3:05 am
So what did you find out after doing this?
November 6th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Hi, Neal
I didn´t even think about that!
That´s good to know.
Thanks, Kari
November 7th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Nice tip, Ive nioticed some times I get clicks from cached versions of my site..
p.s. @ don look for the other tab its there some where..
November 7th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Good tip, thanks – I get these clicks too, but hadn’t thought about whitelisting my own sites.
Don – just select ‘Only allow certain sites to display ads for my account’, and a box appears where you can list your urls.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
adsense is defiantely not my favorite way to make cash. I rather use other affiliate programs like pepperjam network. I had a lot of friends that own blogs claim that adsense was a ripoff and that they spent their hard time earning money…at least $5000 worth and Google claimed that they committed “click fraud” when they really DIDN’T. Can you imagine that? Look online and find all the bad reports about google adsense.
November 8th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I think some of the earnings may be due to people viewing the website from a Google/Yahoo cache or a proxy that works in the form of “http://yourdomain.com.proxyserver.com”.
The result is that the “domain” that the site is viewed on won’t appear as your own.
When I first started using the “Allowed Sites” thingy, I noticed a bunch of regular IPs that would just bring me to Google if I did http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, so I figured those were Google’s cache servers. So, be sure to whitelist these as they appear to perhaps increase your earnings by a good 0.01%
For extra safety, consider looking up who owns the IP before adding to the whitelist (but I don’t bother).
November 9th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
I have often seen a 1 cent earning when I haven’t had any clicks. I won’t get too excited about it though.
November 10th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Good point, Dan.
I noticed that Google was one of my unauthorized sites, and didn’t realize it was probably their cache.
I also saw copyscape.com… which has me puzzled.
Neil.
November 13th, 2008 at 4:34 am
I have an account in adsense, my friend convince me to join this extra income that they called. She have an adsense account last month and she have $22 and one of our friend got a hundred plus of dollar only in adsense…I hope I can have a as much money they have.
November 13th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
When you mentioned that, “I was checking my Adsense stats recently and noticed that the “total earnings†didn’t equal the sum of the separate domains I have listed.â€
My first thought was that you had been ripped off.
So glad you actually benefited.
Joel Smith
Casa Preciosa Ajijic, Mexico