This is a little off topic but since we do run Google ads I thought I'd share this with the community. There is a report that you can run once you have signed into your Google Ad Account called the "Placement Report". I think this is a new report and it will shed some interesting light on the subject of who is clicking on your ads. When you run Google ads you can camp on keywords and optionally choose to have your ads run in Google's Content Network, here's how they describe it.
"Opting in to the content network allows your ad to appear on relevant sites that have actual content relating to your ad. Such contextual advertising is an easy way to reach your targeted audience from across the Web."
So now, let's look at where our EntitySpaces ads are showing (remember, we make a Persistence Layer for the .NET Framework).
We took a look at some of these sites; none of them are technical in the remotest since of the word. The two peggysim's sites on the list which generated 120+ clicks are barbie doll like sites? Most of them are basically "junk" sites, including myspace and others not even shown in the screen capture above.
Needless to say, we suspended all of our ads from running within the Google Content Network and we did fire off an email to their support staff and we will let you know what they say. However, the bulk of our advertising $$ was being spent on clicks received on these sites? Are these sites purposely hosting ads and clicking on them to make revenue? I am personally a big fan of Google and look forward to their response, however, if this problem is as big as I think it is there's a lot of money at stake.
At the very least Google should allow us to block certain websites in their content framework from being able to display our ads. If we suspect abuse by a particular site we should be allowed to block them.
[modified]
You can block certain sites, you will find this under Tools -> Site Exclusion so we will begin to re-enable and filter these sites that are clearly up to no good. Google should be shutting these sites down because these clicks are clearly staged. Run your reports folks and see where you clicks are coming from ....
From mobile devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with medium trust requirements, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.
The EntitySpaces Team
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EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net