Google called a bot farm 'normal user behavior' — but suspended me over its own bug
I sent Google proof of a bot farm. They called it "normal user behavior."
After spending $220 on Google app ads, I found 60% of installs were bots. Google reviewed the evidence and found no invalid traffic, calling it 'normal user behavior.' Meanwhile, Google had suspended my AdMob account for 'self-clicking' caused by a known bug that removed the close button on full-screen ads on some iOS devices. The bug remains until my suspension ends, and my suspension was caused by the bug.
So Google can find a handful of accidental clicks from two of my friends’ devices, and it can’t find 33 phones running a version of our app its own store wasn’t offering anymore, some of them installed on a different continent from the one my ads were targeting.
- absoluteunit1
This is a really good marketing strategy to drive traffic.
- reconnecting
Thanks for the post, Nick.
I'm familiar with some issues related to bot behaviours (1) on Google Ads, and as far as I know, Google doesn't try very hard to filter or detect such bots — on some verticals they might be half of the traffic, and Google still earns from it.
But I found a potential solution in Google itself, since they provide a tool to select your demographics. If you select all available options and skip Unknown, it won't show the ads to some part of the bots. There will still be some percentage, but this cuts out the largest part, since most click bots have no Google history and therefore fall outside the demographic buckets.
- DamnInteresting
I received a phishing email that appeared to come from Google, that almost had me convinced. I was in a delicate place--my father was fighting cancer, and my brother had just been horribly injured in a motorcycle accident. I was distressed, and my wits were not about me. The link in the email was to a google.com url, it looked okay.
Luckily I detected the treachery before sending any sensitive data, and I sent the relevant details to the Google bug bounty. Their response was that google.com open proxies are not considered bugs, and the report was closed. Do less evil, Google.