My Rant on YouTube Invalid Traffic – Creators Need Solutions
- August 29, 2023
- Surfside PPC
I wish I had a solution to the Invalid Traffic problem, but it seems like nobody has a solution, not even YouTube. We are getting hit by Invalid Traffic, being penalized, and there's no way to even appeal. I started my channel in 2016 and I have had no copyright strikes or policy strikes since then. I have never driven invalid traffic to my channel or encouraged others to click my ads. The Invalid Traffic bug seems to have started in November 2022 and Creators have been impacted on and off since then.
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Thank you so much for posting this video. As a small creator (just under 7000 subs), I was hit by this bug in mid May, and it’s still killing my revenue/rpm more and more daily. Multiple chats with creator support and Adsense support have gotten me nowhere. It’s so frustrating to be blamed for something I have literally, no control of. Over 90% of my views are from YouTube. On my last creator support chat yesterday, I was basically told to stop contacting them about this issue. It’s getting so hard to stay motivated to post videos, not to mention depressing. I’m an older woman with a crafting/DIY channel- my demographic is woman aged 45-65+………..and they’re accusing me of buying fake views?!?! It’s so frustrating. I considered making a video about it too, but with as few subs as I have, I don’t even think anyone would see it-much less that Youtube would notice! Also btw: I disabled embedding, remixes, and also the advertising option in advanced channel settings months ago- it made no difference. I’m considering disabling monetization for 5 days next- but I’m not very hopeful it will make a difference. Would love to hear from any other small creators out there with any insight (or just to commiserate-lol).
The unusual traffic that you highlighted, can you tell what geographic region it originates from?
Another thing… considering the dates, is it possible that this is tied to the emergence of all of the consumer grade AI technology? Maybe there are more scrapers now, pilfering other people’s content?
I’m noticing the same thing. I had a huge spike on July 2nd then looks like everything went back to normal. August 18th the floor fell out and keeps moving down. I’ll do the same thing you’re doing as well. I’ve sent feedback and will go to X and tag all of the accounts you did. Maybe if enough creators make some noise YouTube will look into what is going on. It’s apparent something happened around the first of July that was not the creator’s fault.
Thank you so much for this video. I thought I was alone until I started researching and realized this is a much bigger problem than just my little channel.
Be Blessed,
Audrey
@Surfside PPC Yes, I’ve been going through your video bit by bit and looking at all my analytics and my suggested videos. I’m not seeing anything like you are in regards to the watch hours but my suggested videos are definitely up since the beginning of March. But like you said, we can’t control that so to be penalized is just wrong.
Thank you for the link to the form. I edited my comment because I continued on in your video and saw where you went to get the form. 😉
I’ll be following along and continuing to blast YouTube on the feedback form and over on Twitter/X.
This is just wrong on so many levels.
Be Blessed,
Audrey
Here’s the form: https://support.google.com/adsense/contact/invalid_clicks_contact?sjid=5024200169812532064-NA#. I’ve been looking at my traffic sources and anything that looks out of the ordinary I report. The only traffic that looks invalid or low-quality from my channel is from a few Suggested Videos and Creator Support said I have no control over this traffic. It seems like my RPM dropped even more on August 16th and it’s been around $3 ever since. It’s about 85% lower than the last 5 and a half years.
Thanks for showing my channel. You’re right why would I try and scam the system. At this point I don’t know how long I’ll continue because the effort doesn’t seem worth it and YouTube support tells me the same thing every time I contact them. Your video has been very helpful in finding out what analytics to look at. I didn’t even know where to start. Thanks!
@Social Media 4 Beginners Thanks so much Audrey!!
Just wanted to say I love your channel, Ellen. You taught me some things about Notes that have helped me in organizing my video ideas.
Be Blessed,
Audrey
@Surfside PPC me either!! I reach out to YouTube almost daily. Always receive the same answer. “Read the articles,” which give no solutions. You can’t fix something that you didn’t create. Thanks for trying to help us all out.
I saw your tweet and I keep seeing more and more Channels impacted by this. You have such a helpful channel and I just don’t understand why YouTube doesn’t seem to care about the way this issue is hurting our revenue.
I gave a great solution to google months ago, spam traffic is the biggest enemy on the internet. It’s going to get worse and worse because more creators will start to address this issue.
Unfortunately, they don’t really seem to care if this has been an issue since November 2022. My channel got hit for a week back in September 2022, but I never received the Invalid Traffic notification that time.
As an advertiser i recently noticed a large spike in webtraffic from facebook ads.. upon inspection the traffic generated around 6-10 events per session but average time on page was straight 0m00s, and this was for 47K users! Meta has a page saying “Invalid Clicks” are a known issue and they will investigate a refund ads manager for any clicks deemed “invalid” but ive requested a review and followed their instructions to “Report A Problem” and get no reply😂
Penalizing content creators absolutely not a good solution for YT tho🤦♀️ what a mess.
I saw a study said that over 50% of web traffic in 2022 was bots
It wouldn’t surprise me if there were bots and Meta/Google/YouTube may have more trouble detecting it. The problem is these multi-billion dollar companies are not helping us.
ok
If you are a Creator, I would recommend using ‘Send Feedback’ through your YouTube Studio, and ‘Feedback’ through your Google AdSense account, I would contact YouTube Creator Support every day asking about the Invalid Traffic bug and telling them to escalate the issue, and I would fill out the Invalid Clicks Contact Form with literally anything that looks like low-quality traffic. I also think tweeting at @TeamYouTube, @YouTubeCreators, @YouTubeLiaison, and @nealmohan about appealing our invalid traffic can only help. Here’s the invalid clicks contact form: https://support.google.com/adsense/contact/invalid_clicks_contact?sjid=5024200169812532064-NA#
I will keep everyone updated with the status of my channel, any fixes I come across, and any updates that I have. I’d like to say that I’m hopeful, but YouTube doesn’t really seem to care about the issue when it comes to creators. It’s very clearly a bug if invalid Traffic is an issue on so many channels randomly, including channels that have 5+ or even 10+ years of policy compliance. Something is triggering massive RPM drops and YouTube seems to detect it, penalize creators, not give any details about why we’re being penalized, and then send us unhelpful links. The biggest issue I have is that people can sabotage other channels and Creators are helpless when this happens.
I was hit by invalid traffic on website n i dont even know what to do now. I want to jnow if i can use my website for another adsense account later? 😢
@Surfside PPC yes my Adsense account has been closed down I don’t know what to do now
I believe you can only have 1 AdSense account. Was your account disabled? I haven’t had the experience on my website yet, just on my YouTube channel. It’s so frustrating that they aren’t providing solutions.
have you noticed views from youtube advertising last month? i suspect that has something to do
@Surfside PPC i already did the same as you with the feedback and the contact form, ten days ago and no reply. And yes i will keep in contact with you about the embedding
@IBRAGOD If disabling embedding works for you, please let me know. I’ve been doing ‘Send Feedback’ through my YouTube channel every day, filling out the Invalid Clicks Contact Form constantly, and I’ll just chat with YouTube Creator Support asking why my ad impressions are dropping, is CPM low across YouTube, have RPMs dropped for YouTube, and why random videos had a huge drop in earnings without any explanation.
@Surfside PPC i dont have any spikes in my channel, views has been the same and then i gout hit in august 14, i did that thing about the ad settings too, also disable embedding, what really scares me is that i read some people have this issue since november that year, we cant wait that much, i will keep spamming them everyday.
I noticed a huge spike in March for 2 days, some in April, some in May, and then recently in July and August. I went into my YouTube Studio Settings > Channel > Advanced settings and selected ‘Only let linked accounts use this channel’s videos as ads’. I had a spike in Direct/Unknown traffic on July 1st and then penalized on July 3rd. I’ve also noticed an increase in Suggested Video views in late June and then again in August that seemed to correlate to the RPM drop. I was getting a bunch of low-quality Suggested Video views from random betting & crypto videos. The crazy thing is I’ve seen channels that get 95% of their views from YouTube and they’ve been hit by it too.
i´ve been hit with invalid traffic too, no answers, no solutions, no explanations youtube keeps it as a mystery and wont help anyone, it is really frustrating
@Surfside PPC The only solution is that, when it happens and you contact the support, insist you want them to escalate the issue to the technical support. It will be fixed in a week or less.
@Andu It seems to vary for every channel. I got hit July 3rd and then it seems like my RPM went even lower on August 16th. Some people only recently saw the issue and it seems like it has gotten worse in August. Some channels have been impacted since November 2022. Some have had it happen for several months in April, get fixed, and now they are dealing with it again.
@Surfside PPC I have a friend that got this solved in a week or two.
I don’t even blame YouTube Creator Support at this point, I blame YouTube themselves for not actually fixing the issue. In their attempt to ‘protect’ advertisers, they are literally just destroying our revenue. The YouTube Liaison said its not a bug and that maybe YouTube Creators have always had low RPMs on their videos as if our revenue didn’t drop 80% overnight for every single video on our channel. It’s crazy that one of the largest companies in the world is pretending this issue doesn’t exist.