Adsense referrer spam?

I made a whopping 0,12€ with ads on this blog over the last 30 days (and just disabled them entirely, don’t want to get corrupted by all that money). However, what really caught my attention in the report was a domain that doesn’t belong to me (or my company):

Adsense Referrer Spam

So, apparently t****4web.com used my Adsense code on their site, resulting in a single ad impression (and nobody clicked on it, otherwise, my ad revenue would have been at least three two times bigger). How and why did this happen?

The innocent explanation is that their “Web Back Machine” (which sounds suspiciously similar to the non-profit Wayback Machine) archived one of my pages, including the Adsense ads. That’s possible, but what is more likely it that this is Adsense referrer spam, meant to get me to visit their website. I’ve got to admit that it worked, so now I have to write this blog post to justify my actions to myself, see, it was all in the name of research.

For further information on Adsense referrer spam, let me refer you to this comprehensive, well-written article.

What Google and Mr. Burns have got in common

They’re both old fashioned.

I discovered this when receiving my first Google Adsense check from Google’s bank in Germany. This sort of intra-EU payment might have been “cutting edge” a century ago. Nowadays it’s just odd and annoying, because I have to leave the office during the very restricted opening hours of my bank to cash the check, which costs me €15 in fees (or about a week of Adsense revenue). Someone at Google should look up Regulation (EC) No 2560/2001.

It’s not just Luxembourg, though, it appears Google doesn’t like smaller Eurozone countries and Greece (bad vacation experiences, maybe?):

StatePopulationBank transfer
Malta404,962No
Luxembourg476,200No
Cyprus766,400No
Slovenia2,013,597No
Ireland4,239,848Yes
Finland5,289,128Yes
Slovakia5,389,180Yes
Austria8,316,487Yes
Portugal10,599,095Yes
Belgium10,666,866Yes
Greece11,125,179No
Netherlands16,471,968Yes
Spain45,116,894Yes
Italy59,131,287Yes
France63,392,140Yes
Germany82,314,906Yes

Population data from Wikipedia