Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 40 Location: New Jersey, USA
Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 1:09 am Post subject: A friend got caught clicking his own ads
If you are currently clicking your own ads to inflate your CTR/revenue OR to check the ads, stop now. A friend was clicking all new ads that would show up to see if they were competitors. He is now being 'investigated' by google...
Quote:
Hello Name,
It has come to our attention that fraudulent impressions or clicks have
been generated on the ads on your site(s), and we are investigating the
situation.
As a reminder, website publishers, or a third party enlisted by the
publisher, may not generate fraudulent impressions or clicks on any
ad(s), including but not limited to the use of robots or other automated
query tools and/or computer generated search requests, and/or the
fraudulent use of other search engine optimization services and/or
software. These practices are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms
and Conditions, which you can view at:
https://www.google.com/adsense/terms .
Please note that clicking on your ads is prohibited. If you would like
to verify the destination URL of an ad in order to add to your filter
list, please use a browser that has a status bar such as Internet
Explorer 6.0. By placing the cursor over the ad link, the destination
URL of the ad should appear in the status bar. You can then enter the
URL in a browser, view the page, and see whether or not the ads point to
a competitor's site.
If we find your account to be in violation again, action may be taken
against your account and payment may be withheld. Please be sure to
review and remain in compliance with our Terms and Conditions and
program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies).
Joined: 16 Jul 2003 Posts: 10 Location: California
Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 7:15 am Post subject:
Yikes.... I had a feeling about that, so I myself have only clicked the ads from my own site that I was genuinely interested in (of which were naturally at least a good number of, as who is more interested in the targeted topics discussed on a website than the person who wrote them in the first place hehe).... I'd say maybe a click every few days, if that, as new ads come up that genuinely interest me.... though like I said - I click now and then as a potential customer, not to inflate my own stats, and fully browse the advertiser's site, read everything that interests me, etc.... so far I've even bookmarked a number of them to check out further later. Any other links I'm curious about though, I always get the link the way mentioned in the letter you just showed from Google.
It would be nice though, if Google would release some kind of web-based service for AdSense publishers that would work similarly to those "browse the internet anonymously" sites (enter the address into the form, etc).... so publishers could browse their own sites via a special link from Google and any AdSense ads they click on to test, would be filtered and not count. Afterall, though it's easy to dig the url out of the browser's status text on a few links... doing so for all/many of the links on every page of one's site is quite tedious (time that could be better spent writing new content *grin*). I'm sure the technology to do this is pretty much already in place, so hopefully Google will do something like that (or at least something along the lines of keeping track of the publisher's IP - if static - and filtering out clicks by that IP).
Peace. _________________ -- Dave
TutorialForums.com -- [ community for webmasters & designers ]
AbsoluteCross.com -- [ free graphics & hands-on tutorials]
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Your host: Allan Gardyne. Earning a good living from affiliate
programs since 1998.
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Private Messages
Log in
