Written on April 6th, 2005 at 12:04 pm by Darren Rowse
On Clicking your Own Adsense Ads
A reader emailed me this question this morning and I feel its important that I respond publicly to it because it is crucial information for anyone using Adsense to monetize their blog. It is basic information but can’t be emphasized enough. He writes:
‘I just started Adsense, and one of its rules is that you shouldn’t click on links on your own site. However, there seems to me to be at least a couple instances when it should be ok to click on ads on your own site, namely:
1) If I’m actually interested in what the ad offers. After all, I’m writing about a specific topic and they are (mostly) serving ads that relate to the topic. So it’s highly likely that the ads will be something I’m interested in.
2) If I see an ad I hate and want to get the URL so I can block the ad.
There may be more instances your readers can come up with.’
I’ll be blunt with my answer - NEVER click your own ads for ANY reason.
I know of a number of bloggers who failed to learn this lesson and whom today are banned from using Adsense. In my mind there is NO valid reason to click on your own ads.
Why? Google tracks who clicks on ads (probably through IP addresses) and they have no way of telling if you’ve clicked an ad out of genuine interest or out of greed.
I mentioned previously how Google are currently being sued by advertisers over issues of Click Fraud - this is a hot issue for Google at present and I suspect they’ll continue to be tough on anything that even looks like it could be fraudulent clicks.
So what do you do if you see an ad that interests you or that you want to get the URL of so you can block the ad? Is there a way around having to directly click the ads? I’m told by my PC using friends that the Adsense Preview Tool might be something that could explore to get around this. It is a tool for IE 6 (and higher) users that allows you to preview ads through your right click menu (once installed). I’ve never used it (as a Mac User) but know of people who use it regularly and rave about it.
As a Mac user if I want to find out an advertiser URL to ban them or to visit their site without clicking on the ad I simply right click on the ad and copy link to clip board. I then paste the link into a text editor or word and look for the actual page’s URL inside the google code (don’t paste it directly into your browser or you’ll activate Google’s tracking code as if you’ve clicked it). I then extract the URL and either view the site or add it to my filter list. Yes its a bit of a pain but its worth it.
Be very careful about clicking your own ads. Its just not worth the risk.
13 Responses to “On Clicking your Own Adsense Ads”
Migs
April 6th, 2005 12:35 pm
They know it’s you because of the cookie you’ll send when signing up, accessing the control panel, and clicking on your own ad.
Dane Carlson
April 6th, 2005 1:19 pm
Never, ever, ever click your own ads!
If you share a network connection with other people, tell them to NEVER click on your ads, because if someone from one IP address looks at the stats, and then later someone clicks on an ad from the from the same IP address it it might look suspicious.
You never want to receive an email from Google like this, especially if you were generating a decent number of clicks: “It has come to our attention that fraudulent clicks have been generated on the ads on your site(s), and we are investigating the situation.”
Migs
April 6th, 2005 1:35 pm
I wrote a simple web script to let you safely view your ads. It’s here. It works by taking out your publisher ID and replacing it with “ca-test” which is used by the preview tool. Hope this helps.
Geert
April 6th, 2005 5:07 pm
@ Dane: that is my situation at home and it is not very practical. I have to keep telling my mom and brothers not to click those ads. By now they should know, however some “fraudulent” clicks out of genuine interest have been generated.
Ogo
April 6th, 2005 11:44 pm
Hi !
Another method that I remember reading somewhere in google page was clicking the “ads by Goooooogle” line which is found on one of the corners of your ad unit ,which will take you to feedback and suggestions page where the URLs (without any Google reference) of the current ads are visible. You could then copy-paste the clean URL to another browser just like Darren pointed out. This does not create self-clicks unless you miss the tiny google link and hit a real ad! Risky ! :-)
Ogo
Nicholas
April 7th, 2005 12:28 am
I accidently clicked on one of my ads once. I didn’t meant to honestly. I was so afraid that something bad would happen. But nothing has. I’m hoping Google will forgive one accident.
Anyway, I think a better strategy would be for google to just filter these clicks out. So, you can click on the ads, but it doesn’t get you any money or cost the advertiser anything.
Mark Boudreau
April 7th, 2005 12:47 am
How hard would it be for Google to implement some kind of “ignore visits from this IP address” function similar to what Sitemeter uses? On Sitemeter I set up my account so that it ignores visits to my site from both my home and work IP addresses thereby preventing me from getting false positives in my stats. It can’t be that hard.
Geert
April 7th, 2005 2:05 am
Google actually does filter your own clicks out. After somebody in my network clicked on an ad I remember seeing 1 click with a revenue of $0.
Jack Krupansky
April 7th, 2005 2:48 am
Just mouse over the Google ad and your browser should tell you the URL of the ad. Usually the little pop-up ballon says “go to www.XYZ.com“, telling you the web site. The actual initial target of the click is more complicated since it goes to Google first for tracking before finally redirectly to the advertiser’s particular portal page for that ad.
– Jack Krupansky
Jon
April 7th, 2005 7:12 am
If you are so interested in the things that are offered in the ad, you can click the link with the right mouse button, and copy the URL for the ad, and paste it into your browser. Then delete everyhing except the url for the page, which will be in adurl=
Leonivek
April 7th, 2005 1:27 pm
I’ve also accidentally clicked my ads while working on the design and literally swore out loud! LOL This actually happened 2 days ago and I was thinking, “Oh no! I don’t want to lose my account!” But when I checked my report, it said that click was $0… phew. I also agree that they should come up with an “Ignore this IP” option.
Paul Power
April 10th, 2005 2:48 am
Being a newbie to AdSense I’ve also accidentally clicked on my own adverts, I assumed that Google would just ignore them. When I checked my AdSense report they were there but as $0 so it looks like Google does the sensible thing of tracking the user owned clicks but doesn’t pay for them.
I’m assuming that their tracking feds into some sort of fraud monitoring application and that a significent number of $0 clicks marks you as worth of investigation - here’s hoping that click threshold isn’t very low.
Mike
September 21st, 2007 4:19 am
-don’t stare at adsense adds for too long(joking) they might cancel your account, you know how picky google can be.
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