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I clicked on my own Google AdSense ads! Now what?

Dave, I'm freaking out! I was just looking at one of the pages on my website and saw an interesting ad placed by the Google AdSense program and clicked on it without thinking. Oh man! I don't want to get kicked out of the program because of a fraudulent click, so what can I do to avoid getting into trouble?

Dave's Answer:

First off, deep breath. Don't panic. If it's one click in a blue moon, you're probably not going to be kicked out of the program. However, I do recommend that you promptly email them and let them know what happened, approximately when it occurred and the advertiser in question.

Here's what I did last time I did the same dopey thing. I sent the following message to adsense-support@google.com:

To: Google AdSense Team <adsense-support@google.com>
Subject: Erroneous click on my ad block

Mea culpa! I clicked on one of my own adverts without thinking. Got an ad on my own page for "Daves Cool Little Website" and thought they might be liberating some of my content since I have "Ask Dave Taylor".

Without a second thought I clicked on it. <sigh>

Please deduct any payment I might have made from this clickthru and credit the advertiser's account. Click time was at approximately 1:07pm MST, with final landing page link http://www....

Thanks and sorry for the hassle!

Dave Taylor

Less than 24 hours later I received a nice response from the AdSense team:

Hello Dave,

Thank you for notifying us of the click that was made on your Google ads. Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited, as it has the potential to inflate advertiser costs. We appreciate your efforts toward avoiding such clicks in the future.

For future reference, to check the destination of ads on your page without the risk of invalid clicks, we suggest using the AdSense Preview Tool, available here:

https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/topic.py?topic=160

For additional questions, we encourage you to visit the AdSense Help Center, our complete resource center for all AdSense topics. Alternatively, feel free to post your question on the forum just for AdSense publishers: the AdSense Help Group.

Sincerely,

Geoffrey
The Google AdSense Team

Crisis averted and he's offered up a good tip about the AdSense Preview Tool too.

Try a similar strategy when you click on your own ad blocks accidentally and I think you'll be okay.

And if you haven't yet gotten started monetizing your site through Google AdSense, I invite you to check out Get Started with Google AdSense.

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Categorized: Pay Per Click (PPC) (Article 6656)
Tagged: fraudulent clicks, google adsense, pay per click, ppc
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Comments

That seems to be the standard boilerplate. When I've accidentally clicked, I've sent the same type of mea culpa and received back the exact same response.

OTOH, it's easy to accidentally click if you're moving around windows. Seems all the whitespace in the Google ad's window is linked too, so if that's all that's showing, you're trying to bring that browser window to the fore, and you inadvertently click on the whitespace because that's normally a safe place to click, you can end up accidentally clicking an ad.

Posted by: Greg at July 18, 2006 6:27 PM

Thanks, very useful info the same thing just happened to me. Cant you ask them to block your ip address? While your still using that address just to avoid that from happening? Oh ya whats going on with the google ads being cut off a bit in your web page? I get that too and thought it was a problem with my site layout. Or is it a problem with my browser?

Posted by: thank you at September 8, 2007 9:40 AM

What about page impressions? Im constantly refreshing my pages checking them over etc... because I'm constantly adding content and tweaking my pages. Can this get me in trouble?

Posted by: boris de bear at September 9, 2007 12:21 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!