netmeg - 3:19 pm on Dec 11, 2009 (gmt 0)

It just means what it says. They have all kinds of internal procedures to check for click fraud that they do for the AdWords advertisers, and given the ginormous size of the entire enterprise, it's not always done instantaneously as soon as the clicks show up on your earnings page. So it's an estimation until it finalizes, which is as it's always has been. I frequently have downward adjusted earnings after month end up to about a buck or so*, just as on the AdWords side, I always have adjustments every month for invalid clicks as well.

Nothing has changed, except the language on the page.

*one time it was actually higher, which is a total mystery that I will never understand or get an explanation for