A Case study.

[sahil123]

I have seen a case where a webmaster was involved in some
invalid clicks ( only a few ). His account was not deactivated till he reached 100$, After reaching that mark he was banned for invalid clicks which he did when his account was just started. I think Google should have banned him at the time when he clicked on his own ads. What were they waiting for. I think advertisers must have gained from it.

[Nitrous]

And?

So what? He deserved it. He stole from them, they and google get something back.

[edited by: Nitrous at 2:32 pm (utc) on Mar. 22, 2006]

[pageoneresults]

I think Google should have banned him at the time when he clicked on his own ads.

If they did that, this forum would be the most popular forum on the net. I know I've clicked on my AdSense ads by mistake every now and then, once here, once there. No big deal. It's good to know that I have a $100 ceiling before being banned. Is that USD? ;)

[sahil123]

[b]And..?[b]

Advertisers got free advertising.

[briggidere]

how did advertisers get free advertising if it was only him clicking on, and possibly viewing the ads? i don't think he had adsense on his site so he could find advertisers to buy things off ;-)

[sahil123]

He did only a few clicks. So, all the other clicks were genuine.

[roycerus]

Dude google will only check an account once it's time to pay the publisher - so naturally he got banned after he crossed $100. Think before you accuse. You really think Google is checking each publisher account every day? That is just not feasible.

[sahil123]

I agree to you Roycerus. Good reply!

[europeforvisitors]

That's a really good point, roycerus.

Even aside from the practical issue that you mention, waiting until payday is a good idea because it sends a stronger message. Wannabe thieves may be more likely to think twice if they risk losing a month's accumulated earnings instead of just a few dollars--or if they know Google's fraud team are like very patient cobras who are watching and waiting to strike. :-)

[jomaxx]

Sahil, Google will not pay you for ANY clicks if you're cheating. Once you've been caught fraudulently clicking your ads, the burden is on you to prove that the other clicks were not bogus.

Don't you see this person did far more than $100 damage to AdSense? The time Google spent setting up his account and investigating the case and reversing the charges, and especially the loss of goodwill when advertisers see some jerk in a 3rd-world country clicking his own ads and eating up their budget?

Google is a hundred-BILLION-dollar company. The idea that Google deliberately lets this kind of thing continue just so they can make a $100 payday is ludicrous.

[humblebeginnings]

"I have seen a case where a webmaster was involved in some
invalid clicks"

I just don't get this. I know nobody who does Adsense. If I go to the pub, people talk about cars, sport and girls, not Adsense. Is it like, there are countries where everyone has an Adsense account, or what?

[vincevincevince]

I have seen a case where a webmaster was involved in some invalid clicks

It is frequently suspected that someone who posts that kind of statement is actually talking about themselves and wants to avoid getting a good ticking-off from the TOS crowd.

[imstillatwork]

My friend got a warning lette rtoday about invalid clicks. He runs a local ISP, and has adsense on the ISP site that I built for him. All the clicks on that ISP portal site come from the same subnet, google sent a warning, and everything was ok, after an explaination and proof of it. So you get what you deserve, and google is reasonable too.

[jeepers]

sahil123

From this and your other posts, you seem intent on pushing adsense to the limit, and hoping not to get banned. Why don't you just design a good site, with some content (whatever that is in your opinion), and hope for the best.

I've started out slowly, and am hoping to get to the $5 a day soon, and then push on to $10. This with my other income streams is starting to add up to a nice income.

Best wishes.

[Thez]

This is so pointless, you can not get banned for clicking your own ads a few times.

It's simply not technically possible for Google to tell that YOU are clicking YOUR ads, so please stop debating about this issue.

Your friend got banned for other reasons than this.

[trillianjedi]

It's simply not technically possible for Google to tell that YOU are clicking YOUR ads

Actually it's not hard to do, and you only need a high probability.

The majority of threads that I've seen like this involved the clicks coming from a PC that had been used to login to the AdSense control panel...

It's not difficult to catch 99% of them.

TJ

[sahil123]

It is a real case, that webmaster is in my college.

[jomaxx]

Maybe he was banned for the specific clicks he made, maybe there were other things wrong with the site such as a sentence saying "Please support this site by clicking some ads". You'll probably never know.