clicked my own ad

the ultimate sin

[jstar]

Today, while editing my website, I accidentally clicked on one of my own ads. Even though I get hundreds of legit clicks a day, does protocol require me to prostate myself before the Google Adsense admins and beg their forgiveness?

[trillianjedi]

emailing them and grovelling a bit won't hurt.

You'll get a stock email response and will feel a whole load better. There's been loads of threads in here about this, and that seems to be the general outcome if it's a one-off.

TJ

[Never_again]

One click will not be an issue and, as already stated, an email to them will not hurt. Shows your concern. Better to prostate oneself before the Google and beg their forgiveness than to get your account closed.

[RoySpencer]

..or live with the eternal torment of your sin...never knowing when you might be punished..yes, better to beg for mercy before Him, the Great One...Gog!

[Goober]

Never have I seen such a response to something so innocent. We really are quite skiddish when it comes to an inadvertant click.

Goober

/sarcasm

[perfectlover]

"Today, while editing my website, I accidentally clicked on one of my own ads. Even though I get hundreds of legit clicks a day, does protocol require me to prostate myself before the Google Adsense admins and beg their forgiveness"

Pray to right GOD,only GOD can save you now :)).

Google is preparing a Lawsuit for click fraud,against you.

[Never_again]

Never have I seen such a response to something so innocent.

There have been numerous threads in the past on just this topic. They uniformly expose our paranoia over Google’s reaction :-( .

[HughMungus]

I did it twice in one week recenly. No problems.

[jstar]

Well, I decided to prostate myself, and got a slap on the wrist back from Google warning me that "as you already know, clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited, as it has the potential to inflate advertiser costs", but thanking me for letting them know.

They also asked me to fill out a survey on their customer support.

Personally, I think they could make the issue of accidental clicking a moot point if they would allow us to set an IP address or range of IP addresses for which clicks would not be registered. Would also give us a remedy to nip click fraud in the bud as well...

[webmastertexas]

Google should bottle and sell this extreme paranoia they seem to manage to generate from their publishers without even trying. :D

[webmasterguy]

oh my! - lol

[DollarKid]

some of you guys are so paranoid, 1 click is nothing.

[johnwhitesmith]

One click is one click too many. Google does give warning for as little as 2 clicks.

[HughMungus]

Google does give warning for as little as 2 clicks.

Depends on the site. If they don't want Adsense on their site, they'll remove you from the program when one fraudulent-seeming click happens (as opposed to others, like myself, who have accidentally clicked on ads more than once and not been removed).

[linear]

I was working on a site that I hadn't launched yet, but the adsense code had been embedded for a week or so, and ads were nicely targeted all well with the world. I had an URL cahnnel aimed at it, so I knew no clicks were arriving.

Then while working on my print stylesheet, I was astounded to see an advertisers page appear in the print preview window--I had clicked to give it focus and *gasp* clicked an ad.

Well, I quickly logged in and confessed my sin. And what do you know: the channel data that materialized two days later showed my single click, and earnings of zero for the day. So they did neutralize it upon recieving my report.

I feel better (a few cents better) for making sure the advertiser got credited. Other than that wrinkle, my story is pretty ordinary. Got the same form letter response mentioned above.