Most wanted new feature?

IP blocker is my nomination

[m0nty]

The new reporting features are nice, but what is the technical feature you most want to see added to AdSense?

Personally, I'd like to see an IP blocker feature, so that you can specify IPs from which clickthroughs are not recorded. That would save us publishers from the guilt of accidentally clicking on our own ads, plus the Google guys would save much time answering e-mails of "OMG sorry I clicked on my own ad plz don't kick me kthx!". Also, a worthy measure to prevent griefing.

Something that would be less necessary, but still good, would be more information on the clickers - location, time of day, how many clicks for each user, possibly even matched to IP number, etc. That could feed back in to the IP blocker if you see a suspiciously high amount of clicks from one user.

[berto]

An IP blocker feature? Me, too, I'd vote for that.

[Zygoot]

Might be a good feature for some users.

But I won't use it. It would take too much time to add my own IP each day and to remove the one from yesterday.. A feature to automatically block every IP that logs into Adsense for one day might be more useful.

[Reflection]

I'd like to see that as well.

One other thing is automatic channels for color schemes which are seperate from your other channels. Currently you have to setup a new channel to track a different color scheme, which means if you are tracking something else (say the on page position of an add, or a section of your site) you have to turn it off.

[m0nty]

Zygoot, evidently you're on a dynamic IP... but I assume it's still within a certain range, like foo.bar.***.***? How about being able to block ranges too? That wouldn't be difficult for G to implement if they actually made an IP blocker. Also, that would defeat griefers who are in a range.

Sure, you might lose some valid clickthroughs if you block ranges, but better that than getting kicked out of AdSense altogether.

[chopin2256]

This should be brought up as a suggestion to Google by adsense users. Apparently Google does listen to suggestions, no?

[Zygoot]

m0nty, blocking per range wouldn't be a solution for me (and maybe a bunch of other people with dynamic IP addresses).

Each day my provider gives me another IP address. The first three numbers of my IP address are always the same but the second three numbers already have like five different possibilities.. We can't just block a few thousands of people.

[m0nty]

Well, it wouldn't be suitable for everyone, but it would be invaluable for some, and useful for others. Just like most other AdSense features.

[topr8]

i don't get this blocking ip address thing.

if you can't resist clicking ads on your pages why don't you just not serve ads to your own computer there are many ways eg.

write a script to block you own ip from seeing ads
set a unique cookie to your own machine and block ads if that cookie exists.
give your browser a unique user agent string and block ads to that UA

and so on.

...all very easy to do

[m0nty]

topr8: part of why I want this is that I want to see the ads, but not have to worry about clicking on them. Your suggestions are good if you don't want to see the ads at all, but I DO want to see them, and click on them without fear of reprisal or screwing G.

[MrAnchovy]

Then try what topr8 suggests... writing a script, but instead of the script blocking the ads, modify it to exclude your publisher ID:
google_ad_client = "";

You should definitely contact Google regarding that method, but I have seen it posted several times that clicks w/o pub IDs are not counted in any way (nor is the advertiser charged).

[bbkid]

yea, I agree with what m0nty is saying. I want to see what ads are being served up on my site sometimes.

sometimes I see ones that I find genuinely interesting, at which point I usualy type the url into a new tab.

other times I have adblock enabled and dont see any ads at all <g>

[sailorjwd]

I would like to see Adsense conquer this click fraud thing without tossing publishers out of the program who have no control of jerks maliciously clicking ads.

I would be happy to protect my Adsense income by having G simply ignore clicks above x number per day from a specific ip (or machine-level identification).

Or, more preferably block clicks using a cookie after so many clicks per day. I don't want to hear another story like SuzyV's and I don't look forward to telling such a story myself.

[no9t9]

click fraud is probably number 1 on my list.

but I would also like to see a little more transparency. someone mentioned clicks from ip's and countries, etc. G must already track this information...

[berto]

... if you can't resist clicking ads on your pages ...

Sometimes this happens by accident. Are you never extremely tired and spaced out? Does your screen saver never lock up on you? Do you have no click-happy children around the house? Cats who walk across your keyboard and mouse? ... Do you never make a simple honest mistake?

About the suggestion to write scripts and employ other technical methods to block ad showing or accidental ad clicking: Not everyone is adept at this. And what if you make a mistake in your implementation? Ever write buggy code? Misplace a semi-colon?

There should be a simple, straightforward, fool-proof, Google-sanctioned means to stop accidental ad clicks. Google provides us with advertiser URL filters. I don't see why providing us with IP filters is such a big deal.

If anyone doesn't see the point, ignore the feature if offered. The rest of us will gladly use it.

[thewonderwall]

berto -- well put!

[kghdude]

How about when you login, there is like a button "Set Webmaster Cookie" and if you click it, it sets a cookie on your machine... then when you view your ads, they look normal but where it says "Ads by Goooooogle", it would say something like Webmaster Ads or something (I'm bad at wording), and if you clicked an ad, since you had the cookie, it wouldn't track it!

Maybe that would work...

[erobs]

I add the following to my hosts file on my local PC's:

127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com

Then if I want to modify a page and need to check the layout of the ads, just add a # prior to the 127

#127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com

This just makes it so that your computer cannot resolve the address the adsense ads are served from.

Got the tip from a previous post here. Stops the chance of a child clicking on your site, or an accidental click.

[berto]

I add the following to my hosts file on my local PC's:

127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com

Neat trick. I assume you mean Linux (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, ...) PCs? Is there a Windows (ME) equivalent?

[erobs]

Hosts file is at the following location in Windowx XP c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts

I am not sure if it is in the same location in ME, but there should be a hosts file none the less.

[kghdude]

Neat trick :-)

I can also have the domain's i've always wanted point to my site :-D