Clicking on my own ads?

[adamnichols45]

Hi im curious to click one of my own ads just once to see how it all works on my site - i wont get banned from just one click will i ?

[blairsp]

you might do. Prepare for many outraged people telling you about fraud and how you are going to hell. click fraud is just a fancy name for theft

[david_uk]

In reality one click won't get you banned. I'm sure that all of us have clicked on our own ads once by accident or design. I've done it on two occasions, emailed them to tell them about the accidental click, and they thanked me for letting them know. They didn't boot me out.

Having said that it's unlikely they would terminate what could be a profitable account for them on the basis of one fraudulent click, they technically could.

I'm not a member of the TOS police, but I would say it's better to not do it.

[incrediBILL]

I always click anything I install ONCE just to make sure it works and try it in both Netscape and Internet Explorer. Otherwise, how would you know anything you install on your page, including AdSense, worked properly?

It just seems if Google were smart they'd let us put the account in "TEST" mode when we needed to do such things so we could experience the product without charging the advertiser and put it in "LIVE" mode when we're ready.

[adamnichols45]

cool posts i take that on board - Do you all get payed at the end of them month or is it different?

[hunderdown]

Read the AdSense TOS. The earnings for one month are paid at the end of the following month, if you make the minimum. So April's earnings will be paid out at the end of May.

[hyperkik]

I always click anything I install ONCE just to make sure it works and try it in both Netscape and Internet Explorer. Otherwise, how would you know anything you install on your page, including AdSense, worked properly?

That sounds like a rationalization for periodically clicking on ads. AdSense displays in an iframe. If it displays, even if you suspect that it might not be "working", there is nothing further you can do from your end to make it "work". There's nothing wrong with testing your own site, but it is something else entirely to click Google links under the guise of testing your own site.

[europeforvisitors]

Read the program policies and TOS. Observe them. If you want permission to to break the rules, don't ask your fellow publishers--ask AdSense Support.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Otherwise, how would you know anything you install on your page, including AdSense, worked properly?

How about looking at your reports?

[sailorjwd]

Be careful, clicking on ads is like trying crack.. you might get hooked.

(now, can somebody help me with my ad view attack :)

[SeK612]

If you've clicked on adverts before when surfing the internet it's remarkably similar. Upon clicking you're taken to another website which placed the advert in the same window :)

[incrediBILL]

That sounds like a rationalization for periodically clicking on ads.

Don't you check your web site to make sure it's fully functional when you add new things?

It's not rationalization at all, it's called QA TESTING, and it was only INITIAL testing almost a year ago, there is no periodic clicking so don't be exaggerating what I said as now that it's up ad running with channels installed I can see hourly that it's working properly. If something was wrong when I initially installed it and it didn't work, neither Google nor I would be making any money and that would be bad and quite useless.

I'm sure my 5 clicks checking out the site functionality when I installed AdSense was a blip on the radar compared to the tens of thousands of clicks my customers made that month and I needed to know those massive amounts of clicks counted.

I've been a programmer for about 26 years now and I always test something before I turn it loose on the world. All of my pages are dynamic and run thru a pre-processor and there is always a random chance, albeit rare, that the pre-processor will cause a glitch with something on a page. Therefore, I test all my custom web programming on the site, I test affiliate links when I install them, and I tested AdSense when I installed it.

BTW, Did you see I said I'd like a TEST mode for AdSense so it didn't cost any advertiser anything for the initial test clicks when I setup and tested the site? Not my fault AdSense doesn't provide that feature in their service as it's everyone's initial reaction to verify it's installed properly and working.

[incrediBILL]

How about looking at your reports?

There were no reports, it had never run, I use something called a "staging area" before making things live.

AdSense was being launched on roughly 40,000 pages and I sure as heck didn't want to launch a fiasco so a couple of quick clicks verifies everything is OK and it's tracking, then I make the modified site "live" for the rest of the world.

[jomaxx]

A better way is to launch the code on a handful of pages and wait until you can see some impressions and clicks.

[incrediBILL]

That would be nice but the site is dynamic, I'd be launching it on 100s (or 1000s) of pages at once.

That's why I have a staging area to test the site before rolling it into wide production.

[natto]

Surely it would be easy for Google to filter out your IP so that any of your own clicks won't cost the advertisers? If Google can match up the IP address (or addresses) that you use to access your adsense account with the IP address used to click the ads, then they can simply allow you to click away with no consequence.

[MichaelCrawford]

If you're the sort of site that offers forty thousand pages, then surely you have the staff and technical ability to serve the ads on just a few of the pages, then watch the logs to see if clicks show up.

Trust me, no amount of explaining why it's OK to click your own ads to webmasterworld members is going to help your boss understand why your company was kicked out of adsense because you had to "QA test" your website.

You should also realize - sometimes ads perform very poorly. You have to look at them to understand why. I have one page with very high clickthru rate, it earns almost all my money each month. I have a half dozen pages whose ads go a whole month without a single click.

In some cases it's because those ads aren't really relevant to the content - in my experience, google's keyword-based ad relevance algorithm works very poorly sometimes. In other cases, it's because the kind of people reading those pages are just not the sort of people who like to click on ads.

I've been taking the adsense ads out of the pages where they don't perform, because I don't want to discourage my readers from linking my articles because they see ads all over the place.

[hyperkik]

Don't you check your web site to make sure it's fully functional when you add new things?

Again, AdSense displays in an iframe. AdSense ads are not on your site. Test your site all you want. Google is explicit that you are not to click the ads, and clicking the ads has absolutely nothing to do with testing your own site or server.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I don't understand why this topic keep coming up and getting everyone into a lather. The rules are VERY clear, i.e. dont do it! If people are daft enough to click on their own ads intentionally then too bad! Let them take the consequences.

From now on, when someone asks this question, let's all just say, "Sure, go right ahead" :)

[cagey1]

If, after your "QA Testing", you immediately informed Google about the click(s), citing time, date and site (so they can refund the advertiser), then I would agree that your actions, while dangerous to your account status, are at least not malicious.

If, however, you do not inform Google, then your actions are still theft. And if the ad you clicked was mine, then I want my money back, as I am not in the business of subsidizing your QA efforts with my hard earned money.

[incrediBILL]

If 5 clicks almost a year ago testing a web site that hadn't even been indexed by the mediabot ruffles this many feathers then get off the caffeine before everyone slumps over dead from hypertension.

BTW, did I mention they were all PSAs?

Of course not, but I knew I'd be tried and convicted by the TOS police.

Ah, letting everyone make assumptions was better than my April Fool's prank :)

[sailorjwd]

OK Bill, you may come out of the naughty corner now.

[bestsoc_org]

I think there are some programs which automatically clicks an ad over and over again -with a change of ip for every click. Though, I don't know how it really works.

<snip>

[edited by: Jenstar at 3:10 pm (utc) on April 30, 2005]
[edit reason] No URLS as per TOS, please! [/edit]

[hyperkik]

Bill, I don't care if terms of service violators get thrown out of the program - some people here spend too much time trying to save idiots from themselves. But you gave bad advice, and that's not "saved" by the question of whether you clicked regular ads or public service ads, is it? Where in the TOS does it say, "... except you can click public service ads; we don't care about that"?

You don't want people on your case? Stop giving bad advice. Not too hard?

[incrediBILL]

PSA ads don't cost anyway anything so stop soapboxing. I don't encourage anyone to do it, but I admitted I did a couple just to make sure it worked many months ago so put down the torches and send the villagers home.

If they clicked on regular ads, they should tell Google to refund them.

Back to my original point, testing the technology is a natural impulse and the fact that Google doesn't povide a TEST MODE or a way to ignore our own IP address is just silly. It would be so easy to have an options in the AdSense Preview tool to "TEST THIS PAGE" or "IGNORE MY IP TODAY" or something simple.

[Atticus]

nevermind.

who cares.