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Valid clicks policy

How does Google consider legitimate clicks?

         

silverbytes

3:52 pm on Apr 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I'm new in adsense and trying to understand the nature of the business still...

My dumb question: What if you sing up and tell all your friends that click your ad? (I know that is not correct, but the question is how does google consider a valid click?)

What about your own clicks? I use to enter repeadly to my sites for mantainance reasons and to check everything is going right, so I probably will click sometimes those ads?

Will google count that too? My own clicks?
What if a competitor clicks repeatedly your ads? Does that harm your adsense account? or benefit?

europeforvisitors

3:55 pm on Apr 22, 2004 (gmt 0)



What about your own clicks? I use to enter repeadly to my sites for mantainance reasons and to check everything is going right, so I probably will click sometimes those ads?

Don't. That's a violation of the program policies, and you're likely to be kicked out if you're caught (as many publishers have been).

loanuniverse

3:57 pm on Apr 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



What if a competitor clicks repeatedly your ads? Does that harm your adsense account? or benefit?

It can probably harm your account. I think that there might be some discretion as to how the rule would be applied in a case like that, but the potential for harm exists in that situation.

silverbytes

4:04 pm on Apr 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Thats very ugly... whatever competitor can then click spoil your business just clicking your adds...

About clicking yourself I understand.

jomaxx

5:03 pm on Apr 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



That's the version of the Internet we're stuck with. There is virtually no way that Google will ever be able to prove who is generating the bogus clicks, much less whether they are doing it with your knowledge or whether they are trying to help or hurt you.

However any competitor would have very little motivation to get you kicked out, since they wouldn't stand to gain anything - it's not going to drive you right out of business, and it won't help them show better ads. The only scenario where it really makes sense is where the publisher is also bidding competitively for keyword traffic.

Besides, any competitor doing so would be exposing themselves to a huge civil lawsuit, and maybe even criminal charges, especially now that it's possible for webmasters to track the IP addresses where clicks are coming from, and even to set cookies when a user clicks on an ad.