Accidental click

Should I explain to Google?

[BenW]

Today a friend looking at my website using my computer clicked on an Adsense ad before I could stop him. Do you think I should explain the situation to Google? I know which ad he clicked, the site it led to and the time of his click. I'm rather worried now as I have read on here of people being excluded from Adsense for such things,

[wonderboy]

Every response to such a question is "yes go tell google" They will respond with a "thanks for telling us" and "try to avoid such things in the future".

W.

[Mario]

Yes definitely tell them.

[Jenstar]

It seems to be more of an issue with newer publishers, and usually a single click won't hurt a publisher. But many do chose to play it on the safe side, so it won't hurt to contact AdSense and explain what happened. It will also give you peace of mind ;)

[surfer67]

Boy, some friend. I'd report him to the authorities, and if possible, throw the book at him. These type of actions should not be taken likely or even tolerated.

Sorry, got a little carried away there :)

[novice]

It will probably help you to sleep at night if you contact Google and let them know.

Here is an interesting thread about a similar situation [webmasterworld.com...]

Note post #6, even GoogleGuy got in on the action.

[dvduval]

At a deeper level, always remember that advertisers and google track the number of conversions. In other words, the advertiser (using cookies) is informing google when they have a successful sale.

If you or third parties (so called friends) start clicking on ads, your conversion statitistics are going to raise a red flag, and eventually I think, your account will be terminated.

I was trying to right-click an ad to get the url, and somehow I still ended up "clicking" on one of my ads. I didn't tell Google. My opinion is a single occurence is not going to cause a problem, but that it is really stupid to try to beat the system in anyway.

(and I'm not saying you were trying to do anything malicious...)

[DaveN]

every time I launch a new site I always click on the ads to see if i should ban them or not, pretty sure google can see my login IP and just exclude it from the stats. I even go to jenstar's site and click on hers too ...... lol ( only joking jen :) )

[Rodney]

every time I launch a new site I always click on the ads to see if i should ban them or not

How come you don't just click on the "Ads by Google" so you can see all 4 ads at once without wasting the advertisers money with your tests?

[dvduval]

How come you don't just click on the "Ads by Google" so you can see all 4 ads at once without wasting the advertisers money with your tests?

THANK YOU for telling me about this...I NEVER knew about this. Now I can stop clicking on Jenstar's ads. :-)

[getadsensed]

Hey, your friend must have clicked on an ad coz he was really interested in the ad, so I guess if you explain it's okay! ;)