Forum Moderators: martinibuster
If AS has finally figured out who I am and no longer counts my impressions, is it not resonable to assume that they will simply filter out my clicks as well?
If so... when did this happen and how come I didn't get a memo? :p
BTW, I've only accidentally clicked my ads once, a year ago. I use replacement AS Gifs while I develop. But with all of the paranoia revolving around new users clicking their own ads, it would be nice to know for sure. Anyone? ASA?
I think it would be dangerous to assume that you are "protected" from clicking your own ads simply because your impressions are not recorded in your AdSense stats. In fact the opposite is true: self-generated clicks will certainly be recorded as attempts to defraud if you don't report them.
I think a single unreported self-click on a long established account may be excused as carelessness. But I wouldn't bet my account on it. :)
it would be dangerous to assume that you are "protected" from clicking your own ads simply because your impressions are not recorded
Of course I wouldn't just assume that based just on my own obsevations. However, it would be nice if Google put everyone at ease and said that impressions and clicks by you or any related accounts are automatically detected and discounted. It's not rocket science for them to do that.
Back to me... If this is not happening to anyone else, why am I special?
- Could it be because I have in the past generated hundreds of thousands of impressions building a sitemap?
- Could it be because I have reached a certain earnings level?
- Could it be because a short while ago, G audited on or more of my sites?
Again... I put up a new site yesterday morning and have generated 100's of impressions testing it live and still no impressions have been recorded.
Back to me... If this is not happening to anyone else, why am I special?
My observations over the past year are thus - my visits definitely count as impressions. However, I have occasionally had the accidental click on one of my own sites, and when it happens, it shows up as a click with 0 earnings. This has happened both from home and from the office (where I have two different IP numbers). I log in to my AdSense account from all three places, and from what I can tell, no clicks from any of the three IP numbers have ever been counted. Therefore, my guess is that somehow they don't count clicks coming from the IP numbers from which I log in to my account. As long as this happens at most maybe two or three times a year, they're smart enough to realize it was probably an accident, and not boot me out of the program.
Now, I have no idea if that's true, and I dunno how they'd handle something like AOL or other proxy situations, so I could be completely and totally off. But that's what it LOOKS like to me.
They do have the cpm model now so it makes sense.
Good thinking. I know I have CPM ads that show up on some of my sites.
Can anyone else with CPM ads confirm this?
I log in to my AdSense account from all three places, and from what I can tell, no clicks from any of the three IP numbers have ever been counted. Therefore, my guess is that somehow they don't count clicks coming from the IP numbers from which I log in to my account. As long as this happens at most maybe two or three times a year, they're smart enough to realize it was probably an accident, and not boot me out of the program.
It is possible that G would not count clicks (or credit accounts) by people with accounts for which they've built up some history of IP addresses. However, think of the implications for your earnings when the IP addresses you usually use are transferred to some other organization.
De Facto, you are penalized for working on your site. Is it fair to count impressions that cannot possibly generate clicks? No. So what? They must have some reason for doing it.
I sometimes generate 100 impressions a day working on ONE page (I'm a perfectionist - I want to see the results of my efforts NOW, in real time, on the net, as I work, every few minutes.) This dilutes my CTR, resulting in lower payouts (EPC), theoretically.
It's just part of the game - that's the way it works. I stopped worrying about this a long time ago, among other things. Just let big G do its job, and you do yours - create the best pages you possibly can, and don't sweat the small stuff. One could nit pick all kinds of things, but why bother? Just a waste of effort for me.
I can assure you that publishers are still not permitted to click on their own ads. Our engineers appreciate your feedback on this issue.
If you ever have specific questions or concerns about something you're seeing in your stats, the AdSense support team will be happy to look into your account for you:
[google.com...]
-ASA
[edited by: AdSenseAdvisor at 3:10 am (utc) on Oct. 6, 2006]
I asked Google, saying I'm a webmaster, and need to check updated pages. I was asking about impressions, not clicks. Webmasters, of course, can avoid clicks but not impressions.
They wrote back and said keep it to a minimum (impressions). Seems fair to me, esp. when advertisers buy packets of 10,000 impressions (or something high?), and one or two impressions equals fractions of a cent (?).
This was months ago. No idea if anything has changed. I don't click on my links (maybe twice accidentally in the last year), and keep impressions from reviewing updated pages to a minimum. Besides checking updated pages, I also occasionally check some pages just to see which 'fleas' I need to wipe out w/ the competitive filter.
p/g
Exactly how does this effect on my bottom line?
As explained above:
"I sometimes generate 100 impressions a day working on ONE page (I'm a perfectionist - I want to see the results of my efforts NOW, in real time, on the net, as I work, every few minutes.) This dilutes my CTR, resulting in lower payouts (EPC), theoretically."
"Google wrote back and said keep it to a minimum (impressions)."
