Paying for clicks from Google team?

[markbiz]

I started advertising on AdWords a little over a week ago. I received 5 clicks so far. I have a hit-tracker on my site, and i noticed that 3 of those clicks came from the same ip (216.239.45.4). I traced the ip, and it comes from Google. That was probably because i submitted new keywords 2 times, plus the first time they reviewed my site (that's 3 in total). But why would i have to pay for them to check my site (3x0.5=$0.15)? Is that how it works?

[vibgyor79]

Not sure what's happening in your case - but I'm almost sure that you don't have to pay for clicks from AdWords editorial team. You get charged only when somebody actually searches for your ad through Google or its partner sites and clicks on the ads. Actually, you won't be charged even if you click on your ad from your account under View/Edit Campaigns.

How many impressions have you collected so far?

[hannamyluv]

Could it be that Google staff is shopping from work? :)

[rhyno]

I can relate.

I just created a set of new Ad Groups yesterday (spilt from One Big Group), resetting click counts for each keyword/ad.

Today AdWords reports about a dozen clicks. I check my local logs ... and I received eight visits from: 216.239.39.5 -- a Google address -- to my tracked URL! And all came in at 1:47am EST (?)

Sure look like they were charged to me...

It's only a buck-and-a-half of costs, but it's the principle.

<grumbles>

[GoogleGuy]

Hi markbiz, and welcome to WebmasterWorld! We filter out internal clicks from the GooglePlex so that you don't get charged for those. Any clicks from the editorial team, people surfing from inside Google, etc. aren't charged on your account.

[vibgyor79]

Thanks for confirming that GG.

>>> people surfing from inside Google

Now that's interesting. Why is that?

[Chris_R]

Google trys to be ethical - the standard political phrase would be:

"To avoid the appearance of impropriety"

So they filter their surfers behavior.

You don't want people complaining they lost $1.00 on a click from a google employee.

My understanding is that findwhat, overture, and the others do this as well.

[martekbiz]

Hmmm...

Wouldn't it be great that is Adwords offered the ability for us to create a IP filter list so that we could prevent certain IP's from viewing our ads?

Think about.. lets say we're able to determine that an IP is continuously clicking on our links to drive up the cost and we figure this out. How cool would be if we could filter thse IP's from ever viewing our ads to that IP thus giving the person on the other end of the IP a fake impression that we cancled our ads.

Or.. how about when Adwords recognizes that an IP has continuously hit an the same ad or same account holder's ad in a certain time period that an email be dispathed to the account holder to notify them of the offending IP so we can do our own looks up and then potentially ban the IP using the function I described above.

Hmm.. interesting thoughts I am having and not all that complex to implement from a programming stand point.

Just my thoughts.

Aaron

[bcc1234]

Great idea. But only for manually enabled filters.
If it's going to be automated - there will be a lot of false block for proxies.

On the other hand, one person might use many proxy servers to just keep clicking your ads.

And maintaining a list of all ips for all adwords users - that's one more huge database google has to worry about.

[martekbiz]

It would be only manually added IP filters.

Again, it would be up to the Account Holder to assess the risk associated with banning an IP.

Aaron