I have these friends of mine, who came to know about adsense and the whole online earning jig, from an ebook that was in a CD, they borrowed from me. Now these friends of mine, they made 4 or 5 websites, with their adsense on them, and after waiting a few months and seeing no earning, started clicking on their own ads, by using different IP addresses, visiting cyber cafes, from their office and asking other people (including me) to visit their site and click on the ads. Now, I earn a good amount from adsense each month, and I kind of donot like this "pissing-in-the-community-well" kind of job they are doing. I tried talking sense into their heads, tried talking about SEO/Adwords and other ways of bringing visitors into the sites,ideas to improve their sites, and pointed them to DP/SEOchat/SitePoint et al for knowledge. But things remain the same. Am in a moral dilemma, should I go ahead and complain to google of this blatant click fraud or should I keep mum coz this guys are my long time friends. But I cant help thinking about the money the unknowing advertisers are loosing, and they did nothing to deserve this. One of my friend recieved his google PIN last month, and quite happy regardless of the fact that he earned money frauding people he doesnt even know. The others are still waiting for their PIN. Am just fed up trying to talk sense to them.
I would report the sites anonimusly... then tell the friends they will get caught eventualy and their money will go away. Then it will, and they wont have a clue as to you helping them along. Honestly i advertise in adwords and would hate to have this kind of click fraud against one of my campaigns.
If it were a choice between giving up your friends or not I wouldnt tell google but since its anonoymus or however u spell that word......then go ahead and they will soon be banned and wont know its you.
No dilemma - just leave it. From what you've said the sudden burst of click activity from internet cafes and the like will be enough to attract attention. They will get caught before they get their first check - I'm sure of that.
Yes sooner or later they will get banned, most probably before payment, just search about the banned threads on digital point you will find tons of them
I would suggest wait for few days till Google finds out, and if big G don't report it anonymously. I am sure anyway Google will find it out.
Dont ever ... ever .... ever ..... Think of ratting your friends. What they are doing is very wrong. But dont let there stupidity taint your loyalty.
Geeze a little caught in up protecting google and advertisers? F advertisers you are willing to rat out your friends because of a few dollars. Are you jeleous because they are taking the easy road and you didn't? Confused here.....
Look , if they are your real long term friends then you dont have why to tell Google such a thing! Im quite sure that maybe they will take the first cheque or even the second but you will see that they will have spend more money on cyber cafes for a 0.01 click Olgi
Leave the matter to Adsense's anti-click-fraud. You can't out smart it. Traffic and clicks from just several IPs will lead to a click-fraud pattern. I bet your friends are now also greedy with high CTR as well. So it's just a matter of time. Give them two month. Even they're not banned, their account will got smart-priced; those clicks will count as $0.