From time to time it happens, I just did it now, which is why I am posting this. I see that google does not credit me with these clicks, good. They are tracking my ip and matching it with my adsense publisher account. My question is, are they still dinging the adwords customer for that click? I hope not. Because i'm hitting the back button almost instantly. Does anyone know. I think i'll send an email to google and ask.
Well like you said google has top of the line fraud equipment. They know when you click and give you no money. No worries.
Yeah please do so and let us know too. But let me consolidate whatever I have seen and heard in two years. Google does not ban your account so easily due to clicks on your own ads. If it happens often, they might take it seriously.
I'm not worried about getting banned. I know that won't happen if I only click on an ad once every 2-3 months. I just hope they are not charging the owner of the ad for those clicks. They are not paying me for them, so they should not be making the advertisier pay full pop to google. I sent an email to ask what their policy is on accidental clicks and if they still charge the advertisier. I'll post when i hear back.
That's such a simple question, I don't know why you had to email them. The answer is No, they don't charge the advertiser. If you don't get paid for it, Google doesn't get paid for it, so no one is charged. It's, you know, kinda common sense logic...
You should have the right to click your own ads. I mean, you should have the right to know what content is appearing on your site.
Why don't you just get the adsense ad preview tool? You can look at your own ads that way all you want and not get in trouble.
Under the agreement you entered with Google when you decided to participate in their AdSense program, you gave up both those rights. Clicking on all you ads all the time is going to get your account banned -- not simply result in you not being paid for those clicks. Especially, if you use any methods to hide yourself. If you are unhappy with Google's choice of advertisers, you can filter out a certain number of advertisers using the competitive filter. If you are still unhappy, sell your own advertising. Then you will have complete control. Now, if you are generating a million dollars of month of ad revenue with AdSense, then you will be able to craft a new deal with Google and better define what ads it displays.
Ok. Google got back to me. This is what i wrote them: Here is their lame auto response. This sounds to me like they still charge the advertiser for the click. And to those who mentioned using the Adsense preview tool, Google said it too, I am talking about un-intentional, accidental clicks. I did not want to or intend to click the ad. It just happened. Sometimes to get my scroll button on my mouse to work I have to click on the page so it will scroll that window. Quick click and woops, there was an ad in the way. Or I am selecting some text and am a little to close to a google ad when I click to start the selection area. Or when I am building pages in FrontPage and I switch to preview mode, then switch to another page to work on, then switch back to the other page and forget it is in preview mode and BAM I fricken click on the page and quickly realise I am still in preview mode as it starts to load the advertisers page. Oh well, I do try to avoid clicking, but once in a blue moon it happens.
I think what they're saying here is simply that you should be careful, because if they for whatever reason weren't able to determine your accidental click(s) as invalid, it would unfairly cost the advertiser money. Since they caught it, as you saw, they didn't charge the advertiser. It's great to be so consciencious, though - lots of people try to click their own ads and not get caught. One thing you could try while doing a lot of dev. work to keep from accidentally clicking on your own ads is to disable javascript on the page for a bit, then turn it back on as needed.. or there are other tools out there as well for this kind of thing. Good luck!
Just going by what they said. I realy don't care that much either way. I was just curious after having clicked on an ad, and I wanted to hear what others thought of this. And it was not supposed to be a spot for the dummies to bitch about why they should be allowed to click their own ads. Get over it already.
The last time I accidently clicked one of my own ads, my account got terminated lol. I'm not sure if it was for this reason or not, but it sure did suck.