Do you report every accidental click?

Do you report every accidental click? I had an accidental click two day ago and reported it and Google gave me the normal response email. I click one accidentally tonight, I'll probably report myself again but how necessary is it?

My accidental clicks are about 0.001% of my total clicks and there is no pattern as the last three accidental clicks were two months apart and 15 months apart respectively and I do report them. I just feel dumb reporting myself two days later after getting my last "thank you for being a good boy, now no more clicking, no-no-no"

 

I have 21 sites, thousands of pages with 3 adsence banners on them.

I have never clicked on an adsense banner

That's why Google bans accounts. One single time it might happen and you can call it an accident, but after the second one it is just being dumb.

 

I never have accidental clicks. Coz i am bit tensed abt my account. But whwen ever i see an unexpected hike in the CTR or number of clicks (may be genuine or may be from some weird minds) i report that to google.

 

The people that get banned for clicking are simply being dumb. One or two clicks aren't the end of the world. It's the ones who click at an abnormal rate from the same IP, or have similar patterns in clicking (clicking on the same day at the same time from the same IP).

You can even trip an impression filter (this would have to be quite a bit). People may argue the impression topic, but Google will stop displaying an ad if the click through rate falls below a certain percentage. So if you run a meta refresh on your page every X amount of seconds, you're effectively lowering the CTR of the ads shown on your page and hurting the adword's advertisers. I'm not saying manual refreshes are bad, but you have to have an abnormal amount to get banned.

But it's real simple...don't click your ads. If you do it once, don't worry about it. Google has PHD's that track this stuff. They know what they're doing. It doesn't benefit them at all to kick legit publishers that provide them legit click throughs because that brings them and the advertisers money.

And when I hear the sad stories of people saying "But I only clicked the ad just once..." or "I never clicked an ad" I call BS.

 

Infiniterb,

Thanks for the feedback and insight. I kinda doubt they'd cut off their side of the click income that my sites generate over an occasional brush of the thumb on the touchpad.

I don't have a PHD and I am not sure what you'd do with a post hole digger on the internet anyway but them Google guys are smart.

 

hehe, yeah. Those post hole diggers are quite expensive (or so I hear). I think minstrel has a post hole digger.

 

I seriously doubt that AdSense would ban an account for self-clicking a few times. I'm pretty sure they realize that some people might be curiouse how it works, what goes next, if the click being tracked just fine etc - I'm pretty sure this kind of stuff has been thought through. If they ban an account I would expect there a serious reazonbehind it which is not one, two or three exidental or trying clicks. I think there would be a huge difference between excidental or trial clicks and the ones that intentional to make more money or whatever it can be. I wouldn't really worry too much about it unless there is something really wrong with your stats and you feel like someone taking advantage of you.

 

AdSense publicly claims a zero tolerance policy. We all now that there is some forgiveness. I administer to 150,000+ webpages ...90% of them have AdSense, I have probably clicked them accidently 6 times in 2 years.

The horror stories we are hearing 'I GOT BANNED FROM ADSENSE'...rest assured they clicked there banners many times and it was no accident

 

that is my point. If someone tells me they got banned for exidental click, to me it would sound pretty similar to - "We were doing it safely, but now I have a baby"

 

LOL...Trojans for Adsense

 

it doesn;t help to report the click. Its all done automatically via the adsense software. Google auto responder will tell you nicely to not click your ads and how it violates the TOS, but it wont stop them from disabling your acount.

 

I did not know this...because they've never emailed me...must mean you have received such an email

 

No, because I have read alot on forums how people would send an email to google and get an automated email in return. Google doesnt have time to look over the thousands of 'I clicked my ad' email.

 

I, for one, dont believe google gets overly concerned with an occasional click on an ad. I have mistakenly done it. I work at a place where we have a few hundered computers all hooked up to the same line. Some of those guys frequent my site during a certain time of year, and I am sure they get curious and click some ads. I have adsense ads, a couple banner ads, and text link ads. I shouldnt have to worry about getting banned for that very very small percentage of clicks where I work because google might think I am clicking my own ads a couple times a day. I am sure they have something in place that looks at percentages.

 

I agree totally...some stories you read about really make you wonder...Google Banned me....I got banned and only clicked a couple times :-/

 

They didn't send me an autoresponder email but they have replied to each email I have sent to them. They did reply to my suggestion to filter out all clicks on an account when the clicks come from an IP that has been used to log in. They said good idea and it may be in a future enhancement. So they don't autorespond but they do human respond.