Adsense Policy Clarification Required

This is an excerpt from the Adsense policy document:

Prohibited Clicks and Impressions

Any method that artificially generates clicks or impressions is strictly prohibited. These prohibited methods include but are not limited to: repeated manual clicks or impressions, incentives to click or to generate impressions, using robots, automated click and impression generating tools, third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf, and click-exchange programs, or any deceptive software. Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited, to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs.


Pl note the piece about the manual impressions.

How do you test your own site because everytime you load the page an impression is generated? Could you get banned for that?

 

Nope you shouldnt worry about checking your own website. Just make sure not to click the ads.

 

I understand that it should not cause issues but the TOS clearly says:

"These prohibited methods include but are not limited to: repeated manual clicks or impressions"

How do you convince Google that you were testing?

 

for testing adsense use Google Adsense Preview Tool (provided by Google) - only for IE

 

We do not test adsense as such. What we do when setting up a new website is to see how well it integrates with the complete layout. Will the preview tool help in such cases? I do not think so.

 

Your not using any artificial methods. You will be fine. Think of how forums work, the owner gives his own sites thousands of impressions himself. This policy is just there to protect google from artificial impressions to inflate CPM campagins on your website. You should worry about it. Just dont click your own ads.

 

They don't like "false" impressions for two main reasosn.

1. It may affect CPM advertisers

2. It can artificially lower your CTR.

Some people could then use the latter if they had an otherwise abnormal CTR. As I work on my sites almost all day constantly "looking" at the pages I too was concerned about this. I wrote to them to ask them what to do and their response was :-

Hope that helps - seems like they simply "ignore" impressions from your IP.

 

Re: this suggestion: google_adtest='on';

Where exactly should it be placed? For example, if the page you are checking for testing purposes has a google search code at the top of the page, and an adsense for content code in the top invisible to readers instructions sections and another in some section of your page content--- does this "google_adtest='on';" need to be put in each set of codes and, if so, where? For example, before or after <!-- SiteSearch Google --> ?

This may seem a simplistic question but not being very specific about just where to place suggested pieces of code for one purpose or another, makes that tip confusing.

 

Thanks whitespider. I think that reply from Google clears the doubt.