I was just browsing one of my sites, ensuring everything is in order etc when I saw an AdSense advertisement and thought it looked interesting. In a brief lapse of concentration I clicked the link. It completely passed me by that I was effectively making a fraudulent click, but my intention wasn't to gain AdSense revenue, the Ad genuinely enticed me! I'm sure in most cases, Google would just cancel the credit and put a strike on my account incase I did it again (I won't ) but the site in question isn't really live yet so the AdSense revenue was $0.00 before the click! Does this make it worse, because now 100% (1 Click) of my AdSense revenue for that particular site is fraudulent as oppose to an establised site that has a few hundred $ AdSense revenue, the fraudulent click ratio would be <0.01%. Silly move on my behalf and I hold my hands up to it, but will anything come of it or will Google see it for what it is, a simple mistake. --Mike
I doubt there is any of us who have not clicked on our own ads at some point by mistake. This is why I no longer place the ads on a site until after I have everything working and ready to go live. Google won't bar you for one click unless you have done other things in the past to have them upset with you. You can always tell them about the mistake and ask them to correct it if there is money involved with the click.
Main thing is that if google knew the click from our own then immediately it stops account and our balance is also gone. We are not able to our past balance too.
Google usually monitor a click from the same IP source. If 1 click is seen it would be fine, but if there are five or more it will set up an alarm and you will get a warning email from Google.
It's been a couple of weeks and I've heard nothing from Google. The click/credit is still being displayed in my account which leads me to think Google just see it for what it is - an honest (one-off) mistake. I'm not too worried about it now, but I'll try to remember and update this thread next month (when Google has processed this months AdSense earnings) so that anyone else in this position can relax.
Wow! You guys look really frightened by the big G. Don't worry! Like it was mentioned, Google tracks the IP, and one or even two or even three clicks on your own ads mean NOTHING. Two or three clicks per day every week will probably lead to account cancellation after two or three weeks, so don't worry...
You are in deep hooey. The Google police will not only ban you for life but they will soon start following you around to see if you are involved in other fraud!!!! Only kidding. i think we've all clicked on our own ads sometimes. I hadn't really ever thought about it until I looked at a domain that I had parked with godaddy and clicked on one of the ads to see what would happen and got a "You've been naughty message." Interesting that google doesn't tell you so most of us just drift into it. Whereas Godaddy tells us so that we remember to go over to a friends house to earn a few clicks (again, ONLY KIDDING!!!)