We often receive questions from new publishers about what these two terms mean, and we'd like to help you understand the difference.Invalid clicks are clicks for which we decide not to charge our AdWords advertisers, since they may artificially drive up advertiser cost or publisher revenue. These include extraneous clicks without any value to the advertiser, such as the second click of a double-click. They also include many other types of clicks that we've determined aren't motivated by genuine user interest.As a reminder, any method that artificially generates clicks, impressions, or conversions is strictly prohibited by our program policies. You can also find more information about these topics in our Invalid Clicks FAQ and our Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center.
"Invalid clicks" are often confused with "clicking on your own ads". However, we'd like to stress that invalid clicks are generally any clicks that artificially inflate advertiser cost or publisher revenue, regardless of their source.
Click fraud is a subset of invalid clicks that are generated with malicious or fraudulent intent -- in other words, clicks that are intended to drive up advertiser cost or publisher revenue artificially. Sources for these clicks include, but are not limited to:The same principles above apply to ad impressions and conversions as well. Some sources of invalid impressions include, but are not limited to:A publisher clicking on his own ads, or encouraging clicks on his ads Users or family members clicking to support the site / publisher Third-party programs with user incentives, such as paid-to-click services and click-exchanges Automated clicking tools, robots, or other deceptive software Excessive page refreshes, generated either manually or automatically Third-party programs with user incentives, such as paid-to-surf or auto-surf programs Third-party programs for purchasing fixed amounts of traffic, e.g. "$10 for 1,000 page views"
Updated links to resources
63 comments:
What if I am redesigning a site and require to refresh the site several times in a day?
I can't ask help from the Help Forum because I'm not a member, and I may be refused membership because of the way I had to fill out the application form. How do I get an answer to this?
I DON'T HAVE A MAILBOX. I live out in the country and our mail gets stolen out here. I got tired of my mailboxes being smashed as well. So I now get my mail at a P.O. Box.
I put my street address in the first address line on the application and tried to put my P.O. Box on the second line. It refused it. The only way I could make it word was to just put "Box 1472" on the second line.
I provided both addresses....is this going to get my app refused?
sorry, but I couldn't find any other way to ask the question!
I have same question as "lozbo", what if I redesign my website, I always remove ads while I am doing any changes but in sometime I have to add them to preview how page look like with them, also how about forums where I have to view every new topic which is published so I can know whether it's a spam or original post by member.
So, let me get one thing straight:
A)a competitor clicks your ads till exaustion - you're banned.
B) a competitor refreshes your pages millions of time, and you're banned.
Thanks Adsense!
Hey Borisz, I found this:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10005&topic=160
Looks like it only works for our [sarcasm]favorite[/sarcasm] browser though... haven't tried it out yet but hope it helps...
perhaps an ajax part could avoid the page refresh. Like only certain parts of the page will be updated. But I believe not all publishers are capable to add ajax or similar intelligent technologies to their website or hire some one to do these jobs.
I am wondering if any Adsense support can satisfy the question of santiago asked?
Thanks for the update.
J
super
thankx Lozbo for letting me know about that
Oh, yikes. I'm in the middle of a huge migration and am having to do most of the development on the live site -- constant refreshes. How do we know if we're exceeding the limits?
(Do questions get answered here on the blog? First time posting ...)
I have the same questions as asked above. Unfortunately, I have never seen even a single questions answered here.
Hi,
Thanks for your questions. You can find answers in our FAQ at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=62472 .
Lozbo, Borisz, and Karentempler, you might find the section which discusses viewing your own site helpful.
Santiago and Jojy, you can find information about protecting your account in this section of the FAQ.
Isn't there a tool/software to identify the invalid clicks or click frauds so that we can report to you (Adsense) before our sites are banned?
Thanks for the advise good post.
I have a website www.1320movie.com which is nearly entirely all made up of flash code. If you have your system checking this and somebody refreshes, since it is all flash the domain doesn't change right? My friend said that since the flash file is self contained and doesn't have key words such as fast and furious or street racing for meta tags that it is only one file and I would have to purchase these ads in order to generate some additional traffic. What if there is an additional page for my URL that I have setup under a different domain name made out of html code or something besides flash -- would this help ratings or are ads going to be a necessity???
THanks
I have 23 clicks today and none of them is valid. I earned 0 for them. I have no idea why. I have always received between 15 and 35 clicks a day. This is the frist time not even one click is valid. Since my amount of received clicks is regular, it is obvious Google makes mistakes sometimes. I hope you'll improve this part of the system, it is very depressing.
Well, best regards anyway and make a good day.
Thank you for responding, but I'm not sure this answers the question:
"Can I view my own site without generating invalid impressions?
Yes, you're welcome to view your own pages without generating invalid impressions. However, please keep in mind that clicking on your own ads is strictly prohibited by our program policies (http://www.google.com/adsense/policies). As you may know, we constantly monitor all clicks and impressions on Google ads for any invalid activity that may artificially drive up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings."
So if I'm developing on the live site and doing a ton of refreshes as a result, I shouldn't worry about it? I've never clicked my own ads, but do I not need to worry about you getting worried about impressions? I just don't want to inadvertently find myself on the wrong end of some judgment.
And as someone else noted upthread, the vast majority of my traffic is in my forum, and I monitor every thread and participate regularly, so I do naturally create impressions on a daily basis, apart from the development issue.
i have my adsense site . some days before my adsense account is blocked of account finacially damges resigen . please answer me what i will do.
I have applied for an adsense account . Its more than a month now and my account is still not active. The message I have been seeing says that he account will be reviewed in a week, but its arround a month and account is still not active. I request Adsense to please activate my account.
Our account was mistakenly suspended for some type of artificial clicks, etc. today. We had no notice or contact from Google and the decision to suspend our account was based on false information.
I'm quite disgusted with Google Adwords right now. The level of customer service for us publishers is unacceptable.
I run a Christian family website. Tonight I was checking my pages and noticed very inappropriate ads. I reported this to Google.
After many of these ads came up I began to worry. What did site visitors see if they clicked these ads. Without thinking I clicked thre of them to see how bad it was. Now I have three clicks that I should not.
I tried contacting Google to report this. As I went through thr process for contacting I got to the page that says Google relizes this could happen and doesn't expect us to report each accidental click. I am worried though since there are three of them. It put .52 cents on my account. Is there a way to volentarily get Google to remove this from my account and stay in good standing?
Geesh...been disabled for no reason,,,google still hasn't told me why, Got an email to update etc. So i went to the site not thru the email but to the site to sign in on the 24th they asked me to supply them with w's info, SS# phone verification & bank info, inwhich i did, The next day in am disabled no email no nothing just disabled. Numerous emails to them nothing back. BEWARE...after all that personal info no i'm disabled???? I have a dog and cat site about food and accessories, so nothing there, i have not clicked on any ads or had anyone do so. JUST DISABLED why no reason WHY. DO these people know how much work u put into putting these ads on your site? I am a newbie and have spent hours doing this. the ads have only been on 2 weeks. I am REALLY up-set with these people & the way they handle yes us as customers, we are doing them a favor also by putting these ads on our sites so they can make $$$ too. Theya at least could have the cooth to let you know what you did or warn you or something. Not just get all your personal info one day and ban you the next, FISHY. you-tube i;m in the making
can you tell me, how I can get my click earning? thanks
This info is really helpfull. I have found my report there are some clicks but There is no earning. What does it mean? Thanks..
What if people click our account until banned? How do we combat there?
What if someone clicks intentionally to make account banned?
You lock people's account with no option to restart it (Even if you clear older revenues).
Will consider reopening accounts of which the owner agrees to start from 0$ all over again?
Thanks.
I agree with Santiago
Adsense policy sucks. I had someone repeatedly click on some ads (malicious or mistakingly thinking it helped? - who knows they won't say!!) and the account gets closed down. Bam no warning, no discussion, no integrity
The Adsense Team, I applaud you on the brilliant job you're doing to protect advertisers from getting scammed and ripped off. It's great that you're caring so much for them.
However, I am slightly concerned with the amount of publishers who are feeling scared and worried that they might get banned by Google Adsense. Many people feel the policies involved are way to strict and feel there is very little transparency between Publishers and Adsense. I would love to see this improved.
Thanks once again,
-LostOverThere
Is there anyone to help out there? Today I went to my site and all my ads were down. No e-mail. No explanation. No help. I've worked so hard on it and have never clicked on my own ads. I have no clue as to what happened and I'm pretty discouraged because there doesn't seem to be a place I can go to to get help---just more links. I wish they had a help desk! I'm not sure what I did wrong. I mean, this is all great, to get to vent, but it doesn't solve my problem. And, I'm not that technologically savvy, so that doesn't help! Thanks for listening.
hello
my earning is very poor how can i will increase my earning from adsense if is there any one please help me
I use a mac and safari and don't get an adsense preview tool on my right click menu, how do I preview my ads when I can't use the preview tool and how do I report that I have clicked a link accidentally before I get accused of wrongfully clicking ads?
Dear Adsense Team
I'm here representating all the adsense publishers who are victim of long Festival Vacation that results disabling of Adsense account.
The countries like Nepal and India (and Gulf countries too) has lots of festivals and some festivals are so long that big mass of people stays in long vacations.
I'm publisher from Nepal, my adsense account has got disabled.
The main reason for disabling of adsense account is not due to invalid clicks, it is due to long Festival Vacation that caused it. Nepal has a big festival Dashin (Dashara in India) where 10 to 20 percent people are in work. Rest of the country are closed everywhere which means there are less visitors for publishers whose targeted area are the locals.
Dashain Festival lasts at least 3 weeks that means around a month, generally it starts from last of September and ends at mid of October (this year it started form September 30 and ended at 14 October). During this period there are very very low traffic (around 0.5 to 2 percentage).
Adsense has always been dividing publishers from where they belongs. Like publishers from US and Japan have different facilities, publishers form developed countries can only use the facility of online payments and so, publishers from the developed and underdeveloped countries have huge difference of revenue on same content, Adsense for mobile is restricted to publishers from limited regions.. ... ... and lots.
If Adsense has been dividing publishers for few or many factors in its services or so then now Adsense should also think for those publishers who has really great impact due to Long Festival Vacations or so. Publishers from affected countries or reasons should be analysed why and what are the cause before disabling account due to less or no impressions.
If Adsense is dragging publishers towards it and has divisions based on various factors then Adsense must also be responsible to investigate on factors that might arise based on different regions or countries.
I love Adsense, it matters to me and lots of publishers to. If Adsense also loves me or publishers who are victim like me then I'm Appealing Adsene Team, Adsene Publishers and all directly and indirectly people involved and related to Google Adsense that Adsense should consider in this factor, Adsene publishers from the affecting regioins should first be analysed before disabling their account.
Every body knows Adsense Team doesn't take of publishers whose account are disabled if appealed again. Why is this?? Adsense is proud of their technology that it has best click fraud detection technology, but the universal truth (beign a programmer) is that "A program can never satishfy its users for long period of time", this is because as time passes on new problems and factors arises that makes programmers re-modify the algorithm, codes and so hence there are different versions of softwares.
Tips for Adsense Team:
- you have powerful resourses and tool like Analytics hence Please Please Please recheck datas from Analytics from affecting country (like Nepal in my case).
- you will see dramatic traffic change on all sites that are accessed from the region
Here is a site that is most popular: http://www.nepalnews.com and
here is a site which is not so popular: http://www.bigmantra.com
both of these sites have drammatic change in terms of visitors.
Please Adsense Team save publishers and earn glory.
Thankyou
help to get help @ gmail . com
i posted a comment on "internet moneymaking scam" ,i want to say that i was wrong & was misguided.forgive me for posting wrong information..
my adsense a/c is disabled now , Is there any chance that my adsense account is being normal again ? till today I am blogging genuinely also earn more than $10 a month, but suddenly a/c is disables , plz someone guide me
OhK sounds interesting to me,
I am new in Adsense and I'm trying to be to understand it but it is so so complex!~ :S I am so tired reading and reading to all just to understand this Adsense thingy.
I hope I understand this soon. And after going in the Adsense account I'm like lost in it for hours reading about it. I hope they make it easier for us to understand it soon as possible. They should make a video or something that can help the Basic Adsense users as well.
that's all I got to say.
I have a mac and use Safari. I'm trying to understand how to delete unwanted ads from my AdSense. How can I determine the url of the ad for the Competitive Ad Filters dialog without clicking on the ad itself? The AdSense suggestions don't seem to work with Safari!!
What if the ad that appeared on my site is very interesting and i wanted to know more about it. Can I not click on the ad?
Dear adsense team,
Just few minitue ago, i tried to login my adsense account and i saw below message....
Account Disabled
Your AdSense account for this login is currently disabled. We recommend checking your email inboxes for any messages we may have sent you regarding your account status. Sometimes our messages can be caught by email filters, so please be sure to check the Bulk/Spam folders of your email accounts as well.
If your account was disabled for invalid click activity, please visit our Disabled Account FAQ for more information.
Now i want to tell that google adsense mentioned that
****Your AdSense account for this login is currently disabled.We recommend checking your email inboxes for any messages we may have sent you regarding your account status.****
i did not get any type of this mail in my inbox and i also checked spam folder.There is no this type of maail in my inbox or spam folder.
so i will request hardly that please send that email again because i dont know the actual reason for disable my account.
Thanks all
Dear Sir,
My adsense account disabled due to invalid clicks.
Now can I make new google adsense account and switch my blog adsense
to new adsense account.
if some one want to make us upset and click on our ads daily many time
from many computers. Then how can we provent ourself??? please tell me
how can we safe our self by invalid and fraud clicks
Regards,
Umair Sheikh
so am i allowed to click on my own absence adds even if it is only once a day,as i read this below,
If you've added an AdSense for search box to your page, you're probably aware of the relevant search results it provides your users. That being said, a few publishers have asked us if it’s a violation of our program policies to perform searches in their own AdSense for search boxes. The short answer is no, this activity is not explicitly prohibited by our program policies.
However, we strongly advise against using your own AdSense for search box for a couple of reasons. First, it can increase the chance of accidental or invalid clicks on the ads that appear on the search results pages. Second, this will inflate the number of queries in your reports, giving you an inaccurate picture of the activity on your site.
this is saying that we will no be in violation of there policy.
I have the same question as Cathryn Sykes. She said...
"I can't ask help from the Help Forum because I'm not a member, and I may be refused membership because of the way I had to fill out the application form. How do I get an answer to this?
I DON'T HAVE A MAILBOX. I live out in the country and our mail gets stolen out here."
I would really appreciate an answer. If you could email me at mae.gal@gmail.com that would be great.
Thanks so much!
Yes we dont get home mail delivery either since we live in a town. All we get is po boxes. How do we get notification.
Thanks,
Dave
David, Sarah and Cathryn:
I typed in "Postal Box #" and it seemed to accept that.
Hope this helps.
Debbie
Google compant is big company but google is also a big cheaters they making fool the inocent peoples and peoples working on their websites and adding google addsin their websited after when peoples earn a good money from his website and when time is near to payment google disable the account only just for saying this that your account is disable by invalid acitivity even their is no such a activity was happend their and they do this beacuse earning money from advertisers and no to give publisher there is no proper channel for contacting them and they never replied to your email google is big cheater company.
I am news editor and i have a power of media currently start a Big campaign in which we plan to biccot the google company in the whole Asia and that time is very near when we remove the google atleast from whole asia and australia while china has a big plan for helping us dont worry we are going to plan start a compnay like google but not a cheater company like google.
YEs agree with Umair their must another company like google who dont have a fucking program policies like google. Google must be banned because they are a big cheaters and cheat peoples they dont pay every publisher i think the ratio of paying from google is like if for example google have 1000 adsense account creates every month then they disable 900 account for no such a particual reason and just pay 100 publisher who will come here and said google is good but the truth is that google are the cheaters.
Ok, so it would seem I am not alone in my concerns. I clicked on the YouTube video link, only because I was interested in the video myself, and now I am worried that I will have my account shut down. I will ask someone to pull the click, and any funds raised by it, from my account if I can actually talk to someone. Reaching a real live person does seem to be an issue.
My account was yanked for "click fraud" by (a) my competitors or (b) over-zealous fans of my sites. It took me several weeks to convince Google it wasn't me.
By over-zealous, I mean the type that clicks your ads because they think they are doing you a favor (which is is holdover from the 'early days' of advertising).
I want assurances that Google has updated thier system to automatically deny suspected "click fraud" on their own and not pull my account each time some competitor or some goon-head "click frauds" my site.
Dear Google - have you worked this out? Because what prevents people from click frauding competitors to get the Google ads yanked to kill the competitors ad revenue?
I am upset!! I just signed up for youtube intergrated into my site and my adsense was just disabled I am a new adsense member so I don't fully understand the adsense thing I want to know how I can get it reinstated and given a chance for I don't have any knowledge of why it was disabled just something that beats around the bush to me without justification or a real explantion why I don't know why I have to go to the help center it just says you can't get it reinstated when I don't even know why and if I clicked on my site or my daughter pushed a button on my laptop by accident does that mean my account is automatically terminated. I work so hard to place those ads and sign up for things integrated into google adsense I don't know what to do. It's not like I can contact google adsense. What action can I take?Please HELP
Well, after reading the previous posts, I realize the crowd of upset people is growing fast! I just got suspended today. I have 14 websites that have been suspended in one quick swoosh by google. Everyday, I have been testing different means of marketing these websites to the general public. My number of visits & clicks have increased as expected. Yesterday, I listed all 23 of my websites on my facebook page, today I have 14 suspended sites, no answers, no way of getting answers, and they took away the money that I have been accumulating for the past 30 days! It sounds to me like Google is collecting money from advertisers and not paying the publishers who are hosting the ads. I'm going to spread the word, change my default search engine to Yahoo and say goodbye to google forever. Now I understand why g--gle stock is going down.
I am wondering if some one clicks many times on ads from one IP for any reason, what can i do for the safety of my account ??? Can any one have any idea please ?
yes, im agree you all, my account also has been disable due to invalid clicks.
It has been a week now since I filled the form to reenable my account after google adsense banned my account for no reason. I did everything right and I didn't ask to nobody to click on my website ads.
so what's the problem? is this fair? what's the best to contact google and get my account back on track?
thank you
Hi, is there any way to track the invalid/fraud click.. Can we track who is doing this annoying things?
My account is blocked :-(
I am working on 9 blogs and most of the time i update all of my blogs.. I am wondering if updating the blogs resulted in the issue?
Thanx Adsense
i did a lot of hard work for days and nights on my PC to make a blog on sports. I earned more than 30$ in 15 days. After that it got blocked. I submitted the form but no reply. I mean if i go to a site like AMAZON.COM or bigger sites . And i myself click 10,000 times on the link. SO that google should ban them as Well. It is possible for anyone to block anyones blog. Why does not google just block that invalid IP adress or DEDUCT that invalid link money rather than just DISABLING the blog. It's Really a hard work for a person like me to sit on computer and waste energy and trust. Ain't it?
I just created my site 2 nights ago and am only now fully understanding about the clicks and page views. I clicked on a couple of my own ads because I really wanted to see the shoes on them, sorry! It wasn't malicious. Also, it's a blog so I do view my own page quite frequently to update and see if I have new followers etc. I hope that doesn't constitute fraud.
But my question is: does clicking on my ads result in the person's getting on a bunch of email lists or getting spammed somehow??
thank you for this great program.
my account has been disable due to this reason : While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our
advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account.
Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in advance
for your understanding and cooperation : -- now i don't know what i hav to do can anyone pease tell me why they disabled my account and what aboutn my payments do i still get paid? please tell me..
Disgusted with google, i am both an advertiser and a publisher, i built my own website and applied for adsense, i got approved and accumulated about $50, then the next day, i got that same message every one else does and got disabled.
I spent $4000 in 2weeks on adwords, then i get canceled for no reason for just $50, I am currently advertising on bing and i will also advertise on yahoo and then i am going to cancel my adwords account, pronto!
thanks all, jean
Now I begin to understands more about this thing..
Keep it up google team..
:)
Indeed... at least I don't feel so alone on this now. Also got my account ditched without explanation (aside from the boilerplate others posted above). No idea who was clicking, or where, or when, or how much. Just that my account is gone and no one will talk to me. Meanwhile, readership and pageviews grow... way to go, Google...
How do we as publishers, stop other publishers from doing click fraud?
Here is a comment that I frequently get on Blogcatalog:
"I visited your site. It's very nice. I had clicked on your google ads. I hope you do the same to my google ads. Please click on this blog and ads http://removedurlofblog/ please keep in touch and click on ads, it helps both of us earn $$!!. thanks a lot!"
I replied and told him that I will not click on his ads, but how am I supposed to stop other publishers from doing this?!
I am so afraid that I will be banned because of other users!
It doesn't seem fair that my account could get closed because of other publishers.
I also reported that user immediately, but still, I get this kind of request a lot and am very worried about my accounts good standing because of other users doing click fraud.
Thank you!
Try simple 2 steps to protect your adsense!
1.Use allowed sites in google settings!
2.This is a commercial tool! Try Adsense Guard tool! (http://www.adsguard.com)
I am using above tips to protect my account for 2 years now!
Enjoy!
what is important thing should i do on my website if i use PPC programs like adwords and ysm to promote my site to get more visitor and get more adsense revenue?
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