I got an email today from someone who wanted to find a network of 50 people who will intentionally click on each other’s Google Adsense ads.  My first reaction was to email the person back and kindly decline, then let him know that it is against Google’s terms and conditions and wish him good luck.

As I read on however, I was shocked by what he wrote:

… I have already clicked on you ten of your Google ads. You can check your Adsense acct.

This was definitely something I did not appreciate! I logged into my Adsense account and sure enough, the click rate was on the high side. I immediately went to the help center and emailed support of what I noticed in my account and I will await their resolution.

Something I also noticed was that although it shows more clicks, my earnings were actually lower than usual.  Perhaps Google’s automated system already flagged those clicks but hopefully my account won’t be disabled because of this person!

Tips to Keep Your Adsense Account in Good Standing

1. Don’t click on your own ads!
2. Don’t ask anyone else to click on your ads.
3. Don’t show a popup at all for your site that asks users to download or run special software.
4. The pages with Google ads should never be showed on a popup from anywhere.
5. Only show Google ads on sites without prohibited content (check out the program policy for details).
6. Google trademarks cannot be tampered or altered, nor can it be shown to artificially build your site’s credibility without Google’s prior consent.
7. Don’t change the Adsense code
8. Sites with Adsense should provide value for the user in some way.
9. Anything Google deems deceitful for the user is prohibited.
10. The site should be presented in a way that advertisers will want to place ads on the site
11. Publishers should be responsive to emails sent by the Adsense team (this is a little funny because the Adsense team is not always responsive to our emails :))

This is taken from Google’s help center.  For the original list, click here.

For those that are new to the blogging world, I strongly advise not to try gaming the Adsense system!  At the end of the day, this is just a waste of your time as Google is very good at catching people who violate their guidelines.

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