Comments on: Google AdSense Says Don’t Worry About Accidental Clicks, No One Will Notice

By: vsd 32

vsd 32 — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 08:24:03 +0000

Really is a great title for this entry but i don’t know if we really shoud beleive it: ???
Google AdSense Says Don’t Worry About Accidental Clicks, No One Will Notice

By: SEOrefugee

SEOrefugee — Sat, 26 May 2007 16:35:15 +0000

Danny, you and I both know there’s no way they would catch it and yet, lots of people readily believe Google’s AdSense/AdWords fraud numbers. That’s always baffled me.

If they don’t catch it, they must not know about it. If they know about it, then why don’t they catch it?

I don’t know whether the AdSense team intentionally lies to the public or if they just don’t get it but either way, it’s disturbing.

By: netmeg

netmeg — Fri, 25 May 2007 17:40:58 +0000

They’re matching something up, whether or not you are logged in to your Google account. I have occasionally had “accidental” clicks over the years. I have three IP numbers from which I log in to my AdSense account; one at home and two at work, depending on whether or not I’m on the cable or the dsl connection. The two work IPs have been the same for years, the one at home changes every six to eight months or so. Google has never once attributed any earnings to my accidental clicks, and I’m pretty sure about this, because on the few occasions that it’s happened, I’ve looked for it. They record the click, but there’s zero earnings for it. That happens whether or not I’m logged in to one of my Google accounts at the time of the click.

By: Gang0rraZ

Gang0rraZ — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:11:15 +0000

From the Desk of Gang0rraZ
Friday May 25 10:45AM
The Internet

Dear Milos,

I oversimplified it to not get into all the technical details. To avoid the problem you mention they would simply record more information, not only the ip. For example, to make it more improbable, they could record the user agent string as well “”Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; (R1 1.5); .NET CLR 2.0.50727)” in addition to the ip.

Now a more evil, I mean “advanced” approach is to use the Google toolbar with PageRank or Desktop Search to notify Google when you change ips. They would not do this in the open and would probably hide the notification in a hashed value.

Your pal,
Gang0rraZ

By: Milos Mileusnic

Milos Mileusnic — Fri, 25 May 2007 15:17:43 +0000

Gang0rraZ, that could be tricky because of dynamic IP addresses provided by ISPs. For examle, I login to AdSense, Google remembers my IP. After a while, I disconect my modem/cable/whatever. ISP can assign my IP address to anyone else then, and clicks from that users won’t count because Google still believe it is me clicking on ads?! I don’t think so…

By: Gang0rraZ

Gang0rraZ — Fri, 25 May 2007 14:53:26 +0000

From the Desk of Gang0rraZ
Friday May 25 10:45AM
The Internet

Dear Danny,

I hate to say this but there is actually a very simple way for them to tell if you are clicking your ads.

You don’t need to be logged on. They simply need to record your ip every time to login and then match you clicks to that ip.

Another more advanced way to it, is to identify you via the Google toolbar with PageRank checking, but I can’t tell for sure they are doing this.

You fan,
Gang0rraZ

By: Philipp Lenssen

Philipp Lenssen — Fri, 25 May 2007 13:01:48 +0000

Agreed, it’s impossible for them to differentiate between accidental clicks and clicks-to-increase-revenues in certain cases… like when you’re logged out, cleared all cookies & the IP changed, etc. I guess their support was swamped by emails and they figure that an accidental click once a year by an honest publisher isn’t really worth fretting about…