Reports | Slots | Ads | Settings | Support

What are invalid clicks?

Invalid clicks are a serious threat to anyone earning significant income from AdSense. Unfortunately, the risk posed by invalid clicks is not widely recognized. Many people wrongly assume that Google can and will screen out invalid clicks automatically, and that there is no risk to a publisher's account unless the publisher has violated the AdSense terms of service.

This is a misconception and completely false. Google Adsense can and do terminate publisher accounts even if the publisher has done nothing to violate the AdSense Terms of Service.

Google AdSense expects users to be aware of the risk of invalid clicks, and to report invalid clicks if they occur.

If invalid click activity is severe enough, Google AdSense will selectively terminate the account that received the invalid clicks. The account will be shut down without prior warning, no explanation will be given, and any inquiries from the disabled published will go unanswered. Not only will expected income go unpaid, the publisher won't even be able to access any past data of the account.

What exactly are invalid clicks? Broadly speaking, there are three types of invalid clicks.

Owner Clicks

The site owner is not allowed to click on his/her own ads. Every publisher agrees not to do this when signing up with AdSense. While publishers do take care not to click on their own ads, sometimes they may forget they are on their own site, and click on an ad. AdQore can prevent accidents like these by suppressing the ads if the viewer is the owner.

Unintended Clicks

Most people immediately associate the term 'invalid clicks' with click fraud, or malicious behavior by a competitor or disgruntled user. Actually, the main danger is posed by individuals who do not know what they are doing, or do not fit within the confines of behavior expected by Google AdSense.

• 10-year-old randomly clicking on everything on the page
• Inexperienced or geriatric user repeatedly clicking on the same ad in lieu of bookmarking it
• Obsessive compulsive user clicking on every single link, including ads, she sees
• Non-native speakers desperately trying to find something and clicking on everything
• Newbie user clicking on numerous ads repeatedly in an effort to find something on your site

Malicious Clicks

Malicious clicking is rarer, but it does happen to almost everyone in the business of serving tens of thousands of users. Some individuals, whether due to mental problems or the effect of drugs, will for some reason decide that your site is their nemesis, and set out to destroy it. One way of doing so is showering your AdSense account with invalid clicks.

Whereas AdSense should perhaps automatically protect your account from these clicks, for reasons known only to Google, it doesn't. That's why any publisher earning enough from AdSense to miss the checks if they stop coming all of a sudden should sign up with AdQore.