22 January 2008 12 Comments

Do you use Google Adsense to make money online? Have you installed Google Adsense on your blog to start making money from your blog?

The Prohibited Uses clause of the Online Standard Terms and Conditions mentions that any type of repeated manual clicks will lead to an immediate suspension or termination of your Google Adsense account. The Google AdSense Program Policies as mentioned in the “Google Adsense Program Policies Help Center” mentions it even more clearly:

Invalid Clicks and Impressions

Clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest. Any method that artificially generates clicks or impressions on your Google ads is strictly prohibited. These prohibited methods include but are not limited to repeated manual clicks or impressions, using robots, automated click and impression generating tools, third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf, and click-exchange programs, or any deceptive software. Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited. Failure to comply with this policy may lead to your account being disabled.

Take my words, as an advice! Never take this stuff by Google lightly… In your quest for making money online, don’t overlook the Terms & Conditions or you’ll even lose all the money you ever made from Adsense. Remember, Google can get to you sooner than you think you can “hit and run.”

But then, sometimes you can face problems like this one that I faced. When I made a post, a few days back, a link in the post was on the extreme left of the content container, almost into the Adsense Ad unit in left sidebar that bulges a little into the content container. I had to check by clicking on the left-edge of the hyper-link to make sure it didn’t make a click on the Ad. This is because, when readers realize that they clicked on an ad when they wanted to click on that link, they’ll either hit the back button or reload the page very soon. That could be risky, for such clicks can be thought of as clicks under influence or anything of that sort. And while trying to check if clicking anywhere near the link doesn’t click the ad unit, what if I myself click the ad unit! This can get me in sacks, and I must tell you, I am really Google-fearing.

But at the same time, I wanted to test by clicking that space on my real estate. At the point I was doing this stuff, I was reminded of a post about test-driving Google Adsense, that I had made on my previous blog.

Click your own Ads & Google won’t even mind!

So,here’s a simple solution to this problem. All you have to do is add “google_adtest = ‘on’;” to your ad code using the following syntax:

google_ad_client  = “pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = “468×60_as”;
google_ad_type = “text”;
google_ad_channel =””;
google_adtest = ‘on’;

; where xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is your Publisher ID.

Now any impressions or clicks on that particular modified Adsense ad unit will be ignored and so you can test the adsense on your website/blog without any hassles.

Coming back to the Adsense ToS again…

The document clearly says:

Any AdSense ad code, search box code, or referral code must be pasted directly into Web pages without modification. AdSense participants are not allowed to alter any portion of the ad code or change the layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason.

But I think this is just as harmless as changing the #RRGGBB colors after generating the ad-unit code, directly. Just in case you are uncertain about the whole thing, please contact Adsense Support Team.

Also, remember to remove google_adtest = “on”; once you are done or you won’t make any money!

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