IMPORTANT - regarding google ads...

[seymour]

Ok, so who was apparently either using some program to generate ad clicks, or otherwise doing non-normal things to generate clicks? I received an email this morning saying my account is disabled because of it, and anything added to my account will be returned to the advertisers.

From their Program Policies:

Prohibited Clicks

Any method that artificially generates clicks is strictly prohibited. These prohibited methods include but are not limited to: repeated manual clicks, incentives to click, using robots, automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited, to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs.

And the email:

Hello Chris,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the ads on your web pages. We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including
but not limited to clicks generated by a publisher on his own web
pages, clicks generated through the use of robots, automated clicking
tools, or any other deceptive software.

Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms
and Conditions and program polices, which can be viewed at:

https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_US
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US

Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further
participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment. The
earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected
advertisers.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

If someone was doing this, I'd rather it be admitted, so I know what was going on.

Thanks.

[Chad]

repeated manual clicks

guilty as charged. i clicked them twice! seriously, their detection must be messed up, i mean we like the board but why would we make a robot script to keep it funded... i would guess it was one of the bots that tries to post here automatically and set a spider on the ad links.

[seymour]

That's kind of what I was thinking as well, but you never know. In the past few months, clicks have gone up quite a bit, but I can't even check what they were now. I should contact them to see if I can get anything more specific.