How does Google knows if you are a Adsense client and clicking on your own ads?
Often I have come across people asking me through mails that how does Google come to know when we are clicking ads on our own pages? For them and for the information of all my readers, i thought of putting up this post on Technofriends.
When you visit a website using your browser there are various informations along with the IP Address that are sent to the website.The website can then extract these informations and make use of them ( like Google does 
) as per their processes.
The Information that is sent across either by HTTP Headers or other means includes
a. Your PC’s IP address
b. Operating system
c. MAC Address
d. Screen resolution
e. Browser information( IE/Firefox ).
f. Cookies [ Thanks to Igor for reminding me of this through his valuable comment to the post]
In order to come to the correct conclusion Google or for that matter any website can place checks on
1. Above information collected from your adsense login and
2. Above information collected from PC from which the ads were clickedIf both 1 and 2 match then your adsense account might be suspended anytime. This is one of the very crude check which Google can certainly do and must be doing.
You can also read about the various HTTP Response Codes.
Google Blog, has this information with regards to the topic
IP addresses of computers clicking on ads are very useful data points. A simple use of IP addresses is determining the source location for traffic. That is, for a given publisher or advertiser, where are their clicks coming from? Are they all coming from one country or city? Is that normal for an ad of this type? Although we don’t use this information to identify individuals, we look at these in aggregate and study patterns. This information is imperfect, but by analyzing a large volume of this data it is very helpful in helping to prevent fraud. For example, examining an IP address usually tells us which ISP that person is using. It is easy for people on most home Internet connections to get a new IP address by simply rebooting their DSL or cable modem. However, that new IP address will still be registered to their ISP, so additional ad clicks from that machine will still have something in common. Seeing an abnormally high number of clicks on a single publisher from the same ISP isn’t necessarily proof of fraud, but it does look suspicious and raises a flag for us to investigate. Other information contained in our logs, such as the browser type and operating system of machines associated with ad clicks, are analyzed in similar ways.
Also read: Changing the Font Type and Size of Adsense Text Links is Allowed
Tutorial: Find the IP Address of sender in Gmail.
Tutorial: Find IP Address of Sender in Yahoo Mail!
Do comment if you feel there are other ways of doing this as well.
You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/vaibhav1981
Do stay tuned to Technofriends for more, one of the best ways of doing so is by subscribing to our feeds. You can subscribe to Technofriends feed by clicking here.
Cheers
Vaibhav Pandey
Related posts:
- Google Adsense : Roundup
- Changing the Font Type and Size of Adsense Text Links is Allowed
- Google launches Click Fraud Website
- [How-To] Ensure that you Google Adsense Account Doesn’t Gets Disabled
- [Adsense] Google Adsense Fake Screen Generator
You forgot to say about the cookies…
Under the guise of “More Precise Ad Targeting” Google has created the most incredible spying machine that has ever existed on the face of the planet. They have recorded everything you have ever searched for and attached it to your IP address. In addition, if you use google adwords, gmail or other personalized services they have also added your complete information profile into the mix. So what can you do to keep from being tracked when using search engines? Click this story for more information..
@Igor: Yeah you have rightly pointed out… i definitely missed cookies. Thanks for putting it up for me. I shall edit the post accordingly
@Tio: Thanks for sharing this wonderful article. It was definitely a pleasure to know about Scroogle.
What happened to mw was that one of my competitors used a traffic surf site to repeatedly click on my ads.
Google warned me to stop, I said how do I? Its not me.
They cancelled my Adsense acct.
Now they have a who bad page they are advertising I see.
Hi Vaibhav,
following on from my recent post on search engines and privacy I have just posted some information from the EFF on ways to protect your privacy online at my blog. I thought I would like to share it with some of your readers.
http://balafria.wordpress.com/2007/09/02/6-tips-to-protect-your-online-search-privacy/
Hope you are well.
Best Tio
@Tio:
Thanks a ton Tio for sharing that link. Its really a well articulated post. I shall be writing up a post linking your blog. Hope thats ok with you.
Cheers,
Vaibhav
Doug Woodall really makes a good point. Another thing that happened to one of my friend is he had blended his ads with his navigation bar so well, that almost every visitor started clicking on those ads thinking its navigation bar. As a result, google banned his account.
You really need to be careful while using google adsense on your page.
Your MAC address is never transmitted to web server that is not a member of your local network segment. Mac addresses do not transit routers or most switches. A MAC address is basically a universally unique identifier for your local computer’s network hardware. If it was transmitted to a remote host none of the other tracking mechanisms you mentioned would be needed to establish machine identity.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_fingerprint for some idea of the ways that Google uses the information that they can collect to identify your machine.
[...] You are strictly not allowed to click on your ads and Google definitely has a way to make out if you clicked on your Ads. The way out to prevent that from happening is by disabling the ads from showing up for any of the [...]
[...] Also, as a general tip, never click on the ads on your Own Website. Google definitely can figure out if you are clicking on your own Adsense Ads. [...]
This was starting to sound logical until I read the part where you said they receive the MAC address on their website. Due to the routers involved, the MAC address is filtered out before it gets to a website. Only the IP is logged and you can get around that by running a little command and getting a new IP anytime you want from your internet service provider. You go for it big daddy, make’em feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
it is very difficult to say how google finds out. but i can say you try all ways google will find the wrong clicks. so u should try to promote your website to have more new visitors rather than trying to find ways to click your own ads.
Google is taking over everything.
first they took over youtube, then tracking your computer
next: microsoft
[...] You are strictly not allowed to click on your ads and Google definitely has a way to make out if you clicked on your Ads. The way out to prevent that from happening is by disabling the ads from showing up for any of the [...]
hi vibhav..
i was looking for the information about adsense…i got lot of information regarding this…
thanks for giving information to the all…
u r really great…man…
cheers…man
Hi Vibhav,
Thanks for the information, One thing is in my mind. Y cant google ignore clicks from there own ipaddress of publisher.?
they do ignore. But unfortunately, there are many publishers who do so and Google uses this information to block the publisher. As far as advertiser’s money is concerned, that certainly is protected.
[...] [...]
Does my mac adresse change if I upgrade my computer with some other hardware? For example change the graphic card?