As a rule AdSense Publishers are paranoid at the prospect of having their account closed for infringing Googles Terms and Conditions. A quick visit to one of the many forums directed at webmasters will confirm this to you.

We are no exception to this rule and only today noticed some clicks that appeared to be invalid. We thought it a good idea to share with you how we dealt with the problem.

To begin with we visited the contact side at Googles AdSense Help Center and selected the radio button of relevant category; in our case “other”.

We then continued to the contact information area

where we entered the required information and the following message:

Hello

I am concerned about the integrity of some ad clicks that were made today on above mentioned site. There are currently x clicks showing for adsensestudy on the reports overview of my AdSense account. From the tracking software I use I can see that x of these came from x IP address: xxx.xx.xxx.xxx. x of these clicks were on content ads and x was on a link unit. I obviously can’t follow what happens after a link unit has been clicked but suspect that the remaining clicks may also be from the same IP.

Naturally I take your Terms and Conditions very seriously and want to avoid any possibility of causing damage to Google, Advertisers or myself, hence this message.

Kind regards,

Steve

Here is the response we had from Google:

Hello Steve,

Thanks for your note. I see you’re worried about the possibility of
invalid clicks being generated on your site. We have noted your input and
will continue to monitor the situation closely. I also wanted to assure
that your account is currently in good standing.

However, feel free to continue reviewing your site’s traffic logs for
suspicious activity and notify us with any findings. This information can
help us in resolving any issues, although as we’ve noted in our Terms and
Conditions, Google will use its sole discretion when determining instances
of invalid clicks.

If you’d like to notify us of your findings, please visit
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/request.py?contact=invalid_clicks_contact

In addition, please allow me to give you some quick context on the issue.
In order to protect your interests as well as those of our advertisers,
Google monitors clicks on Google ads to prevent any abuse of the AdSense
program. To do this, we use both automated systems and human reviews.
More specifically, our technology analyzes all ad clicks for any invalid click
activity that is intended to artificially drive up an advertiser’s clicks
or a publisher’s earnings.

We thank you for your continued cooperation to remain in compliance with
our program polices.

Sincerely,

Sunil
The Google AdSense Team

The software we use to track the AdSense ads displayed on the various sites we operate is AdSense Tracker which is included in the AdSense Gold package. I know for sure that by enabling us to be pro-active and contacting Google before they contact us, that it has been instrumental in us avoiding a suspension in the past.

For any AdSense Publisher who is remotely interested in protecting their account some form of tracking software is essential. We wholeheartedly recommend AdSense Tracker, but whether you use this or another tool TRACK YOUR CLICKS.

Incidentally, you’re welcome to use our message to Google as a template