Our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance tomorrow, from 10am to 2pm PDT. While you won’t be able to log in to your account during these hours, the maintenance won’t affect your ad targeting or delivery and your earnings will still be tracked in your reports like always.To celebrate the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games, here’s the start time of the maintenance in past, present, and future host cities for the Summer Olympics:Montreal - 1pm SaturdayLondon - 6pm SaturdayAthens - 8pm SaturdayBeijing - 1am SundaySydney - 3am SundayWe hope the maintenance period will give you an opportunity to catch a few matches and root for your home country!Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support
Defining invalid clicks and click fraud
We often receive questions from new publishers about what these two terms mean, and we’d like to help you understand the difference.Invalid clicks are clicks for which we decide not to charge our AdWords advertisers, since they may artificially drive up advertiser cost or publisher revenue. These include extraneous clicks without any value to the advertiser, such as the second click of a double-click. They also include many other types of clicks that we’ve determined aren’t motivated by genuine user interest.”Invalid clicks” are often confused with “clicking on your own ads”. However, we’d like to stress that invalid clicks are generally any clicks that artificially inflate advertiser cost or publisher revenue, regardless of their source.Click fraud is a subset of invalid clicks that are generated with malicious or fraudulent intent — in other words, clicks that are intended to drive up advertiser cost or publisher revenue artificially. Sources for these clicks include, but are not limited to: A publisher clicking on his own ads, or encouraging clicks on his ads Users or family members clicking to support the site / publisher Third-party programs with user incentives, such as paid-to-click services and click-exchanges Automated clicking tools, robots, or other deceptive software The same principles above apply to ad impressions and conversions as well. Some sources of invalid impressions include, but are not limited to: Excessive page refreshes, generated either manually or automatically Third-party programs with user incentives, such as paid-to-surf or auto-surf programs Third-party programs for purchasing fixed amounts of traffic, e.g. “$10 for 1,000 page views” As a reminder, any method that artificially generates clicks, impressions, or conversions is strictly prohibited by our program policies. You can also find more information about these topics in our Invalid Clicks FAQ.Posted by the Google Ad Traffic Quality Team
