What Happens If I Accidentally Click My Google Ads?

Google Policy

Google's general policy on ad clicks is that they should only result from genuine user interest, and that website owners may not click their own ads for any purpose whatsoever. Therefore, even if you yourself are interested in one of the ads that appears on your own site, you may not click it. It is also prohibited to encourage website visitors to click ads, or to use automated means to increase the number of ad clicks you receive.

Click Fraud

Non-genuine ad clicks are classified as click fraud. Were this allowed, it would be possible to target competing businesses and repeatedly click their ads, increasing their advertising costs to no benefit. Furthermore, it would be possible to cost advertisers to your own site money by clicking your own ads, even if you had no interest in the product. Automated click fraud is a felony in some states, such as California under penal code 502.

Accidental Clicks

Google understand that users will accidentally click their own ads on occasion, and for a single case will generally not take any action against the user. However, since the usage of AdSense is closely monitored, if the click is recognized as coming from the ad owner, the income will be stripped from it -- though the click may still appear on the AdSense statistics pages. If a publisher is deemed to have clicked ads purposefully, however, the account may be disabled.

AdSense Preview Tool

Some instances of publishers clicking their own ads occur because the site owner is genuinely interested in a product or service being advertised, or because they are curious about the advertisers they are attracting. For this purpose, Google AdSense Preview Tool can be used to click ads without them being counted in the main statistics or costing anything to the advertiser. It can also be used to view the ads that would appear on a page you are thinking of adding AdSense to.