After coming back from visiting my sick great aunt today, I decided to check my AdSense earning for the day. To my surprise, I made more than I had for the past two days combined and nearly as much as I earned in my biggest day yet. And all this was only 10 hours into the day (going by Pacific time, which is what the AdSense servers use).

I figured I might have had a surge of traffic from getting a link on Robyn’s blog, so I decided to look at my Google Analytics stats. After looking at where the majority of my referrals were from, it turns out that it was from a post I previously made on the 2+2 Money Making & Business forums. My original forum post was to collect input and feedback on the site, as it was my first site utilizing AdSense. The thread was dead for the past week, as newer threads had replaced it. However, another forum member revived it with a post stating, “ i just clicked all your ads, enjoy your dollar.”

The post seemed like he may have intended some good will, but at the same time may have been mocking the AdSense program by suggesting that people are only earning a pittance. Regardless of his intention, this is clearly click fraud, which is in violation of Google’s policy on the matter.

Because I’m fairly new to the program and do not want to be kicked out, I sent Google an email using a simple click fraud reporting form they provide. Hopefully I won’t lose too much of the earnings, as I suspect some of the clicks are valid. However, I’d much rather lose some earnings today in order to still be allowed to use the program and make earnings in the future. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this doesn’t happen again.