Originally Posted by kaminas

Of course everything have confines...

Yeah, And the confines mean it's impossible for adsense to ignore the clicks of the publisher based on IP addresses.

ok - than please explain: why do you get kiked out of adsense for the reason of clickin your own clicks. they would ban u, only if they knew who you are. meaning that still, after chaging your ip address " " they know that they are ur clicks. prove me wrong!

It's obvious.
if you login to your account with the IP 123.123.123.123 then the IP 123.123.123.123 is clicking adverts, they know it's you.

I didn't say they can never identify who you are from an IP, I said they can't always identify who you are with any kind of accuracy based on your IP, If your IP has changed.

I'm sure Google is recording your IP when you click and ad, but I'm also sure it's not the only thing they record. What Matt is saying I think is that IP alone is not enough to determine exactly who you are.

If you're on dial up then every time you sign in you get a different IP. It also means the IP you used the last time you signed in is now being used by someone else. So I could click on an ad and then a half hour later someone across town could click on the same ad. We are two different people, but it's possible we both showed the same IP when clicking the ad.

I think Google can in many cases determine who is clicking an ad or at least they can make reasonable assumptions whether or not click fraud is going on. That determination is being made though by more than IP.

As for the original question of why not let you click your own ads and not count them. In some ways it's just as Matt has said. I don't think Google knows exactly who is clicking an ad. What they know is more likely a combination of data that can predict with reasonable accuracy that the clicks are invalid.

Also there are ways to click your own ads without it being recorded. devaid offered one solution. Another is the Firefox extension AdSense Preview (I think that's the name). It shows you what ads are likely to be on a page and you can click through their interface to see the ad without recording a hit. I've compared it to pages with ads on them and it's very accurate in predicting the ads that will be on the page.

As for accidental clicks I think it's pretty easy to avoid them. How often do you honestly click accidentally on a link. Just be careful on your own site. You should know exactly where the ads are and it should be easy enough to keep your mouse away from them. I also don't think Google is going ban you if you do on occasion click accidentally.

Banning happens with a lot more clicks than one or two.