I recently read this ad in the "employment" section of the local newspaper by a company looking for Google Adsense Clickers. They didn't give a lot of details about it other than a phone number to call. Does Google have any rules against this sort of thing?

Yep

They ban the adsense accounts.

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/google...tml#post477312

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Send a copy of the ad to Google, I'm sure they would love to have the phone number

It sounds odd to pay someone to click your own adsense ads.
What’s the point?







fastreplies

A army of "clickers" from random home dynamic IPs, randomly clicking ads from hundreds of accounts on several thousand MFA sites on hundreds of various host servers around the world is pretty difficult to detect a pattern.

The organised click fraud networks can tot up hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent payments before getting taken down.

This is definitely NOT allowed, they DO ban anyone who asks others to click on their ads. Taken straight from Adsense's Program Policies:

In order to ensure a good experience for users and advertisers, publishers may not request that users click the ads on their sites or rely on deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks. Publishers participating in the AdSense program:

• May not encourage users to click the Google ads by using phrases such as "click the ads," "support us," "visit these links," or other similar language
• May not direct user attention to the ads via arrows or other graphical gimmicks
• May not place misleading images alongside individual ads
• May not promote sites displaying ads through unsolicited mass emails or unwanted advertisements on third-party websites
• May not compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behavior
• May not place misleading labels above Google ad units - for instance, ads may be labeled "Sponsored Links" but not "Favorite Sites"

They are banning the absence accounts ... because this is not allowed...

But how do they tell whether a click is legitimate or not? Same thing with Adwords, like I could go to Google and start clicking on tons of my competitors ads making them pay lots of money... Not that I do :-)

Wouldnt it be flagged by a high use of a dynamic range of ip's? like 103.131.13.** for example, if you get 1000 clicks in a few hours from one IP range in one area it looks dodgy, fraudulant you might say... with better spelling you might say

Originally Posted by Nathand

But how do they tell whether a click is legitimate or not?

Any one particular click, they can't. Patterns of clicks, dead simple.

Originally Posted by Nathand

Same thing with Adwords, like I could go to Google and start clicking on tons of my competitors ads making them pay lots of money

You could, but you would leave a footprint that would soon have the clicks discounted.

Originally Posted by St-evo

Wouldnt it be flagged by a high use of a dynamic range of ip's? like 103.131.13.** for example, if you get 1000 clicks in a few hours from one IP range in one area it looks dodgy

Agreed. It would. BUT;
You are thinking small scale.
This is organised. the drones (WAH clickers) are not left to decide for themselves where and when to click.
They get an order of play for their day or hour.
instructed to;
never to click the back button,
never to refresh a page on their list,
disconnect periodically,

basically they are instructed in methods designed not to leave a footprint, or leave one so small it looks like a normal searcher.
There are private networks of proxies where the drones have client software that will randomly rotate these proxy IPs.

These are not managed by students trying to scam a few cents here and there, this is big time organised crime.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

These are not managed by students trying to scam a few cents here and there, this is big time organised crime.

Is it legally treated as such? You mentioned the word fraud before and that's exactly what this is.

thats awful, that will only impact on us honest people who rely on adsense income !

Woc

Is it legally treated as such

Nope; because as usual none of the PPC providers including Google will actually be open about the scale that click fraud exists.
In a similar way that the financial institutions (Banks, Credit Card providers, Merchant systems etc) play down the scale of Internet and other forms of fraud. It's a consumer confidence thing.
The other problem of course is most of these groups are located in countries where US jurisdiction (as the origin of most PPC providers) is between limited to non-existent.

idiot idea. They will get banned soon.

I mean, it really might be quite genious. It's by no means illegal in most countries, you'd just need to keep setting up adsense accounts. And moving. And have nothing to lose. Hopefully nobody loves you.

do they ban the site or the account? can the same person have another site under their name/account?

Google ban the account itself and no adsense will display in your website. I think you can apply for another adsense account using a different name, ip address and location.

How much does this job pay? I could use some extra cash.