Editor’s note: John Brown, the Head of Publisher Policy Communications, is sharing insights and answering most common questions about invalid activity.

In this post, I want to stress why we take invalid clicks so seriously and clarify a few questions related to traffic quality and invalid clicks.

Let’s take a step back and think about the digital ad ecosystem. The relationships between Google, advertisers, and publishers are built on trust. A strong and healthy digital ecosystem needs:

• Users who trust the system and have a good experience,
• Advertisers safely investing in digital ads,
• Publishers who can sustain their business.

To protect those relationships, it’s very important to make sure that clicks and impressions are based on genuine user intent. That’s why at Google we have a global team that monitors the traffic across Google's ad network, and prevents advertisers from paying for invalid traffic.

Now, I'd like to address some of the most common questions and concerns from publishers related to ad traffic quality and invalid clicks.

• What is Google's obligation to publishers?

Google manages advertiser relationships so that you don’t have to. Publishers benefit from our vast supply of ads. To provide ads to your sites for the months and years to come, advertisers must trust our network. Our policies are in place to protect these advertiser relationships, which ultimately protects publishers that work with us as well.

• What happens to earnings held back from publishers due to invalid activity?

Any revenue found to be from invalid activity is refunded back to the active advertisers, not kept by Google. In 2014, we refunded more than $200,000,000 to advertisers from detected invalid activity. In 2014, we’ve disabled more than 160,000 sites to protect the ecosystem.

• What can Google do to better communicate policies and enforcement?

We’ve adopted a policy of silence for the most part in order to protect our signals. We find it important to protect our signals so that bad actors cannot detect how we discover invalid activity. Additionally, we are always striving to increase transparency around our communications without compromising our techniques to protect advertisers and publishers. Stay tuned for new features which will help you have more control over your content and stay compliant with the policies.

• Will Google modify interactions with the publisher community going forward?

We realize that we can improve our communications, especially around warnings, suspensions, and account disablement.  My charge is to do this. I have many people working with me on better education, along with improving the language and instructions around warnings or messages received from Google. I believe that publishers understand much better where they stand at all times when our policies are clear and when we communicate them effectively, and enforce consistently.

I hope you found these insights useful. Check back here next week where we’ll talk about what you can do as a publisher to help us protect the digital ecosystem. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

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Posted by John Brown

Head of Publisher Policy Communications

When you check your payments history, you might notice a difference between your estimated AdSense earnings and the final amount paid to you. The difference between these two amounts is mostly caused by invalid activity on your site, such as accidental clicks, which are deducted from finalized earnings.

We've received feedback from you that you want to know more about the differences between estimated and finalized earnings. Starting with May’s payment history, you’ll be able to see the invalid activity deductions that cause these differences.  For example, if your estimated earnings were $1,100 and your finalized earnings were $1,000, you now have a better view into how your estimated earnings break down into invalid activity and finalized earnings.

If there is a large difference between your estimated earnings and your finalized earnings, make sure to review these tips. To prevent invalid activity on your site, pay special attention to your site design and traffic acquisition. If you see unusual levels in invalid activity, we encourage you to notify us by using the Invalid Clicks Contact Form.

We hope this will help you understand the differences between your estimated and finalized earnings and how invalid activity affects your payments. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Posted by Justin Chu
AdSense Product Manager

It’s time to share your feedback! To improve our product and services, we send out a survey to a random group of our publishers every 6 months. The next survey will be sent soon and we’re looking forward to hearing from you.

Your feedback and comments are important to us, and we really do read and consider everything you write. Thanks to previous suggestions, we’ve launched a number of new features to improve our services and help you grow your earnings. These include the redesign of the performance reports with a brand new dashboard, Matched content to help you increase engagement with your site visitors, and welcoming Malay and Hindi languages to the AdSense family.

You may receive a survey by email over the coming weeks. To make sure that you can receive the survey email, please take the following steps as soon as possible:

• Update your contact details.
• Update your email preferences to receive ‘occasional survey’ messages.

Whether you’ve completed this survey before or you’re providing feedback for the first time, we’d like to thank you for sharing your valuable thoughts. We’re looking forward to feedback!

Posted by Adriana Satmarean
AdSense Publisher Happiness Team

We’re always looking to hear your thoughts on how we’re doing and your suggestions on  how we can make Google AdSense and other Google publisher products as useful and impactful as possible for you. Your feedback is important to us and helps shape the future direction of our publisher solutions. Our semi-annual publisher survey will launch on April 23rd and we hope to hear from all of you.

Every six months, the feedback collected from this survey is closely reviewed to help determine our product roadmap. Based on your feedback and asks last time round, we’ve launched a number of new features to grow your earnings. These include custom ads sizes, easier A/B testing and to get the most from your ad units and the new AdSense homepage giving you quick access to the insights you value most.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll send the survey by email to a sample of publishers. To participate, please take the following steps as soon as possible:

• Ensure your contact details are updated.
• Ensure your email preferences are updated to receive ‘occasional survey’ messages.

Whether you’ve completed this survey before or you’re providing feedback for the first time, we’d like to thank you for taking the time to tell us how we’re doing. We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Posted by Adriana Satmarean - AdSense Publisher Happiness Team
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

As the publisher landscape evolves, we’re constantly looking at how we can develop our products and solutions to help you grow your online business. Your feedback plays a key role in shaping our publisher offerings, and so we hope to hear from you in our upcoming semi-annual publisher survey.

Launching the week of October 15th, the goal of our survey is to collect as much of your feedback as possible. It covers a range of topics across all of our publisher products, ranging from new feature requests to help resources and much more. Since our last survey, we’ve addressed your feedback with new features like in-account policy notifications, responsive ad units, a mobile app for AdSense, and new functionality in the Publisher Toolbar.

We’ll be sending the survey out by email shortly to a sample of publishers. If you’d like to participate, there’s a couple of steps you should take as soon as possible:

• Ensure your contact information is up to date.
• Ensure your email preferences are updated so that you’re opted in to receiving ‘occasional survey’ messages.

Whether you’ve filled out every previous survey or you’re providing your feedback for the first time, we’re really grateful for you taking the time to tell us how we’re doing and look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas!

Posted by Sahar Golestani, on behalf of the AdSense Publisher Happiness Team
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Over the last few years, Google’s offering for online publishers has grown dramatically: in addition to AdSense, our products now range from AdMob, to DoubleClick for Publishers and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

As we continually work on improving our existing offerings, as well as developing new products and service for publishers, we’d like to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Our semi-annual satisfaction survey is a great way for you to share your feedback on AdSense and other publisher products you’re using. Later this month, we’ll be sending our survey to a sample of publishers opted in to receiving “occasional surveys”, so if you’d like to participate, make sure to update your email preferences and contact information.

Your suggestions are valuable, whether they come in via surveys, our product forum, or in-person events, and we regularly use your feedback to make improvements. For example, we recently introduced a new, brand-friendly ad size in AdSense and announced a closer collaboration with you when it comes to fighting invalid activity. Based on your feedback, you can now also benefit from video ad serving in DFP Small Business and AdMob Academy - our comprehensive guide to everything AdMob. It often takes time to develop new ideas and make improvements, but be assured that we read every single one of your comments and take your thoughts on board.

If you want to let us know your thoughts and ideas, don’t miss our survey in the week of April 28th. We look forward to hearing from you, and we appreciate your time.

Posted by Sahar Golestani, on behalf of the AdSense Publisher Satisfaction Team
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.