A common problem which Google tries really hard to monitor on their AdSense program is click fraud. So if you're running Google ads on your site it might have crossed your mind to disable Google AdSense when you're looking through it. This way you can rest assured that you won't be penalized for click fraud.

That's when you accidentally hit your ads when you're browsing your site. The sort of thing that can happen when your checking your links are working.

Bouncing around your website/blog is something webmasters have to do from time to time to make sure it's all running along nicely and there's no glitches that's going to affect your visitors.

It's so easy to hover your mouse on the sidebar waiting for the page to load and low and behold when it does, you bounce into another site through an advertisement.

Accidentally or not, it's going to be seen by Google as a fraudulent click. That is if their ad monitoring stuff picks it up, although even if it does get through the net, an advertiser is paying for you arriving on their site and it doesn't feel good to know that you've just cost somebodies business when you didn't mean to.

You could always report it to Google AdSense support with the details to avoid the advertiser being charged but still, I don't think it's something you want to be admitting to them...

That you've fraudulently clicked one of their ads.

This workaround is something you can do on your browser and while it doesn't just disable Google AdSense on your website when you view it, it will disable Google ads on your computer which is going to affect every site you arrive on.

That's why it's ideal for people being paid for the ads and not so much for people who aren't involved.

Important Note Before You Disable Google AdSense:

Google AdSense is a program which pays a lot of money to small businesses, most of who are self employed without an expert team behind them. It pays their bills and puts food on the table for a lot of people, so if you don't run your own blog or website and just want to get rid of ads when you're online, then please think carefully. If you frequent a website regularly and find yourself clicking out to other sites, then chances are that's how the website is staying in business.

If You Still Want To Disable Google AdSense When You're Browsing

The easiest and fastest way to do this is to use the Google Chrome browser.

When you click the spanner in the top right of your browser, scroll down a bit and select "settings".

From the "settings" menu, you'll see a search bar. Run a search for "Adblock" which is the add on that lets you disable Google AdSense.

Once you install the Adblock extension, you'll notice a new tab opens in your browser. It asks if you want to continue and disable the ads from Google or if you've arrived by accident. Once you confirm that you do want to disable Google AdSense when you're browsing the web, you'll then be asked about donations.

The Adblock developers allow you to use the add on for free, but do ask for a generosity one-off contribution. That's up to you if you would like to. Like I say, there's no need to if you just want to try it out. I didn't as i hadn't heard of it and wanted to make sure it worked before I paid anything to the developers.

My way of thanking them is to give a bit of free publicity.

Makes me feel a bit better for not contributing before.

Anyway,

Once you have Adblock installed on your browser, there will be a logo appears beside your settings spanner in the top right of your page. (It's the same as the image used on this page.)

You can use that to pause and restart the ads. This way you can disable Google AdSense when you're browsing the websites/blogs of your own and switch it off if you want to when you're done.

You don't have to keep it running constantly. It's entirely your choice when you want to see ads and when you don't.

I know for myself, working as a ghostwriter, I do a lot of research on a lot of sites that are monetized with Google ads and I have to say that I do find it annoying having to read around the advertising.

I just want to read the material I need to and get back to writing. So I don't pause Adblock much at all.

It certainly seems to be a great way to protect your AdSense account from being flagged for fraudulent clicks.

On another note:

It took me quite a while to find out about Adblock and I'm not one for using the Bing search engine too often and this is where I found out about the Chrome extension.

Searching on Google threw up a lot of results that were trying to explain how to disable Google AdSense using the windows host files. I got lost at this part...

"Windows NT (and some 2K) C:WINNTsystem32driversetc"

As it turns out, using that method means going in and modifying your computer. I don't know about you but I'd rather make a mistake on a browser when you can fix it a lot easier than break a program on your computer.

Needless to say I carried on looking for an easier way to get rid of the ads.

That's what Adblock is!

So if you know others who are running ads on their blogs and think they could benefit from protecting their accounts, then it might be an idea to share this post with them. After all, Googles' business is built from the revenue they make from this program so I'm not entirely convinced that they'll want to show this page on their search results and risk losing reach with their customers.

Thanks in advance and I look forward to the street talk below