This is a useful tip that everyone should know about. The reason why many don’t know about this is probably because you can’t find the information among the AdSense help pages, if you can they have either hidden it well or added it very recently.

A problem when developing or working on a website can be that you want to see what the advertisements will look like, but at the same time you don’t want to keep reloading your own ads an excessive number of times, inflating the number of impressions, or worse risk clicking your own ads by mistake.

It is very easy to solve this problem. Just add google_adtest = “on”; to your publisher code, for example:

google_ad_client = “pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx”;
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = “468×60_as”;
google_ad_type = “text”;
google_ad_channel =”";
google_adtest = “on”;

Any impressions or clicks will now be ignored by Google and you can work on your website without having to worry. You are allowed to make this change to the code even though the AdSense Program Policies clearly states otherwise:

Any AdSense ad code, search box code, or referral code must be pasted directly into Web pages without modification. AdSense participants are not allowed to alter any portion of the ad code or change the layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason.

If you still are uncertain, just contact AdSense support and ask. Also, remember to remove google_adtest = “on”; once you are done or you won’t make any money.

Daniel