Adsense is a service owned and operated by Google. Adsense lets website owners earn advertising dollars by showing ads on their websites. Google supplies the text, image and video ads that show on websites in the Adsense network. Which advertisements appear is determined by the keywords and content that exists on the website.

For website owners who rely on advertising revenue for part of their income, Google's Adsense system has become the foundation of that effort. Several reasons exist for this. Adsense ads are often less distracting than the typical banner type ads. Due to Google's method for selecting which ads appear on which websites, Adsense ads are most often highly relevant to the website on which they are displayed.

The way Adsense works is this. A website visitor clicks on an advertisement on a web page. This action generates revenue for the website owner, from a few cents up to one dollar or even more. The specific ads are drawn from the Adwords advertisers network.

One might think that website owners would click on ads on their own websites, because each click means more revenue for them. To counter this possibility, Google has constructed means of discovering when this happens. Google calls this action "click fraud". Whenever a website page shows evidence of click fraud, the offending party could be prohibited from using Adsense forever.

Website designers have come up with three main ways of increasing clicks on websites:

The use of several varieties of traffic generating techniques to get more visitors to their websites.

The use of excellent content on their websites, with the goal of displaying higher-revenue generating advertisements.

Effective sales copy which moves visitors to click on ads. Common phrases include "Sponsored Links" and "Advertisements". As you might expect, Google's Adsense terms do not allow such statements as "Click on these links".