If you check out earnings forums, you may discover that several people post reports of their earnings using Google AdSense or other such ad networks. Many of these reports are faked with the intention of generating more interest in their profiles or their blogs. In some forum threads, you may find that someone posts a screenshot of AdSense with much greater earnings than they have ever gotten.

One reason they do this is to show off to others in the forum that they are a master of AdSense and it is worth their while to visit their blog/website. With this sham, they may also attract more advertisers to their blog and command higher ad rates. Another possibility could be their petty ego toward people earning more than them. Whichever it is, they can be successful in fooling quite a few of the forum users, who respond with kudos in the thread.

Some of these people use a web service that helps them generate faked Google AdSense screenshots. They only have to submit the amount they want to show (today’s and yesterday’s earnings), and the screenshot will be generated, without revealing any important information, such as their CTR, impressions, or eCPM.

Another way they generate a screenshot is to save their AdSense reports page as an HTML file and then edit the values that represent their earnings and other data in that file’s HTML source code. After that, they simply save the edited page and open it again in their browser to take a screenshot of it.

These techniques may work with many people, but you can readily see if a screenshot is faked by looking closely at it. If you are using the web service’s script, all screenshots will look alike. They always show yesterday’s earnings, with the shaded area over the important data. If the one posting the screenshot is really lazy, they may not have changed the name the web service gives every image it generates.

If you are examining a screenshot generated with the second method, there are ways to spot if it is real, as well. Most people forget about the other parts of the data, such as Referrals, AdSense for feeds, Search, and Mobile content. A successful AdSense publisher usually has a great number of RSS readers, and its likely a substantial part of that money has been generated from RSS impressions. They also get a great deal of money from daily searches, as they probably have installed AdSense search boxes on their site. In faked screenshots, the data under both of these is likely to be nil.

Another way to spot a fake screenshot is to look closely at the impressions, clicks, and eCPM data, which may be blacked out. Examining the width of these numbers can pretty much show if the screenshot has any anomalies. A narrower width for the blacked out region probably indicates a smaller number of clicks or data, which may not correspond to the earnings.

It’s truly sad that anyone would try to fake their earnings on AdSense or any other networks. To those patting them on the back for their impressive accomplishments: Don’t believe everything you see!