This may seem a very ignorant question, but I have added adsense to a new (sandboxed)site as a test-run so I can work out how to do it/how it works etc. before going for it on a bigger site.

Because this is a new site, it gets very little genuine traffic at present, but does get a lot of spiders (as I'm working on backlinks.)

I have just checked my google adsense account and have been pleasantly surprised that I have some revenue. So, does this mean that other search engines spidering the site and following links actually count as click throughs?

Please be tactful if this is an ignorant question!

Many thanks

most bots don't trigger adsense as they are in javascript and bots don't "do" javascript.

Interesting...
I agree that when say for example MSN spiders my whole site that I do not see an increase in impressions in Adsense, but it seems like if the page is loaded, that adsense would still register an impression. I would be curious how it works.

When any bots visites they just dont see the Scripts and so there is no point in seeing an increase in page impressions. Its always when any user has javascript enabled the page impression in G adsense is counted.

spiders and bots do not "read" pages. Their function is to grab the source code delivered from the server and store it in their database. So links are not actually followed, scripts (client-side) are not triggered, Images are not retrieved, CSS is not opened. etc etc.

Thanks - that all coincides with what I thought. I am still puzzled though by where the income has come from.... Oh well, I'll just take the cash and run!