Google Addresses Advertising Click Fraud
Since a number of bloggers use Google Ads and similar advertising services to get some revenue, I thought this piece might be relevant enough to include in this space.
Click fraud is an illegal practice “that occurs when individuals click on ad links that appear next to search results in order to force advertisers to pay for the clicks.” Expenses from this practice in cost-per-click advertising can add up fairly quickly.
"The main perpetrators appear to be competitors of advertisers and also scam sites set up for the sole purpose of hosting ad links provided by Google, through its AdSense unit, or Yahoo!, through its Overture service. Humans or specially designed software then click on those ad links in order to ’steal’ revenue from advertisers."
I hoped the article would detail how Google investigates fraud and determines what fraud is. For example, does it constitute fraud when a blogger using Google Ads follows a link to an ad when he’s legitimately interested in the product while knowing he’ll get even a few pennies out of it? The article implies Google is only looking into large-scale fraud.
another from LIS News
December 6th, 2004 at 9:08 am
Click fraud is an ‘illegal practice’? I would believe a violation of terms of service, but I’ve never heard of any laws that put the legality of ‘fraudalent clicks’ in question.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Click fraud is still a huge problem. On one site, http://www.arizonaballoon.com, a ccompetitor told the owner that he was clicking on his site to run up his costs. This was reported and nothing was ever heard if the perpertrator faced some type of sanction or not.
It’s still a big problem as is clicking on a page multiple times to reduce your click through percentage and thus lower your ad quality.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
The website is actually http://www.arizonaballoon.com