Google CEO on click fraud: 'let it happen'

[ly2]

I dont know if this sounds right to me. Sounds a little bit like he could careless what happens to advertisers. With all their money, shouldnt they be putting a bit more effort into stopping click fraud? I mean, sometimes it takes 5-10 complaints to get a site TOS'd when they are breaking TOS. They should have a huge team dedicated to this IMO.



http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/index.php?p=219

[yirmumah]

Did you read the whole article even?? I don't think you did.

Did you see this quoted line standing out?

But because it is a bad thing, because we don’t like it, because it does, at least for the short-term, create some problems before the advertiser sees it, we go ahead and try to detect it and eliminate it.

Part of what we do is we try to decrease the time, and increase the rate, at which the auction automatically detects that this is a bad click, naturally.

He was just making the point that letting it happen is self correcting from their business standpoint, but they still do their best to stop it.

Obviously they DO catch people-- look at all the complainers and google haters online crying about being banned--- when they likely were getting friends in other states to click their ads--they say "I didn't click my own ads! "I" didn't do it..." but it doesn't matter-- if they can make a connection between you and fraudulant clicks.. you're done for.

[ly2]

they dont catch THAT many people.
There have been times on DP where people were bitching because they had repeatedly reported TOS violations and Google did nothing about it. They have enough money to get this shit under control if they wanted to.
I dont care either way, I quit using adwords a long time ago for this very reason.

[funlounge]

I sincerely believe they are doing a lot to hunt down the click fraud...

They are terminating Adsense accounts without questions ... check the forums !!

Now you can restrict your Adwords campaign to the "search" network if you
worry about click fraud... There is no click fraud in Google Search (nobody benefits from it..)

[gzm]

I will check all clear again

[dvduval]

Letting it happen means the businesses that have a plan to click on their competitors until they no longer use adwords will remain, and the honest businesses will leave.

The logic is terrible, and they deserve to get a little criticism for this comment.

[KLB]

I actually agree with Eric that click fraud is basically self correcting and have always looked at AdWords advertising as managing one's ROI. In fact when I run AdWords campaigns I just assume there will be a certain amount of click fraud and base my bid rate on what is a cost effective bid. For instance if only 1 in 100 clicks result in a desired action on average, I look at how much that desired action is worth to me and divide that value by 100. If a desired action is worth $10 to me, then I divide that $10 dollars by the 100 clicks it will take to get that action which then sets my maxium bid price at $0.10 per click. If I don't get many impressions, that's okay at least I'm not paying more for clicks than they are really worth to me.

Now as an AdSense publisher I dispise click fraud because I know it is driving down the PPC value of ads displayed on my site because of some other site creating an artificial and fraudlent supply of clicks. In the long run, the ones that get hurt the worst by click fraud are AdSense publishers who try to play by the rules as those who are trying to commit click fraud are driving down the value of ads and clicks, which reduces how much legitimate sites can make per click.

[homeloans1]

Pay Per Click Advertising Fraud - The Inside Story
http://www.agotoguy.com/news-articles/?p=36

Now for a little history lesson on the origin of click fraud.

Cost per click advertising (CPC, hence PPC) actually began in large scale with PPC banner and text link advertising programs in the adult market around 5 to 7 years ago. The most educated people I know on the topic of click fraud come from the adult industry. PPC banner ads and text links was a major revenue stream for adult site affiliates before PPC finally was fazed out of the adult market due to click fraud. PPC banner and text advertising was a norm on adult sites for quite some time. Ultimately, it was also responsible for the closure of many adult affiliate programs.

Adult companies built huge affiliate networks on the PPC model of paying affiliates for displaying banners and text links. In the end, many of these same companies also went out of business because of click fraud. The adult industry could not stop click fraud back then because the technology was no good. The same issues exist today with pay per click search engine advertising. Nothing has changed in over 5 years.

What happened to BlowSearch PPC after they tried to filter clicks
http://www.agotoguy.com/news-articles/?p=64#more-64

After Click Defender launched on the publisher feed the traffic disappeared overnight. So I went to work and wrote new publisher/search deals with better sites to help recoup that lost revenue.

Nice affiliates. Kanoodle and other companies made good money with this fraudulent internet traffic.

[soniqhost.com]

You'll never eliminate click fraud, especially with the amounts of money that is being spent on PPC advertising at the same time though if they are removing sites behind click fraud and refunding the customers money for bad clicks there is not much more you can ask of them