According to a very brief article I just read in the newspaper, 14.1% of all clicks are sham clicks, which is up from 13.7% three months ago. I don't know where they get those percentages, though. Perhaps this could affect how much clicks are worth, it could go down. I don't know how many people saw the article though, it was very short, less than 50 words.
Newspaper reporters are very well informed regarding webmaster-related news... not. What references are provided? And since most of these statistics are just approximations, and could easily be at least 5% inaccurate on either side, then a .4% change doesn't mean anything - except to a reporter looking to exploit the idea of 'monetary dangers of the internet' to an easily-excitable public. Just my 2 cents And if it is true, it's probably the work of this company : http://www.clickmonkeys.com
The story made Techspot. Here's the link: http://www.techspot.com/news/22239-click-fraud-continues-to-rise-says-click-forensics.html. The company was Click Forensics.
Doesn't surprise me. I just had a fool visit my site and click on the ads so many times that my CTR was 70%. The earnings were only cents so I figured that the Adsense team had already sussed it out but I emailed them and got a sensible reply. Click Fraud can be used as a weapon against webmasters as much as a tool to obtain money fraudulently. With the processing power of Google behind them I'm expecting them to stay in the game.
Yep, I check my clicks daily. I will do the same as sarahk and email Adsense if I see anything suss before they make a decision to ban me.
If the original source was a newspaper, there's a good chance that it's a scare tactic. There will always be some degree of fraud. If it be for money or sabatoge it really makes no difference...But back to the newspapers, they are losing money so fast thier heads are spinning like a Gravatron. It's no surprise that they would, do and will publish articles about "The dangers and losses" of internet advertising. What they fail to write about more often than not, is the massive explosion of sales and growth for business owners since the birth of PPC, CMP ads ect.. Newspapers have been attacking web companies since the late 90's when they started to notice that the papers advertising revenue was dropping, dropping fast. Ads for newspapers are the bread and butter, selling a few hunderd thousand papers for a buck won't even cover the overhead for most newspapers. Point is that even if they do publish articles as the above mentioned, they are a dying medium of media and advertising and they don't want to give up...Takes craigslist for example, I remember when alot of big papers were flaming him because he offered an alternative to paid ads..thats just one example....The newspapers are just getting what they had coming to them for raping society with all the BS and political propaganda. anyway, sorry to get into a rant... I just wouldn't worry about what the newspapers say too much. There are better sources out there, and guess where? Thats right...on the web...and um... at DP!
Consider the source too. Click Forensics is a company centered around stopping click fraud. Of course they are going to want to publish news saying that click fraud is rising.
I really don't get it. Why doens't google only alow 1 click? *If possible*: user clicks 1 time and the ad will not show again in that site for that ip in that day/hour whatever. or Google only counts 1 click and ignores all others (thats what they do right?). Why must we have afraid of click fraud? Google should just "ignore" them. If one guy/bot keeps clicking same ads: 1) we do not receive money 2) advertiser only pays the first click - or the first click is also ignored 3) advertiser does not receive "free traffic" because its click fraud and the guy/bot clicking is not interested in visit the site. Who can explain it to me?
I think that its common for users to click 1 or 3 related ads on a site if they are looking for a particular product or service. I would not like to see this stopped. I think googles comment about the market self correcting ( a week or two ago, it didnt go down well) was right. Google and the other ad networks are smart and they are working hard to find and tackle click fraud. Related to that the new google research into actual conversion rate to customers will only serve to lower the value of false click genres.
it surprises me that google doesn't come out with a tool that doesn't display ads to the same IP number or IP host after a click
Some channels can generate very high CTR. One user can click on several interested ads on the same page.
It is a cycle. It get's bad, it get's better. It will always go up and down. It will always hurt the advertiser and help google. It hurts us publishers of adsense ads obviously as well. Everytime click fraud gets out of hand to the point where advertisers notice, their bids go down, our adsense revenue goes down.
LOL! Clickmonkeys says they helped MSN.com double and triple their traffic. That site is the biggest scam ever... it should be shut down.
It is usual to get 2-3 click from a single IP at the same time. It happens because she may like all three ads at a time. What should bother you is you are getting more than 15 or 20 clciks from that IP in a single hour. Thats the time to raise the alarm to Google people. Otherwise they can ban you. Nuttymarketer
this recent article might explain the sudden drop of my clicks ...i guess the trend for fraud growing
ClickMonkeys is a joke. A well written joke. From the same people that created the less tasteful PETSorFOOD website, where you can order animals like seals or koalas - as pets, or food - http://www.petsorfood.com Personally I prefer their ClickMonkeys site