Google Click Fraud

2006-07-05T15:33:00.000-07:00

Alright, still dealing with google back and forth!

Here is an Update. Google is trying to tell me that is a recording issue, that the impressions are recorded differently than clicks. That is belivible but why 2 weeks later, how come I still have a 200% Click Through Ratio?

I will post again with the resolution.

In the mean time...

Click fraud a huge problem
Study finds practice widespread; many cut back online ads

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/05/BUGL6JOQPA1.DTL

Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, July 5, 2006

Internet advertisers paid $800 million for bogus clicks on their marketing messages last year, shaking confidence in the industry and prompting many to reduce spending with Google, Yahoo and other Web sites, according to a study to be released today.

The survey, by Outsell Inc., a market researcher in Burlingame, is one of the most detailed looks at the nagging, high-profile problem known as click fraud. Advertisers have long complained that major Internet sites don't do enough to combat the practice or, at least, disclose the extent of it.

Internet advertisers pay companies like Google and Yahoo every time someone clicks on their ads. The advertisers also share revenue with Internet companies based on how many advertising clicks their Web sites generate. Click fraud occurs when scammers repeatedly click on ads to cause a rival company to be overcharged. In another incarnation, fraudsters place the ads on their own Web sites and then click on the links to get a piece of the shared revenue they've agreed to with Google or Yahoo.

In today's report, advertisers say that 14.6 percent of all clicks are bogus. Moreover, three-quarters of advertisers said they had been victims at least once.

The perception of pervasive fraud has prompted many advertisers to change their spending. Many are asking why they should fork over money - significant amounts, in some cases -- for phantom shoppers.

The study found that 27 percent of advertisers reduced or stopped spending on click-based advertising. An additional 10 percent said they intend to curtail spending.

"In our opinion, it is not acceptable that advertisers fund the illicit profits of the scammers," Chuck Richard, vice president of Outsell, said in the report. He added that the fraud is easy to get away with and that Web sites have done little to stop it.

Gaude Paez, a spokeswoman for Yahoo in Sunnyvale, denied that her company is lax about click fraud. Rather, she said, Yahoo rigorously polices the problem with a range of automated filters so that customers aren't excessively charged.

Through the years, Yahoo has detected and declined to bill for billions of suspect clicks, Paez said. Users can always request refunds if they believe that they were erroneously billed, she added.

Outsell found that 7 percent of advertisers request a refund, netting an average of $9,507. Unsolicited refunds were paid to 4.2 percent of advertisers, with an average of $9,444 coming from Google and $4,068 from Yahoo.

Some advertisers who say they have been defrauded may be mistaken, Paez said. What looks like an unusual spike in clicks, for example, may actually be the consequence of a particular search term suddenly rising in popularity because of a news event or a holiday.

A spokesman for Mountain View's Google didn't respond to a telephone call seeking comment.

Advertisers have sued Google and Yahoo, claiming that the companies fail to filter enough of the fraud. Both recently reached settlements in separate class-action lawsuits over click fraud.

Outsell's survey was based on the responses of 407 online advertisers representing a cross-section of U.S. business. Their spending ranged from several thousand dollars online annually to more than $10 million.

That some of the advertisers cut some of their spending had a big effect on the finances of Google, Yahoo and other Web sites, according to Outsell. Combined, they missed out on $500 million in revenue in the United States, according to the report.

Still, the U.S. Internet advertising industry grew in 2005, as did Google and Yahoo. Such marketing, called pay-per-click, was a $5.5 billion business overall.

"Regardless of how impressed anyone is with the growth of pay-per-click advertising, it's dragging an anchor behind it," Outsells's Richard said in an interview. "It could be much larger."

Paez said that her company's business is still healthy. "We continue to see a lot of advertisers joining the network and increasing their spending," she said.

Ads priced by the click appear most frequently on search engines, in the margins next to results. On average, the advertisers paid $1.39 for each click on their ads during the first three months of the year, according to Fathom Online, a search engine advertising company in San Francisco.

The ads, which appear as mostly text and a link, are usually specifically tailored to the search terms. For example, a user who enters the query "beach vacation" will typically see ads from travel companies.

Richard said that major Internet companies could help improve their perception by advertisers by being more transparent. Google and Yahoo decline to make public any internal data about click fraud for competitive reasons and for fear that fraudsters could use the information to get around the defenses.

The stance has frustrated many advertisers through the years, who say they should know up front what level of fraud to expect and how many illicit clicks they get and when. Previous estimates have calculated the amount of fraud at between 10 and 30 percent of all clicks.

Richard said that dissatisfaction with click-based advertising is fueling the drive to a different type of online marketing that he insists is better for merchants. The idea, sometimes called cost per action, would require advertisers to pay only when a consumer clicks on an ad and then buys a product or asks for a brochure.

Such advertising is gaining popularity, with San Jose online marketplace eBay recently disclosing plans for an advertising network that would farm ads out to other Web sites. The site operators would be paid if visitors click on one of the ads and then buy a related item on eBay within a few days.

"Pay per click is a really rudimentary advertising -- a baby step -- and it's destined to decline and be replaced by other advertising methods," Richard said.

Click fraud

A survey about fraudulent clicks on online advertisements offers a window into a problem faced by many advertisers. Here's some of the findings:

Clicks believed by advertisers to be fraudulent: 14.6 percent

Money paid by advertisers for bogus clicks: $800 million (2005)

Advertisers who said they were victims of click fraud: 75 percent

Advertisers who said they reduced click-based advertising or plan to: 37 percent

Revenue lost by Google, Yahoo and other Web sites, as a result: $500 million

Advertisers who request refunds because of fraud: 7 percent

Average refund: $9,507

Source: Outsell Inc.

2006-06-23T23:25:00.000-07:00

So Google Replied to My Email.

They didn't even answer my question!!!

I never mentioned Conversions, I don't even have the conversion tracking code up!!!

GOOGLE's REPLY

==================================

Hello,

Thank you for your email.

Your conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the number of
clicks on your ad. Clicks should exceed conversions, so your conversion
rate normally won't exceed 100%.

However, your conversion rate may exceed 100% if the conversion tracking
cookie isn't updated properly by the user's browser when a user visits
your site. In this case, more than one conversion may be registered for a
single click. It isn't possible to prevent this situation, but please be
assured that it occurs very rarely.

For example, a user may arrive at your website after clicking on your ad.
After advancing through your site and triggering a conversion, the user
may click on the back button to return to the page where the conversion
tracking code is placed. In this case, instead of recording one click and
one conversion with multiple transactions, the system records one click
and multiple conversions with one transaction each.

Similarly, a user may leave your website after triggering one conversion
and then re-visit your site at another time. If another transaction occurs
without another click on your AdWords ad, two conversions are registered
instead of one.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at
https://adwords.google.com/support to find answers to many frequently
asked questions. Or, try our Learning Center at
http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/ for self-paced lessons that
cover the scope of AdWords.

We look forward to providing you and your clients with the most effective
advertising available.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Agency Team

----------------
Content bids give you the impressive reach of the Google content network
at prices you control. Give your clients the power of the content network
while bidding to their specific ROI. Learn more about this great new
feature: https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=26507

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
From:
Subject: Over 100% CTR
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 22:55:20 -0000

How is this possible? Is this Click Fraud?

How can my add have over 100% Click Through Ratio??

===================================================

Really? Did they just answer my question? NO

I asked about Click Through Ratio, Not CONVERSIONS!!!

So I will ask again Google.....

How can I have over 100% Click Through Ratio?

If I have 1 Impression and 2 Clicks....Isn't That obvious Click Fraud?

If not then what is it? Please answer my question...

How can I have over 100% Click Through Ratio?? Is that possible, please explain.

Here is My Reply.

==============================================

Thank you for the Reply,

It isn't that I had over 100% conversion score.

I Had a 200% Click through Ratio....I had 1 Impression and 2 Clicks.

I don,t want to pay for Fraudulant Clicks.

Both Clicks Came from the same IP ( I can show you the server Log)

My Ad was Clicked twice by One Person. This is Click Fraud.

I have attached a Screenshot.

This IS NOT ABOUT CONVERSIONS.

Please Read My Email - 200% CLICK THROUGH RATIO

Thank you for your time.

2006-06-23T16:03:00.000-07:00

200 % Click through Ratio??? Hello, isn't this obviously click fraud??Please don't charge me $.83 For a Fake Click!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Someone Clicked my Ad, Hit Back on their Browser and Clicked it again!!!

How Can you Charge me For that? Even better you NEVER answer My Emails (4 sent so far)

Google is anyone home? Are you ignoring click Fraud Beacuse it is 30% of your Revenue

30% of 4 Billion is OVER 1 Billion Dollars in Click Fraud.....That is alot of Click Fraud and alot of $$

How can we just sit here and let this happen.

Here is the code you write google.
If X IP address Clicks Y Advertisment 2 times or more in 1 hour then only charge the advertiser for 1 click!

This 100+% CTR has got to stop!! I guess that you assume that I am going to have so many impressions that I won't notice that I get 2 clicks from the same IP, 2 seconds apart! Well you are WRONG GOOGLE, I do notice, I am pissed and I don't want to pay for that click.

That being said, I can't exactly stop running ads with you cause you generate 30% of my Business.

Google...Do No Evil? It is Evil to Charge me for Fraudulant Clicks!

DIGG THIS

2006-06-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

133% CTR How is that Possible. Click Fraud Anyone?

What is Click Fraud?

Click fraud

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Clickfraud)

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Click fraud occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating an improper charge per click. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud whether they like it or not.

Use of a computer to commit this type of fraud is a felony in many jurisdictions, for example as covered by Penal code 502 in California and the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in the United Kingdom. There have been arrests relating to click fraud with regard to malicious clicking in order to deplete a competitor's advertising budget.

In 2004, a California man created a software program that he claimed could let spammers defraud Google out of millions of dollars in fraudulent clicks. Authorities said he was arrested while trying to blackmail Google for $150,000 to hand over the program.^{[citation needed]}

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Pay per click advertising

Main article: Pay per click

Pay per click advertising or PPC advertising is an arrangement in which webmasters (operators of web sites), acting as publishers, display clickable links from advertisers, in exchange for a charge per click. As this industry evolved, a number of advertising networks developed which acted as middlemen between these two groups (publishers and advertisers). Each time a (believed to be) valid web user clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays the advertising network, who in turn pays the publisher a share of this money. This revenue sharing system is seen as an incentive for click fraud.

The largest of the advertising networks, Google's AdWords/AdSense and Yahoo! Search Marketing, act in a dual role, since they are also publishers themselves (on their search engines). According to critics, this complex relationship may create a conflict of interest. For instance, Google loses money to undetected click fraud when it pays out to the publisher, but it makes money when it collects it from the advertiser. Because of the spread between what Google collects and what Google pays out, click fraud directly and invisibly profits Google.

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Non-contracting parties

A secondary source of click fraud is non-contracting parties, who are not part of any pay-per-click agreement. This type of fraud is even harder to police because perpetrators generally cannot be sued for breach of contract or charged criminally with fraud. Examples of non-contracting parties are:

Competitors of advertisers: These parties may wish to harm a competitor who advertises in the same market by clicking on their ads. The perpetrators don't profit directly, but force advertiser to pay for irrelevant clicks thus weakening or eliminating a source of competition.
Competitors of publishers: These persons may wish to frame a publisher. It is made to look like the publisher is clicking on its own ads. The advertising network may then terminate the relationship. Many publishers rely exclusively on revenue from advertising and can be put out of business by such an attack.
Other malicious intent: As with vandalism, there's an array of motives for wishing to cause harm to either an advertiser or a publisher, even by people who have nothing to gain financially. Motives include political and personal vendettas. These cases are often the hardest to deal with, since it is hard to track down the culprit, and if found, there is little legal action that can be taken against them.
Unwanted "friends" of the publisher: Sometimes upon learning a publisher profits from ads being clicked, a supporter of the publisher (like a fan, family member, or personal friend), will click on the ads to "help". However, this can backfire when the publisher (not the "friend") is accused of click fraud.

Advertising networks try to stop fraud by all parties, but often do not know which clicks are legitimate. Unlike fraud committed by the publisher, it is hard to know who should pay when past click fraud is found. Publishers resent having to pay refunds for something that is not their fault. However, advertisers are adamant that they should not have to pay for phony clicks.

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Organization

Click fraud can be as simple as one person starting a small web site, becoming a publisher of ads, and clicking on those ads to generate revenue. Oftentimes the number of clicks, and their value, is so small, that the fraud goes undetected. Frequently publishers will claim small amounts of such clicking is an accident, which is often the case.

Much larger scale fraud also occurs. Those engaged in large scale fraud will often run scripts which simulate a human clicking on ads in web pages. However, huge numbers of clicks appearing to come from just one, or a small number, of computers, or single geographic area, look highly suspicious to the advertising network and advertisers. Clicks coming from a computer known to be that of a publisher also look suspicious to those watching for click fraud. A person attempting large scale fraud, alone in their home, stands a good chance of being caught.

Organized crime can handle this by having many computers with their own internet connections in different geographic locations. Often scripts fail to mimic true human behavior, so organized crime networks use Trojan code to turn the average person's machines into zombie computers and using sporadic redirects or DNS-cache-poisoning to turn the oblivious user's actions into actions generating revenue for the scammer.

Impression fraud is an insidious variant of click fraud in which the advertiser is penalized for having an unacceptably low click-through rate for a given keyword. This involves making numerous searches for a keyword but without clicking of the ad. Such keywords are disabled automatically, enabling a competitor's lower-bid ad for the same keyword to continue while several high bidders (on the first page of the search results) have been eliminated.

It is very difficult for advertisers, advertising networks, and authorities to pursue cases against networks of people spread around multiple countries.

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Litigation

Disputes over the issue have resulted in a number of lawsuits. In one case, Google (acting as both an advertiser and advertising network) won a lawsuit against a Texas company called Auction Experts (acting as a publisher), which Google accused of paying people to click on ads that appeared on Auction Experts' site, costing advertisers $50,000[1]. Despite networks' efforts to stop it, publishers are suspicious of the motives of the advertising networks because the advertising network receives money for each click, even if it is fraudulent.

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Solutions

Proving click fraud can be very difficult, since it is hard to know who is behind a computer and what their intentions are. Often the best an advertising network can do is to identify which clicks are most likely fraudulent and not charge the account of the advertiser. Ever more sophisticated means of detection are used, but none is foolproof.

The pay-per-click industry is lobbying for tighter laws on the issue. Many hope to have laws that will cover those not bound by contracts.

A number of companies are developing viable solutions for click fraud identification and are developing intermediary relationships with advertising networks. Such solutions fall into two categories:

a) Forensic analysis of advertisers' web server log files

This analysis of the advertiser's web server data requires an in-depth look at the source and behavior of the traffic. As industry standard log files are used for the analysis, the data is verifiable by advertising networks.

b) Third-party corroboration

Third parties offer web-based solutions that might involve placement of single-pixel images or Javascript on the advertiser's web pages and suitable tagging of the ads. The visitor may be presented with a cookie. Visitor information is then collected in a third-party data store and made available for download. The better offerings make it easy to highlight suspicious clicks and they show the reasons for such a conclusion. Since an advertiser's log files can be tampered with, their accompaniment with corroborating data from a third party forms a more convincing body of evidence to present to the advertising network.

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Google AdSense Solution

There are solutions if you use the Google AdSense system. One such solution is the AdLogger script. It allows you to block an IP address from viewing (and clicking) your ads. It also allows you to automatically have repeat clicker's banned.

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External links

"Web start-ups vie to detect 'click fraud'." Wall Street Journal Online. Retrieved June 10, 2005.
"Vendors release click-fraud detection tools." eWeek. Retrieved March 4, 2005.
"Click fraud roils search advertisers." C|Net News.com. Retrieved March 4, 2005.
"Mice Attack: Internet scammers steal money with 'click fraud'." Newsweek. Retrieved January 18, 2005.
"Google CFO: Fraud a Big Threat." CNN Money. Retrieved December 2, 2004.
"Click fraud threatens web." Wired News. Retrieved October 13, 2004.
"How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet." Wired Magazine, issue 14.01 (January 2006). Retrieved December 29, 2005.
"Click fraud fears growing for online advertisers." Times Online. Retrieved February 2006
"New Attacks and Defenses In Click-Fraud War." Datamation. Retrieved September 2004

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud"

Categories: Articles with unsourced statements | Internet advertising and promotion | Internet fraud | Electronic commerce | Fraud

Google Click Fraud

Click fraud a huge problem Study finds practice widespread; many cut back online ads

Click fraud

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

Pay per click advertising

Non-contracting parties

Organization

Litigation

Solutions

Google AdSense Solution

External links

Click fraud a huge problem
Study finds practice widespread; many cut back online ads