Posts Tagged ‘Click Fraud’

Click Fraud 101

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Here are a list of my posts designed to be the beginners guide to click fraud.

  • Click Fraud - Definition
  • Click Fraud - Detection
  • Click Fraud - Reparation
  • The Click fraud to do list

As I add posts, so this list will be updated, please syndicate this site for future updates.

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Trust Me I’m A Search Engine

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

As I have mentioned in the click fraud paradox, search engines do not inform advertisers which clicks are invalid in case their detection methods are hacked. All automatic click fraud reparation is done on a trust basis. They do not charge x% because they have detected these clicks to be invalid, and we have to trust their detection methods and that the other percentage is truly billable.

Let me don my cynical hat for the moment and say “No I don’t trust you. Your money is made through clicks on adverts, you bottom line relies on the largest number of clicks possible. You want to cover up the invalid clicks problem.”

Flip back to my optimistic fedora and cock it at a jaunty angle I reply “It is not in the interest of the search engines to hide the invalid click issue. Our advertising spend is based upon trust and once that trust is lost, our money will be taken elsewhere.”

Cynical hat (it’s an authoritarian black leather number by the way) “They know we will go elsewhere, that’s why they cover their tracks”

Optimistic (green with a black silk band) “We need to trust them.”

Trust is the central tenant of our relationship with the search engines, and their lack of transparency on which click is invalid causes a problem. We need a mechanism with which to gain trust.

I find myself repeatedly saying we need independent verification. In the same way that auditors check computer system controls for stock holders of public companies, I would like to see auditors check the controls of search engine invalid click processes.

I do not expect them to publish how it is done, only that it works well. This should be an on-going process.

So this is a call to the search engines, engage the services of the big four accountancy firms and have them audit the processes on the advertisers behalf.

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The Click Fraud Paradox

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

“I cannot tell you which click is an invalid click because you can work out how to create invalid clicks.” Said the search engine.

“So how do I know you are detecting all the clicks?” replied the advertiser.

“Trust me I’m a search engine.”


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Click Fraud A-Listers

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

In this post, I take a leaf from Hollywood’s book and name the people whom I think are A-Listers in the world of click fraud.

The Hollywood A list if the roster of the most bankable film stars, a 100 point check list was developed by journalist James Ulmer,

I am opening this post up to comments to expand this list and create a who’ s who in click fraud so please let me know who should be added.

In at number one

Shuman Ghosemajumder

The Googleite and member of the Click Quality Team. Whenever Google want to talk with authority about click fraud (I know I keep calling it CF when they call it invalid clicks )they seem to roll out Shuman.

And at number two only because it is the second place search engine

Reggie Davis

Reggie is Yahoo’s click fraud Czar, not as vocal in the blogsphere as Shuman, but Reggie has been tasked at an executive level to combat click fraud.

Please leave your comments so we can make up a top ten.

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Click Fraud To-Do List

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

If you are a pay per click campaign manager, then I would like to ask you to one thing today; run an invalid click report from your Adwords account.

As part of their move to be more transparent Google added this additional metric to campaign and account level reports and it is surprising how many people are not taking advantage of this information.

A quick how to:

Login to your Adwords account and go to the report section. Select campaign or account reports, and select the invalid click check box, run your report as normal.

The result was quite a shock to me, for the small period I selected, there were a total of 324 clicks with the invalid clicks result at 24. This means that a little over 7% of my clicks are invalid.

Please note, these are only the invalid clicks that the Google tools pick up, and since Google keeps their click fraud monitoring techniques a secret we do not know what else may slip through the net.

I am interested to get a view of other peoples click fraud percentage, for those of you who run the report, please post your percentages as comments to this post.

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