Advertising “Click Fraud” Rampant Online
By Sheila on Dec 22, 2009 in Make Money Online
Since I’ve started advertising my blogs on different Social Networking sites, I’ve noticed a disturbing phenomenon – blatant click fraud. I have received numerous requests through personal messages that read something like this: “I’ve clicked on your ad, hope you do the same for me” - I really hate these messages. Why would anyone want to take a chance at losing the ability to make money in order to get an extra penny or two? It’s fine if you want to screw up your money making potential, but don’t pull me into your sneaky, deceptive money earning fraud. I don’t want you clicking on my ads unless you are really interested in them and I definitely WILL NOT click back on yours. It seems I’m not the only one having issues with click fraud lately.
“Pay-per-click,” by far the most popular form of online advertising, recently came under fire as charges of rampant “click fraud” gather steam on the Web.
Google and Yahoo! earn the majority of their money through sales of advertising to tens-of-thousands of online merchants, companies, and professional.
In fact, some estimate that 99% of all Google’s revenue comes from advertising sales. Unfortunately, allegations of click fraud may well rain on Google’s otherwise sunny parade and cause a whole scale revamping of current online advertising practices.
Pay-per-click advertising does exactly what it sounds: advertisers pay for each click on their ad, usually mixed in among search engine results or displayed on relevant websites.
“Click fraud” occurs when, for whatever reason, an ad gets clicked by someone or something (usually an automated “bot” that simulates clicks) with no intention of ever buying anything from the advertiser.
The sole intention of click fraud is to simply drain an advertiser’s budget and leave them with nothing to show but an empty wallet.
Who commits click fraud?
Usually an unscrupulous competitor who wants to break a rival’s bank, online “vandals” who get their kicks causing other people grief, or search engine advertising affiliates who want to earn fat commissions by racking up piles of bogus clicks.
Regardless of who does it or why, click fraud appears to be a growing problem search engines hope stays under their advertising clients’ radar.
This problem isn’t exactly news to the search engine giants.
In fact, on page 60 of their 3rd quarter Report for 2004, Google admits that they have “regularly refunded revenue” to advertisers that was “attributed to click-through fraud.”
Google further states that if they don’t find a way to deal with this problem “these types of fraudulent activities could hurt our brand.”
Bottom line for Google and Yahoo! (which owns Overture, the Web’s largest pay-per-click search engine): as word of click fraud spreads across the Web, they must act quickly to calm the nerves of advertisers who could well abandon them over doubts about the veracity of their advertising charges.
The search engines all claim to carry measures that identify and detect click fraud, but details about how they do it and to what extent remain sketchy.
They claim revealing details about security would compromise their efforts and give the perpetrators a leg up on circumventing their defenses.
This sounds good, but affords little comfort to advertisers who feel caught between losing out on their best traffic sources and paying for advertising that won’t result in revenue.
One way to protect your business against click fraud is to closely monitor your website statistics.
Look for an unusually high number or regular pattern of clicks from the same IP address.
If you need help, enlist the aid of your hosting provider to aid you in spotting suspicious trends in your website traffic.
Also, a number of services have sprung up online to help advertisers spot and quickly analyze and compile the data necessary to effectively dispute fraudulent click charges with the search engines.
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22 Comment(s)
By Steve on Dec 23, 2009 | Reply
I am surprised as Google has always done a good job of canceling the accounts of anyone involved in click fraud.
By Morten Pedersen on Dec 24, 2009 | Reply
I have also got a lot of these messages, but I have always just deleted them and never clicked still my Adsense account was closed 6 weeks ago and I do have complaint against it, but havent’t heard a word so far…..
I also have a AdWords account and I noticed that most of the click comes from the AD on my competitor site. … that was a little strange … so I had to do someting about that.
By Paul Baines on Dec 24, 2009 | Reply
I usually receive this kind of request almost everyday at http://www.blogcatalog.com – I usually delete the message and block the user!
By Daisy on Dec 24, 2009 | Reply
Gosh, I get those requests a lot from BlogCatalog members, too. It’s very irritating.
By WoodWorker on Dec 24, 2009 | Reply
From the beginning,when I started my website, I did not like the concept of pay-per-click systems.
Too many cons: I can not click ads on my OWN website to see where they lead , uncertainty over the earnings and vulnerability of being banned.
For example,if I will send you a private message:
“If You to not click my ads I will click Yours several times and daily and get You account canceled.”
For me the best system is projectwonderful.com ,everything is simple and clear.
PS: Please everybody click ads on http://www.isetehtud.pri.ee/blog/ many many times every day.
By Tina T on Dec 24, 2009 | Reply
I agree with Paul, I get them very often from BC also. I remove them as friends, but I guess I should block them also. Funny thing is that I even get these messages for my blogs that don’t have PPC ads, so I guess they mass generate this message but aren’t clicking anyway.
By Benjamin on Dec 24, 2009 | Reply
I get a lot of these messages at BlogCatalog. Funny thing: I checked the statistics of my advertisers, there weren’t any clicks registered. I received identical messages from one guy several days in a row. He stopped once I told him I would ban him. I never answer the messages or clicked the ads in response to the messages.
By Martin@Cornyman's Money-Blog on Dec 24, 2009 | Reply
Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones!
Let’s hope that these BC-Members don’t destroy our hopes in receiving some Adsense funds when the time has come… usually you get banned when you left 20 – 30 $ from the 100$…
By Man Over Board on Dec 24, 2009 | Reply
I can’t agree with you more. I have to say Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog are the worst offenders, but like Paul said I just ignore them and delete them. I should block them also, but sometimes just to lazy too. Great subject.
By the way I don’t even use Google, I believe they have to much of a God complex, but either way, I only click on an ad or widget because I want to know more. Except of course for EC and Adgitized. Boy how I would love not to have to click them also, but it is a necessary evil
A Happy Holiday to you and yours and also your readers, you have an outstanding blog and is on my very top of my favs. Glenn
By StarMars on Dec 25, 2009 | Reply
I also get these messages from BlogCatalog. They’re few though so it’s not much of a problem. Just ignore and leave them alone.
Merry Christmas!
By Melo on Dec 26, 2009 | Reply
Never click on your own Google Ads and never participate in any ad click exchanges.
By Emm on Dec 26, 2009 | Reply
Looking at your Google ads in the sidebar, I’d say that Google only have themselves to blame for this!! All of the ads had to do with things like “pay per click mastery”. Google needs to get a lot more strict on the type of ads they authorise.
By Evan's Mom on Dec 27, 2009 | Reply
I started to get those messages from Blog Catalog members even before I had Adsense on my blog. I usually just ignored them.
I also got the same messages on my Cbox, now I already uninstalled it from my blog.
By Denford on Dec 27, 2009 | Reply
I advocate Google and Yahoo dropping PPC altogether and instead going with the route of paying according to impressions. This way, the sites that expose the brand to the most users gets the most money i.e, the most visited and popular sites become profitable.
After all, this was the original and almost foolproof way to advertise (newspapers and magazines get advertising based on the number of their readers for instance).
By turnip on Dec 27, 2009 | Reply
Any time I see a spammy blog without Adsense, I know they got busted for click fraud. Adsense if by far the best paying pay per click program. Likewise, when I advertise through Adwords, I never used content based ads, I use search results only instead. I don’t want anything to do with “made for adsense” blogs. Even with search results, most of my clicks came from competitors trying to drive me away from their keywords. I even caught Google itself clicking my ads using a foreign IP address, no doubt based upon competitor complaints. As soon as I blocked that foreign IP from that campaign, my keyword got suspended, surprise! When Google can charge your account for their own employee investigation clicks, they set a bad example for publishers.
By MountainWoman on Dec 27, 2009 | Reply
Interesting article. I get these messages all the time and I always ignore them. I agree with you. I don’t understand why anyone would jeopardize a chance to legitimately earn money.
By Comedy Plus on Dec 27, 2009 | Reply
I don’t do ads at all, but I get lots of folks who tell me that they clicked on my ads and they want me to click on theirs in return. Of course I don’t. If there’s a way to beat the system you will find many that are doing just that.
Have a terrific day.
By Xaivier on Jan 17, 2010 | Reply
Nothing is impossible nowadays. Spams are everywhere in internal. What we can do is just ignore them. I received a lot of such kind of message. Guess what!! just click spam on them^^
By Improve Search Engine Ranking on Feb 17, 2010 | Reply
Personally I prefer the organic type of promoting a website instead of doing the paid listings. Aside from being costly, the effect of PPC is just over a short period of time.
By LJP on May 11, 2010 | Reply
I get these messages on BlogCatalog and I just ignore them. When I check my stats, they haven’t clicked on any ads at all. I don’t know what scam they are running but I certainly won’t be participating!
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