Google Click Fraud
How to get traffic the right way: Tell people who care about you to go to your site. Tell your friends. Tell them why it matters to you. Find the places where your community congregates online and participate. Connect with them like a person, not a corporation. Engage. Be real.
Did you know that from 5% to over 50% (depends on how competitive the keyword is) of Google's revenue is due to click-through fraud. It is best summarized in the phrase "a car stolen is a car sold" similar to the phrase "when a fraud is a sale" which you can also google.
Google does not admit to more than a fraction of click-through fraud and there has been at least one class action lawsuit with payback (small compared with the fraud revenue).
It seems that the current high level of click-through fraud does not really affect google's big accounts, due to their resources to supervise and bargain weight, but is largely carried by the medium to low tiers, the bulk of users.
The Vanishing Click-Fraud Case
Why was a seemingly slam-dunk case against an alleged click-fraudster who attempted to extort Google quietly dismissed?
Google won't discuss specifically how it detects bad clicks or what percent it deems fraudulent, only that it's "less than 10%," saying such information could be helpful to would-be scam artists. Google and its competitors also make money on fraudulent clicks. Here's how it works: Hundreds of thousands of advertisers that market on Google's search engine also let Google distribute their ads to other Web sites. When an ad is clicked on a partner site, both Google and the Web site operator split the revenue and the advertiser is charged. If such a click is bogus, and gets through the search company's filters, Google still profits, at least in the short run.
Clarance Briggs AIT Corporation speaks http://media.webmasterradio.fm/episodes/audio/2006/googlestory/googlestory1.mp3 WebmasterRadio.FM investigative journalist Jim Hedger hosts this exclusive
AIT - x military found google in the al caida blog asked where is the money going? - is how this got started with the FBI google helps pro terror fund themselves. WebmasterRadio.FM series on the implications of click fraud on the industry and on national and global security. WebmasterRadio.FM is initiating an industry wide initiative to further examine and confirm issues raised by this series. The series starts with an interview with Clarence Briggs, CEO of hosting firm AIT.com. Mr. Briggs was a lead proponent in one of the class action lawsuits Google settled in the spring of 2006. Because the case was settled out of court, Google was never forced to show how they charge for some clicks and dismiss others as invalid. Mr. Briggs maintains Google is doing business as usual, just as they did before the class actions were initiated.
During the interview, Mr. Briggs noted the use of click fraud by criminal and terrorist organizations. Our investigation has found several incidents of this type of activity. We have also found evidence of bot-nets used to facilitate click fraud, primarily against Google advertisers. This series has been in research and production for over three months. In that time, Jim Hedger and a number of well-known search marketing experts and analysts have studied log files supplied by AIT. Each of the search marketing experts and analysts worked in exclusion of each other, without a lot of background information, in order to ensure non-biased examination of the data.
Click Fraud class action suits in CA & Lessons Learned:
- only lawyers and google won.
- click syndicated networks = stealing Major Telco's could be the next big search engine to defeat google.
- Advertisers have a right to know what they are being charged for and if it is a real user.
- Goggle should provide known ip address
- Advertiser should demand a bill from google that shows the IP address, making sure its not RBL or proxy server and the ID that its a real user.
- Private domain registration exists so you can't find the internet fraud running the botnet
- the new mob - they will lean on the click fraud guys.
- ONLINE division - click fraud - runs from overture down into publications business week - local newspapers into the print division.
- click fraud Shows ip addresses producing spam to promote and ironically IP AIT corp. is on there
http://spamvertised.abusebutler.com/ and
Joe Holcomb -
Search engines KNOW about the fraud on their networks. They also do NOT eliminate revenue from a particular source unless they have another source to replace it. Ive worked for enough engines and been privy to enough conversations to know what I am talking about here. Fact is they may not know WHO they are funding but they do know that the crappy traffic is there making them money. And they DO let it happen. Nilhan, they wont clean up click fraud unless stories like this one get out and force them to in order to save face. As I mentioned in my article linked to above, some industry experts estimate that 30% of all clicks are fraudulent. Imagine what would happen if Google had to clean all that up! Their stock would tank, their revenues would shrink, and their costs would go up. They have an incredible incentive NOT to do anything about this type of activity. They simply ban small time publishers (and keep their money by the way) to make it SEEM like they are doing something about the 300 lb gorilla in the room. [2 Stories - one and two ]
2005
- Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google since January 2000, used to work for the National Security Agency.
- Keyhole, the satellite imaging company that Google acquired in October 2004, was funded by the CIA.
- "We are moving to a Google that knows more about you." — Google CEO Eric Schmidt,
- What Google Knows About You and what you can know about Eric from Google.
- Google hired Dan Senor as a vice president, who was the chief spokesman in U.S.-occupied Iraq.