Google's Fraud Squad Battles Phantom Clicks

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Google's Fraud Squad Battles Phantom Clicks

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday July 20, 2004 @01:01AM from the unfortunate-necessities dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It's an open secret that low cost workers in India, China and other countries are hired to boost traffic for online ads by clicking on text links, banners etc. Internet marketers facing high advertising fees on search networks like Google are becoming increasingly concerned about this form of online fraud. This problem has reached a critical stage and even Google recognizes that it has been the target of individuals and entities "using some of the most advanced spam techniques for years". A Google spokesperson said the company has "applied what we have learned with search to the click fraud problem and employed a dedicated team and proprietary technology to analyse clicks.""

18 of 313 comments (clear)

Open secret? by Threni · 2004-07-20 01:03 · Score: 5, Funny

> It's an open secret that low cost workers in India, China and other countries
> are hired to boost traffic for online ads by clicking on text links, banners etc.

That's like 'common knowledge', right?

Anyway, I click on lots of lots of ads. The ones that make it through AdBlock, anyway. Shortly before I add them to my block list. I do hope I'm not skewing anyone's statistics. I'd hate for commercial websites to suffer.
1. Re:Open secret? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 01:05 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  > Anyway, I click on lots of lots of ads.
  
  So tell me, have you gained those three inches yet? I, er, have a friend who was wondering...
2. Re:Open secret? by AuraBorealis · 2004-07-20 01:06 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You would hate to see it if commercially supported websites disappeared. I don't know what percentage of Slashdot's revenue comes from ads versus paying subscribers, but you'd better believe that all this bandwidth we burn up all day long has to be paid for by somebody.
  Ads are like taxes.. they support the things that people want to use but don't want to pay for.
  -B
3. Re:Open secret? by will_die · 2004-07-20 01:14 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  For 2004 about 96% of Google's revenue has come from ads.
  Here is some more detailed info.
  Because of thier desire for the IPO alot of financial info is now available.
4. Re:Open secret? by Eivind · 2004-07-20 01:48 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Not at all. In the contrary, advertising has a lot of externalities.
  Let me make a example; You own property, you rent it out to a company wanting to put up a billboard. With this, you make $X profit. The company considers the effects of the ad-campaign worth more than they pay you, so they also come out ahead.
  However, the other property around your migth degrade in value as a result of the visually noisy advertising. Or the people passing trough every day migth consider the ads annoying and be willing to pay (in aggregate !) more to be free of the ads than your profit is.
  Summa summarum, a net loss, but the loss is on other parts than you and the advertiser.
  Other example, which more slashdotters will agree with;
  You hire me to send 1 million emails with ads for your product. The sales generated give you $5000 in profit, and I do the mailing for $2000, having costs of my own of $500.
  We both come out ahead, you by $3000 and I by $1500. $4500 in sum. Looks good, no ?
  Until you consider the loss for the 1 million receivers. If the sum of annoyances at the ISP and end-user exceeds 0.45 *cent* pro message, then emailing the spam wasn't really profitable. It only looked that way to you because you get the profits, and someone else carries the cost.
  If you think about it, this ain't rare in advertising, though rarely is it so blatant as with spam.
5. Re:Open secret? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 02:05 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Exactly. I don't mind ads. What I mind (and tend to block) are ads that interfere with my ability to read the web site content that I want to read, or mess with my browser/computer working the way I want it to. This includes everything mentioned above (spyware, popups, flash, tracking cookies, etc.) as well as ad servers that can't keep up and stall things. I can't count the number of times I've been stuck waiting for some poor server at doubleclick to send something so that the page would finish rendering.
Gee. by sentientbeing · 2004-07-20 01:03 · Score: 5, Funny

Thanks for the link to Google.

Does anyone have a mirror just in case?

--

------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
1. Re:Gee. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 01:08 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Here you go.
2. Re:Gee. by houghi · 2004-07-20 01:10 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Thanks for the link to Google.
  
  Does anyone have a mirror just in case?
  
  Sure, no problem. The mirror is here: http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:zhool8dxBV4J: www.google.com/+google&hl=en
  
  --
  Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
3. Re:Gee. by crywolf · 2004-07-20 01:33 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Google mirror
  
  --
  CAUTION: Product may be hot after heating
4. Re:Gee. by Stuart+Gibson · 2004-07-20 01:56 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Hmm, from Google's cache of www.google.com:
  
  "Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content."
  
  That is shirking corporate responsibility if ever I saw it.
  
  Stuart
  
  --
  It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
Perhaps the next form of spamming? by Gentoo+Fan · 2004-07-20 01:04 · Score: 5, Interesting

Imagine a worm that infects machines that, instead of being an open email spam relay, surfs ad-heavy sites and simulates webclicks.
Golden opportunity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 01:07 · Score: 5, Funny

Google has a golden opportunity to avoid being snipped. Please deliver 40,000 advertising clicks now, or we will be forced to go through with our operation.

Best regards,

419
Clicking helps their ad karma ranking by Rhett · 2004-07-20 01:14 · Score: 5, Interesting

Last time I used google adwords, I noticed that they had a mechanism where ads that got clicked on a lot got some sort of karma points. So if you click on your competitors ads, it will cost them money, but maybe also help their ad karma. I don't know the specifics about this. Maybe it is a google secret. Does anyone else know more? My guess is the cost per click hurts a lot more than the karma gained in most cases.
1. Re:Clicking helps their ad karma ranking by myspys · 2004-07-20 01:21 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  the position for your adwords ads is based on CTR (clickthroughrate (%), as in clicks divided by impressions * 100) and the price you're willing to pay
sweet by ikea5 · 2004-07-20 01:28 · Score: 5, Funny

"It's an open secret that low cost workers in India, China and other countries are hired to boost traffic for online ads by clicking on text links, banners etc."
Wow, just like what I do at work everyday right here in US, Surfing the web and get paid.
When I contacted Google... by RobertB-DC · 2004-07-20 01:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

I don't make much from my Google ads, but it's fun to watch the stats. So when my stats tripled -- views, clicks, and cash -- at the start of May, I sent Google a note. No way did I want to be accused of click fraud, that $10 a month (oops, I shouldn't tell you that) takes the place of my dearly-departed CDNow affiliate kickbacks!

I got a nice form letter suggesting I check my referrer logs, but basically brushing me off. Understandable, if frustrating. What did I want them to do, say "OMFG WERE TOAST!"?

Strangely, though, the bump lasted exactly a week. May 1-7 had triple volume or more, then the stats settled down to exactly the pattern they've followed since the site's subject dropped off the face of the planet. I don't know if Google found the problem and fixed it, or if perhaps they were giving me catch-up credit for some previous bug.

All in all, though, they still look like the Good Guys. Hope it can last longer than CDNow.

--
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Is it a secret? Or simply an urban legend? by Junks+Jerzey · 2004-07-20 01:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's an open secret that low cost workers in India, China and other countries are hired to boost traffic for online ads by clicking on text links, banners etc.

Hard references, please! If you don't have any, then we know this is an urban legend. The big flaw in this theory is that it would be much cheaper and simpler to simply write a little program to send the HTTP requests than to have people clicking on links. It would be like paying people to copy text off of web pages when you could just print it out instead.