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Newsweek On Click Fraud, Search Engine Response

Posted by timothy on from the clickie-clickie dept.

prostoalex writes "Newsweek magazine says click fraud is the bane of the search advertising industry. Google and Yahoo! are apparently working on the standardized definition of a "good-faith" click in order to weed out the fraudulent ones. Meanwhile, merchants like Assaf Nehoray are taking their money elsewhere, getting abundant clicks, but no real revenue on Internet advertising campaigns. Newsweek also mentions Google suing a Texas company for placing the AdSense code and then clicking on it in order to run up the revenue. John Battelle says that his friends in the search industry tell him the click fraud is growing and that changes are not too far away."

2 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. It hurts publishers too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I am a Adsense publisher, which means I show thier ads on my site. I earn quite good money (more than two thousand US dollars a month) for doing next to nothing. What concerns me is that they say "oh poor advertisers" when publishers get just as hurt.

    1) You can loose, a lot, of revenue because of advertisers switching off.
    2) You can void all your earnings if Google detects fradulant clicks (say a compeditor clicks the hell out of your ads).

    It does suck for publishers and advertisers, but as it is one of Google's (and others) major revenue sources then I would have thought they would take even more measures to make sure this kind of fraud didn't happen. Because at the end of the day they do rely on both publishers and advertisters. And if it turns to crap Google (etc) will no longer be the middle man.

  2. Re:Click fraud? by tuxter · · Score: 4, Informative

    maybe this would be a bit easier for everyone hey....
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud
    It's not that difficult to format a URL is it?