Google Sues Click Inflators

Rollie Hawk writes "As is the case with any pay-per-click (PPC) advertising service, Google AdSense is vulnerable to click inflation, where the per-click values of ads go down thanks to excessive clicking. What is different this time is that it is not greedy webmasters clicking ads on their own site but rather the advertisers themselves. In a lawsuit filed last year, Google alleges that Auctions Expert used hired hands and automation to generate high numbers of ad clicks that resulted in $50,000 in revenues. This was done with two goals in mind: forcing wasted advertising expenses on competitors and inflating their own click values, lowering advertising costs. Industry insiders claim that Google AdSense and other PPC advertising providers are undermanned and therefore don't catch many of the estimated 20% fraudulent clicks. It certainly seems that some heuristic software could help reign-in some of these activities, yet Google seems to do a large amount of this work by hand. Often criticized for its policies of non-disclosure for many of its online services, Google claims the secrecy is justified in the case of not giving advertisers details on fraudulent clicking. They say the last thing they want to do is provide a 'road map' to would-be frauders."

Comments

Tracking purchases?

[Eunuch]

How hard is it to track purchases that are due to a particular click? That would solve the problem in a hurry. Wouldn't work for more "image" type advertising, but it would be an interesting challenge for a purchasing framework.

Re:Tracking purchases?

[wpmegee]

Not very, I would imagine. You could just have a cookie, and write down every single click you make for each visitor. Or without cookies, you could force your users to logon to the site and store it server-side.

Re:Tracking purchases?

[pablomarx]

I used to work for MatchLogic, which was an non-evil DoubleClick. Regarding tracking of purchases, it's easily done. When you receive an ad, you get a bonus cookie with it. Then on the destination site (Dell, etc) there would be "web pings" (1x1 gifs) on various pages. This way we could track how far into the site you got, if you ended up making a purchase, etc. Not every advertiser did this with us, but those that did were always impressed. But it doesn't really help in terms of weeding out spiders/automated clicks/etc. I was actually involved heavily in that, and while lots of code was written to automate it, and logs were sent to an outside auditing firm, I'd still often take an hours worth of logs once a week and look it over manually (Which was still an impressive amount of data, about 12,500,000 log entries in an hours worth of logs).

Re:Tracking purchases?

[atomic_toaster]

The thing is, they're not charging for how effective the ad is. They're charging for how effective its placement is, like how Superbowl ads cost a frigging fortune in comparison to something that runs on the local cable channel. It's very much as if Google was a huge shopping mall, and the advertisements are the signs and the ads in the windows of the stores. When you pay rent to the landlord to have your store in a mall, you pay more for the same square footage dependant on the location of the mall, the store's location in the mall, the popularity of the mall, etc. -- basically all of the things that the mall itself can provide that makes it more likely that people will come into your store. But it's not the landlord's responsibility to get the people actually into your store (that's your ads, signage, and window displays), or to buy anything in your store (that's based on your products and prices). PPC is just a way of tracking if the "mall" is actually drawing people to your "store". This makes Google tracking the click-to-purchase ratio pretty useless. Now, if the site itself is tracking the traffic-to-purchase ratio, that's a different matter entirely.

Re:Tracking purchases?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you receive an ad, you get a bonus cookie with it. Then on the destination site (Dell, etc) there would be "web pings" (1x1 gifs) on various pages. This way we could track how far into the site you got, if you ended up making a purchase, etc.

I've worked for an online ad company and this is exactly how we did it too. Most of our clients used it to some extent, with a lot of them only paying the publisher (site that runs the ads) if a user bought something in response to the ad. As it's a cookie, you can tell when a user just sees an ad (doesn't click) but still goes to the advertiser site on their own accord and buys something later. Our reporting tool made pretty tables with columns like 'Buys per Thousand Impressions' and 'Buys per Thousand Clicks'. In the industry, it's called tracking.

Re:Tracking purchases?

[rainman_bc]

But still, through some work they can tell when you've visited the site from google at all, and when you've made your purchase.

If ever there's an http_referrer of google it'd be up to the web site to track that and link it to a purchase.

Webmasters know where the referrers come from. Whether they chose to disclose it to Google OTOH is a much different story. I'd bet most web stores track from the referrer to the purchase, they just won't disclose that to anyone.

Pay to Surf Fraud

[disc-chord]

During the early days of the "Pay 2 Surf" fad, some friends of mine in college devised some of the original scams (including bots that have led Yahoo and others to include image verification to determine if a real person is making an account). They were monumentally succesful, one claimed he paid for nearly a whole year's worth of tuition from scamming these guys.

None of them ever had the slightest bit of legal woes as a result of it, and none of them even got complaints from the companies. As far as the companies organizing Pay 2 Surf programs were concerned the more the merrier as it meant more ad revenue for them.

I wonder why Google has decided, against their own interests, to go after fraudsters like this.

Re:Pay to Surf Fraud

[dfjghsk]

I think you're exactly right... The company I work for once tried to expand their advertising by using Looksmart... after 48 hours they put the advertising on hold -- they already received thousands of clicks and spent hundreds of dollars. After 3 months, not a single one of those visitors ever returned to our site, and we dropped Looksmart.. they probably won't get a dime from us ever again.

Perfect opportunity

[stecoop]

This sounds like a good outsourcing candidate. I would hate to click all day but I imainge someone overseas wouldn't mind making a buck doing it and best yet I bet that it wouldn't be illegal there nor even any recourse that a company could seek.

Good for Them

[doublem]

Google ads don't annoy me. Fraud hurts their business model, and as a result may cause them to go away.

At which point we'll be left with pop-overs, pop-unders, flash and every other annoying thing marketing slime can come up with.

Click Fraud hurts my web browsing experience.

Sample mail form Google

[Virtual Karma]

Hello YourName,

We've noticed that you're displaying AdWords ads on a site
(YourSiteURL) that violates our program policies.

Our program specialists regularly review AdSense websites for various
criteria, including, but not limited to, site content, clear navigation,
and the site's potential value to the AdSense program and the user
experience.

We've found that many of the ads that would appear on your site would not
be relevant to your site's content. Because these ads wouldn't provide a
valuable experience for your site's users or our advertisers, we believe
AdSense isn't currently appropriate for the website listed above. As a
result, we've disabled this URL.

Google has certain policies in place that we believe will help ensure the
effectiveness of AdWords ads for our publishers as well as our
advertisers. We believe strongly in freedom of expression and therefore
offer broad access to content across the web without censoring results. At
the same time, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when
it comes to the ads we display in our AdWords program and the sites on
which we choose to display them in our AdSense program, as noted in our
respective terms and conditions.

Please feel to reply to this email with any questions. If you manage or
own another site on which you'd like to display AdWords ads, you may reply
to this email and include the URL in the message. We'll be happy to review
this site and consider it for Google AdSense. If the new site complies
with our program policies, we'll approve your application and allow you to
serve ads on that specific site.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

So, should we really believe the previous article?

[nubbie]

Report on Last Decade of Online Advertising?

low value webpages

[PW2]

Another problem I've noticed is that some people post webpages that contain nothing more than a few keywords that somehow get highly ranked in Google searches. These low value webpages must be making money because I've seen more than a few of them. I'll check someday to see if Adsense has a place to report abuse like that.

Re:low value webpages

[Nos.]

Some of these are the result of expiring domains that have been snapped up. For a couple of days I kept an eye on expiring .ca and .com domains and ran them through a little google PR checker. I watched one .ca domain with an average PR of just below 6. .ca domains that have expired are released within a 15 minute window. I was doing a whois on the domain about twice every second. I never saw the status become available. It went directly from to be released, to registered.

There is a whole industry out there which revolves around snapping up expired domains with high PR. They have pages up within minutes of registering that are filled with nothing but ads, and maybe a few keywords.

Re:low value webpages

[Anonymous Coward]

Google already does reset the PR on expired domains.

But there are ways around it.

Waste of money

[Momoru]

There have been so many examples now of AdSense abuse, it seems that the ROI of AdSense ads is getting lower by the minute. As a webmaster who has tried AdSense, both from a generating money by putting it on my site and a paying to advertise on it point of view, neither gets you many results. Even on extremely popular sites you don't make more then a couple hundred advertising for them, while traditional banner ads brought my site in thousands. And from an advertiser point of view, you are much better off getting someone to "Google bomb" your site and get permanent good placement rather then 50% random people clicking your ad to make money off their blog and 50% "real" people.

Use Bounty Hunters to Suppress Click Fraud

[rewinn]

The expense of detecting and suing over click-fraud could be greatly reduced by adding terms such as this to the ad contract:

1. The advertizer agrees not to [define prohibited conduct here]

2. Google may offer a bounty for truthful testimony by any person hired by advertizer to perform [prohibited conduct], and advertizer agrees to permit such truthful testimony on the subject of [prohibited conduct] notwithstanding any other agreement with any party.

Drones paid sub-minimum-wage for click-fraud would jump at a reasonable bounty, especially if advertizer has already agreed to allow it.

Google AdSense Account Status

[Skudd]

Hello Tim Garrison,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the ads on your web pages.

As a reminder, any method of generating invalid clicks is strictly
prohibited. Invalid clicks include but are not limited to any clicks
that are generated through the use of robots, automated clicking tools,
manual clicks by a publisher on the publisher's own web pages, or a
publisher encouraging others to click on his ads.

Publishers may not provide incentives of any kind to encourage or
require users to click on the ads, due to the potential for inflation
of advertiser costs. If we find your account to be in violation again,
action may be taken against your account and payment may be withheld.
Please be sure to review and remain in compliance with our Terms and
Conditions and program policies:

https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?h l= en_US
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl= en_US

Sincerely,

The Google Team


I'm one of the little guys, too. I have only ever clicked my own ads maybe twice. I never had more than 1 click per day, so they can't really bitch. What's worse, they refused to prove to me that there were actually invalid clicks. My solution: I removed the ads from all my sites and replaced them with "Get Firefox" ads.

Advertising effectiveness

[erroneus]

I just happen to (presently) work at a company where advertising is the primary source of revenue. It would seem to me that they should attempt to follow a more simple model for advertisment without all the unreliable and exploitable complications of counting clicks.

Radio, TV and print ads are only generally predictable when it comes to exposure and public response are concerned. But with generalities, a "value" for the ad placement could be assessed. Sell based on those things. Now a buyer of advertisment needs to feel like he has value in his purchase right? That's why Radio and TV have ratings and print advertisers have circulation numbers. So, at present, no one has devised a web site traffic authority(?) that will independantly serve as a third-party hit counter that will provide "ratings" to people interested in buying advertisment at any particular web site. So how would such a system be devised? You decide, but I think it would be good in that user feedback could shape the advertising on the internet in the future -- people complaining about spam and popups will be heard and an affect could be had! How about that... So who's gonna do it? Not me... I'm too busy sleeping.

Re:Another proof...

[JacquesItch]

Worthless? Not in our case. Our company just closed a $200,000+ contract after just 4 months of Google advertising.

Yeah, I got slammed by this...

[writermike]

I am a one-person PC repair shop and I used Google Adwords for my business last year. I targeted well, thanks to their help, and had AMAZING returns. In the first three months, I spent ~$70 and made well over $1000.00. I was determined to stick with it.

Then, suddenly, my per-month charges from Google went up. First it was $50, then $100, up to $300.00 per month. All this time, I had set on the same keywords, using the same targeting that I had been using. I pulled back a little and the numbers CONTINUED to climb.

I wrote Google, hoping they would be as helpful as they were when I first set this up. (They hand-held my creating the first ads.) No response. I just bailed.

Re:Another proof...an insider's perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming from a person on the inside of a giant search engine.

1. We don't release a lot information about how click fraud was committed, because we don't want to give away new techniques. Believe it or not, there are a lot of different techniques, ranging from relatively sophisticated to utilizing teams of zombie machines, to defraud the systems. And people do trade notes, witness PubCon.

Humans are still required to help sort out the most complicated cases, pattern matching only goes as far as patterns can be detected.

2. While nobody wants fraud to continue, an important thing to note is that, at least on Overture, the placement is determined by bid. There is an organic marketplace for CPC ads, therefore, advertisers will only pay for what works for them.

3. For the guy who said that CPC is worthless, you obviously know nothing about online advertising and revenue generation. Show me a direct marketing media that can be as precisely controlled and tracked as search. Pay per mail already exists, it is called postage.

But is it really illegal?

[LWATCDR]

I mean when does it become fraud?
If it is a program not a person click the link is it fraud?
If I wrote a spider that crawled every link on a page and it hit a page with Ad Sense links is it fraud?

Do I have to be a potential customer?
If I find an Ad Sense link to a competitors site and I click on it am I committing fraud?
What if I just want to see what the heck the ad is for but have no intention of buying it?

When does it become fraud?
And how can following a link be illegal?

Re:Security through obscurity?

[mr.newt]

I think you have totally misunderstood the concept of security through obscurity. It's a matter of degree. If you were being very literal, *all* security is security through obscurity. After all, encryption only works because the encryption key is obscure (in that case, only two people should know it). However, that term applies not to security in general, but security that is had by simply failing to disclose vulnerabilities that are easily discoverable anyway. Generally what is known as security through obscurity is only effective in keeping out very casual users of the system in question, and is not a valid reason for failing to disclose something relevant such as (in this case) type and extent of click fraud to paying advertisers.

Build up to it...

[Otto]

Nah, you just need to make each trojan behave more like a normal human-like pattern. The total effect is cumulative.

Maybe each one loads the ads and your page 10 times a day, and clicks on one of the ads maybe 1 out of those 10 times (chosen at random). Have it replicate to a thousand machines, and you've got something.

In order to make it more randomish and human, you use a random timer between each page load, a more randomised click counter (maybe once every 15-30 loads gets a ad-click, with the number between ad clicks being randomized as well), and so forth. Add enough randomization and it will look a lot like your site just gained popularity. Then make your site a blog, and post to it every day like any other blog, to make it a "real" site instead an obvious money maker via ad-forgery.

The real secret is to not get too greedy. :)

Re:Security through obscurity?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is ignorance at its finest. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. First, if pay-per-click were truly worthless as you say, nobody would be paying for it. As an advertiser, it is very easy to determine the value of the traffic you receive, and you can adjust your spend accordingly. The people you see advertising through this medium do so because they are making enough in sales to justify their advertising budgets. PPC advertisers are very sensitive to their ROI, and are quick to adjust how they spend their money. This is worlds different than more traditional advertising, which provides no direct link between leads and sales.

Secondly, while there is no exact determination of what is considered "fraudulent," there are many heuristics Google can use to determine what is a real person who is interested in the link he/she is following vs. what is someone/something clicking maliciously. There are two methods of determining quality of traffic - at the time the click is received, and in retrospective analysis. At the time of click, their system probably attempts to look at the source of the request, and also most likely does some aggregation analysis, and then decides whether or not to charge the advertiser. Retrospective analysis attempts to look at trends in data that has been collected, which will then be used to determine if sources of traffic are of sufficient quality.

It would be utterly stupid of Google to divulge their fraud determination practices. Right now, you see a blob of clicks and a blob of fraud. You don't know individually what gets charged and what does not. This is not security through obscurity, rather a protection of trade secrets. Additionally, the methods are obviously not perfect. Some fraud will be marked as quality. By the same token, some quality clicks will be marked as fraud. Google's goal isn't to sniff out each and every fraudulent click. Rather, it is to boost the value advertisers receive on their overall traffic to keep bid prices high. The market forces take care of the rest.

Re:I don't understand the issue

[TedTschopp]

Here is one issue. We used Google ads for a while until they shut us off. Turned out that someone else (not those of us running the site) had set up a bot and had been clicking away at the links.

We have no idea if this was to 'help' us or to hurt us. But the problem remains. Want to screw someone over who has uses Googles Adwords on the site. You know how. Want to screw someone over who is advertising on Google. Now you know how.

The assumption that is being made by google is that there is a relationship between the clicking on an add and the recievership of money. In our case there might have been a relationship, but it was done without our knowledge. Now we can't use any of Google's Ads.

The issue is a bit harder than it orignally seems.

Ted