Google Sued Over Click Fraud

tanveer1979 writes "A seller of online marketing tools has sued Google over click fraud, accusing it of failing to protect clients from spurious clicks over web ads. The suit claims damages of $5 million and is seeking class action status. Sites get money per click from the advertisers. Rival companies of the advertiser may employ people to repeatedly click on the advertisers link on Google costing them large amount of money. Google denied the allegations. From the article: 'We believe the suit is without merit and we will defend ourselves against it vigorously.'" Interesting turnaround.

Comments

Not much of a turnaround.

[Sebastian Jansson]

Google sues people for click inflating, for the sake of their customers.

Google's customer sues Google for not doing enough.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[PhilippeT]

When has a customer ever thought a company did "enough" for them?

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

No, no, no ;-) TFA points out they are being sued by Click Defense Inc. They are not a customer or a client. They sell software designed to prevent click fraud!

Click Defense Inc's business plan:
1. Build software which may or may not prevent click fraud
2.Approach Google about using said software.
3.Google says no thanks.
4.Sue Google for not buying your product (I mean protecting customers)
5.???????
6.Profit!
7.???????
8.Burn in hell for being a scum sucking ass-clown

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[bigman2003]

Let's say you are a company. And you hire someone to do marketing- maybe hand out expensive brochures and free samples.

Well, your competitor keeps going back to the booth and taking your brochure and free samples. Then he throws them away, and goes back for more.

Do you sue the person you hired to work at the booth?

No...you figure out a better way to do it...or you fire the person at the booth and hire a big beefy guy who will make sure it is '1 per customer.' (Yet, he scares away all of the customers)

You know the business model going in...how can you sue?

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Correction. Click Defense Inc does advertise on Google so they are a customer I guess. However, I have a feeling they only advertise their to give some legitimacy to the above business plan!!!

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[haagmm]

You could say go to google. google Click Fraud and click "Click Defense"'s add on the right hand side 10-20 times just for added good mesure :p

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[datadriven]

That could be the most expensive slashdotting in history

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[RealityMogul]

I would personally recommend doing a search for 'Click Fraud Defense Click OR Fraud OR Defense OR Assholes' and then clicking on the Click Defense link just so something appropriate shows up in their keyword tracking.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

I like the idea, but it might give them more ammunition in the court case. Instead it seems Click Defense has a 877 number (same as 800 meaning they pay for the phone call). The number is: 877-872-5772. Feel free to just give them a call and ask about the lawsuit or whatever. I wonder if they'll sue the telcos for not screening real customers from the 877 number ;-)

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Wonder if a telephone number has ever been /.ed before ;-)

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Anonymous Coward]

My info page is filling up with rejected posts. How can I purge these?

Call yourself "Roland Piquepaille" and you'll never have another rejected story.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[bedroll]

No wonder they want this to be a class action suit. Unless they have some evidence that they were subject to click fraud then they have no case on their own.

Sounds an aweful lot like extortion to me.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Donny Smith]

>Do you sue the person you hired to work at the booth?
>No...

Yes, of course you do!
If you can prove that the same competitor came in ten times, each time taking with him a shitload of marketing material and your employee still didn't recognize it was the same person and with dishonest intentions at that.
In the meantime, all other people who came to the boot came only once and took two or less brochures with them.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Anonymous Coward]

My info page is filling up with rejected posts. How can I purge these?

Try submitting an Ask Slashdot.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[macshit]

7. Ha ha, just kidding!

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[bdcrazy]

That would be a busy signal (or more recently, an automatted on hold message/music. Though i rather doubt more than a handful of people would actually call or care.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Greatmoose]

Yes, it has. Back when EPIII was coming out, there were a bunch of fans lined up at the wrong theater weeks ahead of time, and somebody here on slashdot posted the number to the pay phone outside the theater. Well, in very short order, it was constantly busy. It was quite funny.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Anonymous Coward]

Close but not quite right

Let's say you are a company and you use an outside company to get the word out on your product. This outside company then sub-contracts various people to assist in marketing - maybe they hand out expensive brochures and free samples. You get billed $1.00 per brochure and the outside company doing your advertising is in turn paying these outside contractors a couple of cents per brochure they hand out. Now there are a couple of outside contractors that return every 5 minutes and pickup another 10,000 or more brochures.

Do you get to hold the outside company accountable for the obvious fraud perpetrated by their sub-contractors?

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Lew Payne]

|| Well, your competitor keeps going back to the booth and taking your brochure and free samples.
|| Then he throws them away, and goes back for more.
|| Do you sue the person you hired to work at the booth?

Thanks for illustrating the problem I might have if I were handing out brochures at a trade show.
Now, would you care to comment on the topic at hand... Google and click fraud?

Its unfortunate that moderators consider irrelevant examples to be "insightful" when all they
really do is distract from the real subject at hand. It should already be obvious to you that the
law treats cyber-crimes differently than physical crimes. Someone who breaks into a computer
gets more prison time than someone who breaks into your car or home. THE CRIMES ARE
NOT THE SAME IN THE EYES OF THE LAW. Is it that difficult to figure out?

Hence, your example is irrelevant and off-topic.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Politburo]

Thank you.

It seems like most threads are a race to see who can come up with the most inappropriate analogy (which is usually all of them).

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[bigman2003]

Sir,

You are a hypocrit and a blowhard. All one has to do is view your message history to see a long list of trolls and flamebait.

Or even better, this message of yours:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=153249&cid=128 59483

Which is nothing more than one big analogy.

And I offer up the opinion that the clown who agreed with you is just as guilty of being a moron for agreeing with a putz like you.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[joshuao3]

Be very careful suggesting this. If clicking on an ad with the sole intent to run up a bill for the company posting the ad is a criminal act, then enticing others to commit such an act by

) providing instruction that serve no other purpose than to cause such an act, or

2) providing incentive or a call to action directing others to commit the act...

is in itself a criminal act.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[bonk]

Yeah. It's like everyone is trying to drive a...

er, never mind.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[gricholson75]

867-5309
Except in those days they called it being Tommy Tutoned.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[nsasch]

Well that just cost them 5 minutes of a phone call and the time of whoever answers to pressing zero. I swear, I did have to hear the menu for a third time!

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[psyon1]

You are assuming it is the web site publishers inflating the click count.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[John Hurliman]

Another time an 800 number to one of those fax spammers was posted. By the time most Slashdotters were able to get through the secretary on the other end was extremely irate, and I can imagine she was envisioning the bill coming in for the 800 number.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[MightyMartian]

When has a customer ever thought a company did "enough" for them?

This is assuming, of course, that the intention of the customer isn't simply money.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[njcoder]

Google... er... maybe yahoo around in this case... you'll find news reports of people making 50k per year click frauding google.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Clueless Moron]

You could say go to google. google Click Fraud and click "Click Defense"'s add on the right hand side 10-20 times just for added good mesure :p

I was, but these "Click Defense" jokers didn't appear on the ad space on the right.

Then it dawned on me: google is deliberately suppressing showing their ads so that Click Defense won't be the victim of click fraud!

In other words, google is actively preventing click fraud. Way to go, google. In your face, Click Defense!

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[advb89]

If I see another:

5. ????????
6. Profit

...joke, i am going to explode!

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Breakfast Pants]

They don't advertise with Google anymore. They do advertise with http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=click+fraud&sm=Ya hoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF -8">Yahoo. When a company like Google goes big and gets popular, people come out of the woodworks trying to sue it for every scrap they can. This quickly starts to drain a company unfairly. Go to the above link, and check out Click Defense's offerings, I'm sure they will be thrilled.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Anonymous Coward]

lol even better just dial the 800 number and leave your phone off the hook. What are they going to do sue telco's for charging them to use a 800 number?

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[galego]

I don't think the example/analogy is that off-target .. at least not in principle. The question being ... is Google *contractually* obligated to *guarantee* that click fraud will not occur OR were they negligent in whatever they were contractually bound to do for this customer? They have people who work trying to prevent click fraud ... what were they bound to in this case? IANAL, and hence am not in Google's legal dept. so I don't know what is in one of those contracts.

I think the point is ... unless you can pick something specific out about the contract where Google failed (which none of us can do here really), then why go after Google? Why not go after the people committing the fraud or take your business elsewhere if the service is not what you expect? Well ... because, in today's society, you go for the easiest/closest target to blame .. or the one that will get your company the most press in the process of trying to get a settlement.

It should already be obvious to you that the law treats cyber-crimes differently than physical crimes. Someone who breaks into a computer gets more prison time than someone who breaks into your car or home. THE CRIMES ARE NOT THE SAME IN THE EYES OF THE LAW. Is it that difficult to figure out?

I'm sorry ... was there some instance of Google or those who committed the click fraud breaking into some system ... Don't remember reading that. Or 'click fraud' is a crime on a parallel level? As far as I can tell it's not. And I quote (from the article that is):

Click fraud is not "fraud" as defined under the law. Rather, it is an industry term used to describe the deliberate clicking on Web search ads by users with no plans to do business with the advertiser.

This seems to be a contractual issue ... did Google do what was required in their contract with Click Defense?

Now, would you care to comment on the topic at hand... Google and click fraud?

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Nethead]

Anyone lined up to see EPIII was at the wrong theater.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[sandwiches]

What can you reasonably sue for, though?
Now, I'm sure Google has a contractual obligation to do his best to prevent fraud. However, The claims of incompetence, negligence, or breach of contract are coming from a company designed to prevent fraud. I don't think this case will fly simply because of the conflict of interest.
Think about it this other way: I design a lid for bottles and cans that supposedly prevents germs and the like from contaminating whatever's in the container. Then, I start a class-action suit against Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Heinz, etc because I do not believe that they are doing enough to protect their products against germs.
If Click Fraud wins, I'll be doing the above class action suit in order to protect Americans from deadly, terrorist/drug-using/devil-worshipping/rock-listen ing/pro-gay-marriages viruses.

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[Anonymous Coward]

I called and pressed 1. I hung up when I realised the phone was ringing for a person...I figured I'd be going through a couple more menus that might be interesting.
To my surprise, they called right back! So I spoke to the guy, asking questions about the service and all that. He knew a lot about what he was talking about.
Anyways...if I used Google Ads I might use this service ;)

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[pfleming]

If I see another: 5. ???????? 6. Profit ...joke, i am going to explode!

1) Post story to /.
2) ??????
3) Profit!
4) Embrace and extend the underpants business model
5) ??????
6) Explode

Hmmmmm....

[technoextreme]

How many people have had problems involving click fraud?

Re:Hmmmmm....

[hostyle]

I searched for "arachnid political movements", clicked on "I'm Feeling Lucky" and ended up at the Pepperdine University Catalog HISTORY COURSES. Surely thats fraudulent? I feel cheated.

Re:Hmmmmm....

[uioreanu]

google does not employ any click patterns analysis, and fraud you have to both expect, plan, pay for, and fight against; mostly by yourself.

I had a one week adwords saga. The bottom line was that if fraud exists, and the claim is right they do react, but one has to act on it, not wait for the PPC carrier to discover it.

Then since this core flaw exists, great media-opportunist companies appear and sue google in order to gain media exposure. this kind of news should become no news soon enough!

Re:Hmmmmm....

[qodfathr]

I've been a vicitim of click fraud more than once. Sometimes, Google sees it and sends me a credit. (And by that I mean I did not notice it or report it -- they told me; that was early on in my advertising days, however.)

I have not had an automatic credit like that in a very long time, but my logs are indicative of click fraud. You can write to Google and get a credit, but, for some ad campaigns, it's just not worth it -- well over 90% of the clicks can be fraudulent. The time invested to keep getting credits may out weigh the value of the campaign. YMMV.

Re:Hmmmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

well over 90% of the clicks can be fraudulent

Ya, that's because over 90% of internet users hate your advertising methods, so we click the shit out of your links, knowing it will cost you a pile, and gain you nothing.

You have picked an advertising method that would be the equivalent of being able to NOT answer a telemarketing call, while still taking up the "sales persons" time, without wasting any of yours.

Am I saying "you shouldn't advertise on the web", no, do what you want. But you picked a method that is easy to abuse, and people are becoming increasingly irritated by the non stop marketing blitz that we are subjected to every minute, of every day.

Re:Hmmmmm....

[budgenator]

So how did you know it was really click-fraud?
multilple requests from the same IP could be fraud, or it could be a couple of people behind a NAT looking at the same page it's also possible you site had some weird-assed IE only shit that didn't render properly in mozilla or even some pathetic ASP page on a windows server kept timing out and people kept trying to reload the corrupted page. What might it be? If your adveritsing in a magazine, you'll have to assume the the advert you've paid for will only be looked at by a small percentage, and mail campain only get a 1% responce rate if it's very exceptional, spam probably gets a thousandth of that. If you advertised in a magazine, and inserted blow-in business reply cards is everytime the post office delivers one that's blank fraud or just a cost of doing business? Not every click is going to be a well-qualified, motivated potential purchaser; but some are going to bookmark you site and compare prices else where, maybe they'll come back, maybe they will not. What would happen if google sued you because a potential customer bookmarked your site after following an advert depriving them of revenue when they returned?

Re:Hmmmmm....

[sobachatina]

How can you tell that a click was fraudulent from your log files?

All you have is what IP addresses downloaded your page and where they came from. How can you make any confident assumptions about the intententions of those visitors.

Do you actually have people clicking the same link multiple times from the same IP address or are you assuming that anyone that viewed the page and didn't buy something is automatically a fraud?

I'm honestly curious how obvious it is to spot fraudulent activity from weblogs.

Re:Hmmmmm....

[qodfathr]

First, you have to understand how Google runs your ads. You set a daily budget, and once that budget is exceeded, your ad stops. You get a new daily budget a 'midnight' (adjusted for locality, of course).

So, there are times when, right at midnight, there is a sudden and dramatic rise in the number of queries which would produce my ad, and my CTR goes to 100%. They all come from the a block of IP addresses owned by one of my competitors. Sometimes they come somewhat more scattered in the IP address space, but a few whois searches reveals that all of the offending IPs are related (through business ventures, or have the same registered mailing address, etc.)

They click the ad until my daily budget is drained, and then my ad stops for the day.

Re:Hmmmmm....

[qodfathr]

I answered this question here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154418&cid=129 50336 .

I agree with your analysis, but, if you read my other posting, I think you'll see that I have evidence of real click fraud.

Re:Hmmmmm....

[sobachatina]

Wow!

That's amazingly low! I understand why it would be frustrating if Google didn't take stern action. Even if you get your money back you would have lost out on the advertising for that day.

Thanks for the explanation.

Re:Hmmmmm....

[orgelspieler]

That would explain why Click Defense's ad no longer appears when you Google click fraud. We slashdotted their ad into oblivion.

mwahahaha

Re:Hmmmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you're the Godfathr - make them an offer they can't refuse... ;-)

Re:Hmmmmm....

[80sCartoons.net]

Looks like we /. readers have already drained the daily budget for ClickDetect.com. [ad nazi]No more ads for you![/ad nazi]

Re:Hmmmmm....

[Stankatz]

They could at least have the sense to use Multiproxy so it wouldn't be so obvious.

Re:Hmmmmm....

[natophonic]

They could at least have the sense to use Multiproxy so it wouldn't be so obvious.

Last I checked, Google did a pretty good job of keeping up with known open proxies... try searching on 'plasma TV' through one of the proxies listed at multiproxy.org, you'll notice you get the regular links, but no sponsored links.

Re:Hmmmmm....

[budgenator]

Ok your correct, I wonder considering the rapidity of the attack, and how they seem to occure at midnight(when your account is refreshed), an unlikely time of the day for a human driven attack, perhaps some kind of a script, which is kinda like a bot attack which is kinda like a DDos, which is kinda like a law enforcement issue; considering that the attack originates from a competitor and other IP's of related (through business ventures, or have the same registered mailing address which looks like purposeful attacks, maybe even things like conspiracy involved, a civil suit or even a criminal complaint might be in order, I'd talk to my lawyer if I was you. (actualy I'd probably run nmap on the offending addresses too serveral scans just to leave a lot of noise on the server logs so they know)

Deep Pockets

[Nick Driver]

Since Google now has pretty deep pockets, you can expect an endless stream of all kinds of wierd-ass lawsuits filed against them.

Re:Deep Pockets

[RevWhite]

Definitely a weird-ass suit. I want to know if this is a genuine problem or just another buzzword that somebody made up to make a lawsuit about.

Re:Deep Pockets

[Anonymous Coward]

Google for "please click the ads". That's just one form of click fraud which harms advertisers. If you paid money for clicks of which a non-negligible percentage was fraudulent, would you still call it a "wierd-ass lawsuit"?

Re:Deep Pockets

[ghislain_leblanc]

Sadly, being Google is not enough to classify a lawsuit agaisnt you as "weird-ass" in a court of law, unless proposition 42B is passed, which we all hope!

Re:Deep Pockets

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, just like Microsoft was sued-by-proxy after much lobbying to state and federal attorneys-general by sorry-ass competitors who didn't know how to compete in the marketplace.

Re:Deep Pockets

[Anonymous Coward]

You asswipe, they sued because they did not want to blatantly break the law like Bill G and Co. (probably because they didn't think they could get away with it).

wait...

[tiberiandusk]

wasn't there an article a while ago about how google was trying to stop this since they were losing a ton of money to fake clicks? i think every online advertising company in the world has been working on this problem for a long time. suing them won't fix the problem but it will get all those lawyers a lot of money.

Re:wait...

[surprise_audit]

Yeah. That was what was being referred to in the Interesting turnaround link right at the end of the summary....

Re:wait...

[kawika]

Google isn't necessarily losing any money at all to fake clicks. Google MAKES money on fake clicks because they take a cut of the money from every click. Google's advertisers lose the money. Long term, the risk that Google runs is that the advertisers lose confidence in the legitimacy of Adwords/Adsense and look for other alternatives. At the moment, the other alternatives are more corrupt and less principled than Google, IMO.

Not google's fault

[Arthur B.]

They don't have to sued Google over this, but the people commiting click fraud... I mean, they sign a contract in which they agree to pay for each click, it's never mentionned that Google will ensure that all clicks are legits... I don't think they have the slightest chance to make a point in court. Now Google could prrobably provide protection, but they won't have to. Eventually, protection (unique clicks, time spent on site etc) will arise with competition on ad placement as a required service.

Re:Not google's fault

[metalmaniac1759]

True - they'll probably lose in court. But Google will get a *lot* of bad publicity and it might end up hurting the major source of revenue of the company we so dearly love!

Nandz.

Re:Not google's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't about getting money out of Google, this is about advertising their Click Defense service.

Re:Not google's fault

[bedroll]

They do have to sue Google. Google is their vendor. Their alternative to suing Google would be to file a suit against an unknown - or if they suspect a specific company they could name them, but I doubt that's the case - company and subpoena Google for their advertising business's records. It's much more likely to be a longer and more expensive case that way, though.

What they want is this: Google actively monitor's for click fraud. Google sues company X for click fraud. Company Y sues Google for similar damages to what Google got from Company X.

See, they don't really want an end to click fraud. They just want a share of the click fraud profits.

Re:Not google's fault

[eldawg]

I mean, they sign a contract in which they agree to pay for each click, it's never mentionned that Google will ensure that all clicks are legits...

I haven't looked at the contract/TOS, but that certainly doesn't seem to be a good long term way of keeping customers happy and making profits. As a matter of fact, Google says that it will credit customers for invalid clicks:

How will Google credit my account for invalid clicks?

Google constantly monitors for, and strictly prohibits, invalid click activity. We work hard to maintain the integrity of our advertising program and to make sure you're being billed for legitimate clicks on your ads. If we discover that you've been charged for invalid clicks in the past two months, we'll apply credits to your account.

You'll find any credits, including credits for invalid clicks, in your billing summary as a line item labeled Adjustment. Please note that other types of credits, such as promotional credits, may also fall under the Adjustment line item.
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?a nswer=6426&ctx=en:search&query=fraud&topic=0&type= f

The question now is probably if they are doing enough to prevent and detect invalid clicks and if they are following up with their own policies of refunds.

Re:Not google's fault

[Bob3141592]

What ever happened to personal responsibility? Is the legal system so distorted that responsibility isn't a factor? Plus, isn't real financial interest a requirement to bring a suit?

I could see that if Google promised click verification in their contract with the advertisers, those advertisers could sue Google, if they could show the clicks are fraudulent. But I can't sue Google, as I have no financial interest in that transaction.

Let's say I own a house, but the front door isn't metal and the lock isn't the most secure possible. Can I be sued by my neighbor because some thief breaks into my house, on the grounds that this promotes theivery and puts his house at greater risk? Meanwhile, the thief isn't at any jeopardy.

The law doesn't work that way, and lawyers who try to make it sound like it does should be put out of work.

Hey, can I sue the lawyers making this claim, because their ridiculous suit may make my online activity more expensive? Is there a lawyer in the house?

Re:Not google's fault

[DogDude]

They don't have to sued Google over this, but the people commiting click fraud... I mean, they sign a contract in which they agree to pay for each click, it's never mentionned that Google will ensure that all clicks are legits... I don't think they have the slightest chance to make a point in court.

They don't have to sued McDonald's over this, but the people commiting click fraud... I mean, they sign a contract in which they agree to pay for each hamburger, it's never mentionned that McDonald's will ensure that all hamburgers are not rotten... I don't think they have the slightest chance to make a point in court.

Re:Not google's fault

[doyle.jack]

Maybe they could sue google if the user clicks the ad but doesn't buy anything from the advertiser? Let's sue google because we believe they should only display the ads to serious buyers.

Re:Not google's fault

[Walkiry]

> it's never mentionned that McDonald's will ensure that all hamburgers are not rotten

There are health & safety regulations involving food outlets and the quality of the food you serve. As in laws.

No such thing for clicks.

Re:Not google's fault

[DogDude]

It's called "good faith". The courts will probably determine whether or not it's reasonable to expect Google to protect you from fraud, and to what extent.

There are health & safety regulations involving food outlets and the quality of the food you serve. As in laws.

You're talking about civil vs. legal. Two completely different things. If McDonald's sells me a rotten hamburger, I can sue, and the Dept of Health & Human Svcs. can shut them down. The safety laws have nothing to do with the transaction between myself and McDonald's.

I'd say the analogy is pretty good, actually.

Re:Not google's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's Googles fault. For example www.compassml.com is nothing but a click farm to generate revenue for the owners of compassml.com. Since google gets the bulk of revenue from compassml.com, they have very little incentive to stop fraud. See how you feel when you get a bill from Google and you find that 80% of the clicks didn't really come from Google at all but rather came from a shady outfit in bed with Google

Re:Not google's fault

[jpetts]

What ever happened to personal responsibility?

It was acquired in a hostile takeover by Messrs Sue, Grabit and Runne...

Re:Not google's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is: once you have a critical mass of lawyers to take care of real disputes (criminal cases, genuine fraud, possibly certain safety issues and the like), every lawyer after that is just sitting idly by waiting for his employer to get sued or finding something to sue himself.

That's right, after the critical mass of lawyers, every additional lawyer necessitates at least one more lawyer. It doesn't help that people keep voting for lawyers, putting them in charge of the one thing that is a definate conflict of interest: the making of new laws. Note: lawyers don't have an interest in the specific laws or whether they're good or bad, only in the sheer quantity thereof. hence the conflict.

Eventually everyone's going to be a lawyer and we're going to need some kinda meta-lawyers.

Re:Not google's fault

[DaveJay]

>What ever happened to personal responsibility? Is the legal system so distorted that responsibility isn't a factor? Plus, isn't real financial interest a requirement to bring a suit?

You have to remember how click fraud generally works to understand why "personal responsibility" doesn't represent a reasonable approach in this case. To visualize this, consider a very simplified and easy-to-detect type of click fraud: a non-technically-savvy competitor trying to cost you money just for the sake of doing so.

Let us say I own a bakery, and I purchase ads for my bakery from Google. Google says "You only pay when someone clicks an ad". In your first week, you get nine hundred clicks, at a cost of $0.02 per click. "Wow", you think, "My ad must be really effective! This is great marketing, even if it does cost me $18 a week!"

What you don't realize is that your competitor bakery down the street has found your ads, and since business over there is bad, they have a lot of idle time. So, the proprietor spends about twenty minutes a day clicking on your ads, specifically to cost you money.

Now, let's say your competitor is doing this from a single computer with the same IP during the twenty minute periods, and so Google's logs should show that the IPs for all those clicks are the same. You're not in a position to know that it's all the same person, even though Google is. To them, the fraud is obvious -- to you, impossible to determine. Are they negligent if they don't detect these fraudulent clicks and remove them from your bill?

Just for fun, take the same scenario as above, but your competitor pays five of his employees to go home and do the same thing from their personal accounts, and so at the end of the week, you get a bill for $500.

Mind you, I believe Google lets you set a limit to the dollar figure, so you could say "stop showing my ad when my total reaches $10". You might think that would help, but what it actually does is allow your competitor to DOS your ads by hitting them until they stop showing up -- you pay $10 a month, and nobody sees your ads.

So "personal responsibility" only enters into it if you realize that the only personal responsibility you can take is to not use Google ads at all. Sounds easy, but remember that you don't have access to the logs, so you have no way of knowing if the expense is due to fraudulent clicks or a highly effective marketing campaign. If it's the former, leaving Google makes sense, but if it's the latter, leaving Google would be a very foolish business decision. Only Google possesses the information you need to figure out which, and they're not telling.

Re:Not google's fault

[chris_mahan]

I wonder if as an advertiser, one should have the option of specifically disallowing the showing of the ad to a specific IP or group of IPs. If the competitor and his army/bots of clickers can't see the ad, they can't click-fraud.

Re:Not google's fault

[aztracker1]

Easy, after 3 clicks on an ad from the same ip, don't count them.. keep showing the ads, but don't count them at all... even if this 3 click count were reset each day, it wouldn't be as bad... also, *YOU* can specify the url that they get redirected to.. mydomain/google_ad/ for instance, and you can log that.. if you can prove it is your competitor, sue them...

Previous suit will help...

[jdreed1024]

Interesting turnaround.

Not really. Google sued people who were artificially inflating their clicks. Now, someone is saying Google does nothing about click inflation. Who knows the specific of this individual case, but clearly Google has done *something* about click inflation.

Re:Previous suit will help...

[johansalk]

I know the specifics on its face, and there's nothing much specific about it; as always, it's an avaricious team of lawyers that persuaded a client to allow them to jumpstart a case, with the hope that they (the lawyers) may turn it into a class-suit action that would enable them (the lawyers again) to take a huge, huge cut out of any eventual settlement or pay!!

Remember that Microsoft settlement case? Californians got pennies, a team of laywers got hundreds of millions out of it.

what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[cytopia]

Does anyone know how does google check for "fake" clicks?

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[-brazil-]

I doubt they're telling anyone, since it would be easier for the fraudsters to circumvent the checks if they knew the exact method.

The obvious measure would be statistical analysis to see whether some IP addresses are generating an excessive amount of clicks, especially on the same ads.

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[Cat_Byte]

Probably but using the 95th percentile like some ISPs do to not charge for temporary spikes in bandwidth would knock out the 5% or less fake IP sources. Just don't count the top 5% IP sources. If they are legit they wouldn't be clicking on a banner that many times anyway. The 5% could be tweaked so nobody wig over it being too high ;)

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[cytopia]

somebody that has access to a large range of IPs could overcome an IP to Ad check I wonder whether they take into account clicks coming from same subnets/networks

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[mwvdlee]

AFAIK the only limit is 2 clicks per IP address per day, how exactly this is implemented, I do not know.

They'll probably have some other stuff too, such as warnings when a specific add is getting an unexpected amount of hits within a certain time period or other such statistical markers, but this is just guessing.

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[AccUser]

Does anyone know how does google check for "fake" clicks?

When you click on a sponsored link, Google spawns a Russian Cracker to monitor your browsing activity for the rest of the day. If you fail to follow up your click with the appropriate purchase, the Russian Cracker is authorised to take over your identity, and do it for you.

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[Anonymous Coward]

My own experience is that (/me clicks Post Anonymously) they're doing more than basic checks.
We were proxy-clicking quite a bit, ending up with checks of roughly $2k per month.
We did everything we could to keep a steady growth-rate (eg. only slightly-higher click-through ratio per day or week), traffic increased at the same rate as the click-through ratio, never used the same proxy twice, changed our browsing-habbits (eg. spend different amount of time on a page depending on the type of ad etc).

They busted us after roughly 6 months.

-jurgen langeschnapp

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[surprise_audit]

Somebody with access to a large collection of zombie PCs wouldn't even all be coming from the same subnets/networks.

I'd imagine that one trick to combat such would be to "rate" the attractiveness of the ad - i.e. Google staff acting as an "average Joe" looking at the ad and estimating how attractive it is as a guide to how often they'd expect it to be clicked. Any ad getting *much* higher traffic should be looked at more closely to see if: a) they underestimated it; b) it's a "click fraud" target.

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[hrieke]

Fairly hard problem to solve, but here's how I'd take a crack at it:

• Look at subnets and IP ranges. Fairly simple one.
• Look at click rates.
• Look at keyword rates.
• Look at search depth (front page vs 5 pages in).
• I'd also have a few labs setup with infected PCs to see if there is anything going on by virus / hacked machines by monitoring all communications.

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[cytopia]

yes but having access to hundreds/thousands of zombie PCs (on different networks) is quite hard. On the contrary being the owner of a larger range of IPs is more realistic ... then he/she would just need one machine configured to act with the different IP for each click ... this could actually be great business! :-)

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[surprise_audit]

So you don't think the zombie network owners would be interested in making a few bucks by running "click fraud" campaigns?? I'm thinking specifically of the zombie networks owned by mass mailers - what they're doing isn't all that different, really...

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[qfg]

The obvious measure would be statistical analysis to see whether some IP addresses are generating an excessive amount of clicks, especially on the same ads.

Not so obvious, given that you can have *lots* of individual users sharing the same IP address (e.g., AOL).

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is so hard about that? Tons of people have spyware/adware/viruses. You could get the average joe to install just about anything on their machine and easily have yourself a few thousand zombie pcs doing stuff for you.

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[ctrl_apple_banana]

(/me clicks Post Anonymously)

-jurgen langeschnapp

(/you forget to disable the automatic insertion of your sig)

But very interesting otherwise :)

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[damiangerous]

I love that that was modded "Interesting", as if some mod out there is now sitting around pondering the possibility of his identity being stolen next time he abandons a shopping cart.

It's a funny old world, innit

[Willeh]

Lemme get this straight, a maker of software that detects click fraud is sueing google for click fraud? This is either gonna make or break them, all off google's back. Looks like Google has got a hell of a hard time ahead, sitting on fat cash like they do.

Otoh, this'll be even worse for google if Click defense manages to score a win in the courts.

Re:It's a funny old world, innit

[kebes]

I think the company in question, ClickDefense must not be doing very well, and is using this as a last-resort money-grab to stay alive (wild speculation, I know!). Why do I say this? Well, it seems like corporate suicide for a company to admit that their product doesn't work at all. They are a company that sells click-fraud detection tools, so that other companies can prevent click-fraud and thereby increase their return-on-investment for all those advertising dollars.

But if their product works properly, then they should be properly protected, and they wouldn't need to complain to Google that they are getting ripped off. They would just use this technology on themselves, and figure out a way to prevent this fraud (and then sell the technique to others of course). Part of this 'technique' might just be to accurately determine which advertising-supplier has the lowest fraud-rates, etc. But by telling google that they are getting frauded, they are basically admiting their system doesn't work.

Of course, they will claim that they are using their technology to detect the fraud occuring on google's ads... this is, after all, the very point of their product, right? Then other people will buy their product. But 'going public' in this way doesn't make sense. If google cleans up their act in a public and verifiable way, then ClickDefense's product becomes irrelevant. Basically companies won't buy their product/services, because they will be happy knowing that Google is taking care of the situation. They don't need to pay ClickDefense for special knowledge about click-fraud: ClickDefense appears to be making this information public!

If this is a publicity stunt, I think it is a bad one. Frankly it makes ClickDefense's product and services appear rather pointless. I question the long-term viability of this company!

Failing to prevent?

[zensufi]

In other news, Sears is being sued for failing to conduct background checks on the purchasers of air conditioners. It seems foreign assassins have been dropping them out of windows and killing unsuspecting Americans.

Failing to prevent? I mean, come on. This only makes sense if Google signed a contract with the advertisers saying they would implement measures to prevent this.

Re:Failing to prevent?

[droptone]

Why do you hate America?

Re:Failing to prevent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing wrong with America, it's a lovely country. It's Americans I hate.

Re:Failing to prevent?

[FidelCatsro]

So basically this guy is suing google because they are not doing enough to stop him breaking the law.
And to sell his software

Re:Failing to prevent?

[surprise_audit]

Does Sears actually do any business in a country more sue-happy than America?? Come to think of it, *is* there a country more sue-happy than America??

Re:Failing to prevent?

[technoextreme]

In other news, Sears is being sued for failing to conduct background checks on the purchasers of air conditioners. It seems foreign assassins have been dropping them out of windows and killing unsuspecting Americans.

Lol. Your post that is meant to be sarcastic is actually pretty close to the truth. I don't know what the law is called but if you sell beer to a perosn that appears to be intoxicated then you can be held liable if that person does something illegal.

Re:Failing to prevent?

[Peyna]

Believe it or not, the law bestows a lot of duties on a lot of different people. One of these is the duty to prevent harm to others in certain circumstances.

It will be a question of law as to whether or not such a legal duty exists in this case.

Other examples:

You have a duty to prevent harm to people on your property. This doesn't mean you have to jump in front of bullets coming out of a car driving by, but you do have to make sure your sidewalks aren't covered in ice.

Re:Failing to prevent?

[mOdQuArK!]

if you sell beer to a person that appears to be intoxicated

I think the reasoning behind that, is that if a person is truly intoxicated, then their judgement is potentially impaired to the point where you can't expect them to make good decisions (like insanity/mental retardation/being a child/etc). If that is true, and YOUR (hopefully rational) judgement tells you how to stop them from committing a crime that they normally wouldn't do if they weren't intoxicated, then why shouldn't you get some blame for not trying to stop them?

I certainly can't deny that a lot of people use intoxication as a means to avoid personal responsibility, but not stopping an intoxicated person from doing something that could end up hurting other people is also a form of avoiding personal responsibility.

1-800

[Matt Clare]

I hope this company doesn't have a 1-800 number:

"Ma' Bell didn't tell all the callers that they could only dial our number if they were going to buy something".

Re:1-800

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup: 1-877-872-5772

http://www.clickdefense.com/contact.html

Umm What more can Google do?

[cranos]

Im just trying to think what google could do beyond some of the obvious - Ignoring multiple clicks from same IP on same ad target.

Any system is going to involve an element of fraud if there are human beings involved.

Re:Umm What more can Google do?

[Marc2k]

That's actually a pretty good point. In today's Web medium, there's a not-so-fine line between "advertising" and "bombardment", and it's pretty obvious now, after even grandmothers are talking about pop-up blockers, that a successful Web ad campaign should be pervasive, but without being plastered to every page that a person in my demographic is likely to view.

That being said, as a consumer, I'm actually _less_ likely to click on an ad for a product that I'm not necessarily in awe of, but is still cluttering up my daily routine. So IMO, it really _does_ make sense to only register one hit per IP*, as if I'm planning on buying a product, I'm not likely to click on the same ad from the same source 8 times in a few minutes.

* Simple IP logging obviously doesn't take into account NAT, but hey.

Re:Umm What more can Google do?

[spockvariant]

Well, the obvious solution should be an analog of what they do for spam filtering: decide on a set of "features" of "spam clicks" - like time intervals between them if they come from the same IP address (since it might correspond to many machines behind a NAT), the credibility of the originating network etc. and then use a pattern classifer (like a Bayesian classifier, or a fuzzy classifier) to generate a likeliness of spam.

What should make (IMHO) click-spam filtering less of a hassle to implement is the smaller penalty of failure. If a spam filter wrongly classifies legitimate mail as spam, it may cause the recipient a lot of inconvenience. However, if a click-spam filter wrongly identifies a click as spam, it would not prevent the navigator from getting on the site or buying the advertiser's products. It would mean that the advertiser's account would not get debited for the click. So all advertisers will get a bonus of x% in the number of clicks they get for their cash - some more and some less - but no big deal.

Re:Umm What more can Google do?

[BenjyD]

What about proxies and NAT? One IP doesn't always equal one person (and vice versa, with dynamic IPs)

LWP and Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

About 10 lines of code and your all set to wreck your competitors bottom line

Why sue Google over this?

[Donniedarkness]

Why sue Google over this? I mean, they aren't doing anything that is against the law, are they? Go after the people that are spam-clicking your links! If you can't do that, there's still no reason to sue Google. I think that's like trying to sue your cell phone company for spam txt messages that you recieve (that you have to pay for). Those cost me money...but having Verizon pay for those spam messages for a month is not going to get them to stop.

Re:Why sue Google over this?

[saider]

The problem is that Google is collecting money for this activity. The only way I can see for the plaintiff to have a case is if they documented the abuse by logging IP information and showed that Google was unwilling to offer a partial refund on the false clicks. Other than that, it looks like a 'tough luck' for the plaintiff.

Re:Why sue Google over this?

[Donniedarkness]

Yes, but Verizon is making money on my text messages.

Also, Google does do thing to discourage this type of thing. I believe they do make each click that's from an IP that has clicked a link before cost less...it isn't like they are ENCOURAGING it or anything. Like you said, though, it's tough luck for the plantiff.

Re:Why sue Google over this?

[m50d]

Google is charging them for all the fake clicks they got. That's why they're complaining.

Re:Why sue Google over this?

[tomstdenis]

Google said their ad would show up when a relevent search or page is loaded. They did that.

Google said they'd charge per click on the links. They did that.

Google never said the clicks would be legitimate.

Tom

Re:Why sue Google over this?

[Donniedarkness]

" Google is charging them for all the fake clicks they got. That's why they're complaining." No, I understand that... but how do they expect to win money over this? It isn't Google's fault.

Re:Why sue Google over this?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why sue Google over this?"

In one word ? Money.

Companies are *not* there to "do good to the world", they're there to make a buck. And some of those companies don't care where that buck comes from, but you can be sure that they try to do it in a way that costs them the least ammount of energy. Sueing a company for damages is as good a method (in grand-old America) as any.

As for "damages" ? Not being able to sell as many of a product as you thought you could could be regarded as "loss". But if you can than name some person or company that is, according to you, the cause of that "loss" it becomes "damages", and you can still, by demanding that the other party pays for those (imaginary) damages, make as much mony as you predicted you would ...

Ofcourse, free advertisement and looking like a "no noncence, we're going to nail those a**holes" is an added bonus too, generating even more money.

That makes me think of something : maybe they can, when they loose the lawsuit, create another one in which they claim damages because Google trashed their advertisement-campain :)

Re:Why sue Google over this?

[m50d]

Click implies an actual click, if someone's got a perl script sending requests to google's server with the referrer set to that page that's not a click is it? But google could be counting it as one.

Re:Why sue Google over this?

[m50d]

Yes it is. They're paying google for genuine clicks, and should only be charged for them, google shouldn't charge for the fake ones.

Re:Why sue Google over this?

[galego]

So is there a reasonable method whereby someone can tell its a person clicking as opposed to the script invoking a bot to generate a request that looks just like a 'click'?

If you've got a good solution (better than what Google does currently) where you can *guarantee* to detect click fraud, then you should either work for Google, sell them your solution or strike out on your own little business venture.

Re:Why sue Google over this?

[m50d]

I don't have all the answers, but the fact is that if it's a bot google shouldn't be charging them for it, and if the people getting the ads think they can show in a court of law that it was a bot they have every right to sue google.

Wrong defendant?

[jasonmicron]

So if it were other companies doing this wouldn't it be more prudent to instead sue the other companies?

I really don't see how this is Google's fault. Then again, I don't really care.

Re:Wrong defendant?

[cranos]

Follow the money. Google has the most money, therefore they are the best target to go for.

I'm confused...

[AnObfuscator]

ok, so based on the second link to the previous slashdot story (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/19/1 927212&tid=123), doesn't that prove in Google's favor that Google *is* taking click fraud seriously? Thus, doesn't that conclusively demonstrate in Google's favor that "Click Defense Inc." is just wrong?

And their main product is to prevent, you guessed it, Click Fraud. Hmmmm, a few minutes ago I didn't know that such a product existed, but now that they've sued google, I do. double hmmmm hmmmm.

Some Executive somewhere: "Google is getting sued because they don't protect us from 'Click Fraud', whatever that is! that could cost us lots of money! What can I do to protect myself? Let me ask Google. Oh, look who is on the sponsored links, clickdefense.com. Oh, their product saves me! yay!"

I smell a large omnivorous rodent of the genus Rattus...

Re:I'm confused...

[kawika]

Both Google and Click Defense (RTFA) probably use a combination of IP addresses, cookies, time frames, and click patterns to guess whether the clicks are fraudulent or not. This dispute is probably over the gray areas.

There's no doubt that someone clicking a dozen times on the same ad over the period of an hour should be backed out. But if a user clicks once on a particular ad today, then does it tomorrow, and the next day, is that click fraud? Google could argue no, the user is just looking to see if the offer changes or taking some time to make up their mind. The merchant or Click Defense might argue the other way.

AFAICT, both the Google and Click Defense techniques do nothing to stop "click laundering" where the click is automatically generated by a trojan or spyware. Imagine a botnet of 100K PCs that run click laundering software. They attack certain advertisers by automatically "clicking" on their ads. This drains the victims Adwords account to zero and makes the keyword available to other advertisers, often belonging to the attacker. But there is no pattern, and only one click per computer, so how do you prove fraud or even stop it?

Another variation on click laundering is to set up a web site that has Adwords on it. Then have the trojan-infected PCs "click" on the Adwords ads on that site, or create ads that display off the site (in spyware popups for example) that will get clicks. There was a movie floating around on the P2P networks that displayed Google ads as part of the DRM license process!

Re:I'm confused...

[Momoru]

The motives of the company that is sueing them is questionable, but I think it is good in that it brings to light how common click-fraud is. Google may have had a token lawsuit or two, but their fundamental model is still flawed when it comes to preventing click fraud. Even their own CFO talks about how it is a real problem. Google can't solve the problem by suing people, and it is a real hassle to try to track down and report all the fraud to Google and hope for a credit. I think this is positive because maybe it will at least nudge Google into showing they are doing more to prevent this, but how hard will they really try if supposedly 30% of the clicks are fraudulent? If they eliminated those, they would lose 30% of their ad revenue.

Re:I'm confused...

[monkeydo]

Thus, doesn't that conclusively demonstrate in Google's favor that "Click Defense Inc." is just wrong?

Only if you believe that doing something == doing enough.

Re:I'm confused...

[Omerna]

They wouldn't necessarily lose 30% of their ad revenue. You give Google a set amount of money/day and they display ads until that money runs out (each click costing $X). If you don't cout the 30% fraudulent clicks you'd probably get at least some more real clicks each day as your ads would still be showing up (instead of already taken down due to click fraud).

Re:I'm confused...

[RealProgrammer]

>30% fraudulent clicks

While that might prove true for isolated products, there is just no way that 30% of Google's overall clicks are fraudulent. The volume is just too high. Almost everybody googles.

What should Google do if they see that some ad is the target of a phony-clicking zombie horde?

Sneaky

[QMO]

IMO
This is a publicity stunt.
Click Defense is suing Google to get people to think about click fraud, so they'll buy software from Click Defense to save themselves.

Proof of Fraud on Google's Own Website!!!

[Zemplar]

Google's Click Fraud System!

Re:Proof of Fraud on Google's Own Website!!!

[RootsLINUX]

I for one, welcome our new pigeon clicking overlords... >_>

Re:Proof of Fraud on Google's Own Website!!!

[Anne_Nonymous]

Sure, but imagine the mess that makes!

IMHO

[Darth Maul]

In my humble opinion, any lawsuit that has the words "failing to protect" in its description is automatically bunk.

Re:IMHO

[Skye16]

I donno about that. A door knob that advertises security but fails to protect against someone turning it and opening the door, even while locked, is pretty valid. That's pretty gross negligence on that company's part, though.

Re:IMHO

[pintomp3]

kinda like the ones against p2p companies?

Re:IMHO

[cduffy]

In my humble opinion, any lawsuit that has the words "failing to protect" in its description is automatically bunk.

That's not always true. If you run a mall, a train station, or some other place that's open to the public and you have a wooden deck you don't keep maintained such that one of the boards rots and someone breaks an ankle falling through -- you had a legitimate duty to protect the public from reasonably forseeable safety hazards, and you're going to get to pay medical bills (and then some, maybe, if you knew about the problem and didn't do anything).

In this case, though, I'm inclined to agree with you.

Re:IMHO

[surprise_audit]

Right on! You might as well try to sue the President for "failing to prevent terrorism", or Boeing for "failing to prevent people hijacking airplanes"...

Hmmm.... if my advertising is costing me money...

[utmslave]

I change my advertising methods. If you bought a full page in the New York Times for advertisement and didn't see an increase in business that coincided with the amount you spent (assume that a rival company with deep pockets purchased about 100,000 subscriptions to the Times to inflate the ad placement cost), you would change your ad placement strategy. This is no different. If you want to sue someone, you need to sue the end-clicker that is causing the inflated ad cost or find another marketing plan.

.sigs cause cancer!

whatty what now?

[jasongetsdown]

whoa, back up a minute. Click fraud? How does this work?

But Supreme Court has already ruled against Google

[VernonNemitz]

Because it offers something that can be misused, of course, like P2P software.

CPM?

[L0phtpDK]

Why couldn't Google go with a CPM (cost per thousand) campaign instead? This would limit the "hackers" (as the article labels them) a bit... Because if I do recall, doesn't AdSense rotate ads when there is not enough space to display them all in its area? Wouldn't Google come out ahead in this two-fold?

Re:CPM?

[HG Slashdot]

They started offering this a little while ago... I remeber seeing the anouncement when I logged into my adsence account about 1 month ago.

Terms of Service

[robbway]

Perhaps they should read Google's TOS that prevents their liability for damages of any kind. Plus, if a company pays people to click their ads, they're the one committing the fraud and the only losers are the company itself and the IRS.

The company is a loser because they paid money for an ad that no one but their own people see. They could have saved money by not purchasing the ad to begin with. The IRS loses taxes because the company is providing service to Google, and then from Google to itself, meaning about half of the transaction taxes evaporate.

Re:Terms of Service

[cduffy]

The company is a loser because they paid money for an ad that no one but their own people see.

It's worse than that, see. Let's say you hire people to click on your competitor's ads without buying their product -- and that these ads are on a website you own, so you get paid when folks click on them! You're draining your competitor's advertising budget, and enriching yourself.

Re:Terms of Service

[mwvdlee]

RTFA

It's about people working for companies that click on banner adds of their COMPETITORS. You can do the rest of the math yourself.

Not that it matters much, the whole case is pretty much moot anyway.

Re:Terms of Service

[robbway]

I shouldn't respond to Trolls, but if you had noticed that I had RTFA (don't ever post RTFA, its an automatic troll)you'd know:

I wasn't talking about company A--ever. Your outline actually proof that Google isn't the problem, and that company B just wasted a lot of money paying people to do this. Company A should sue company B, because company A chose to use Google Ads. No one forced them.

Instead they're treating it like a car wreck--a chain of lawsuits. Hence, the reason Google is suing companies B (in the recent update).

I actually don't understand why anyone would compensate for clicks or visits anyway. It's a naive to think that means the person meant to go there, or even that they're interested in the product. I understand from an old article on NPR that the whole banner-clickthru advertising method was proven to be ineffective anyway. We learned this 10 years ago, when banners were the method of choice.

Compensation for ads should be counted as number of sales resulting from the clickthru. Those sales should only be counted if the purchase profit is greater than the clickthru fee.

To all web advertisers: take control of own your ad methods because you are the ones with the money.

Re:Terms of Service

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this post moderated insightful?

if a company pays people to click their ads, they're the one committing the fraud and the only losers are the company itself and the IRS. The company is a loser because they paid money for an ad that no one but their own people see.

Do you realize that you've just publicly admitted that you don't understand the problem?

Let's review
Company A buys adspace from Google
Company B competes with company A (whether or not they buy ad space is irrelevant)
Company B, through its employees or agents, pays people to commit click fraud against company A, exhausting its ad budget and bringing a "premature" end to their ads

If, including click fraud expenses, company B has sales in excess of what they would have had with company A's ads running, this is rational economic behavior.

Also,
Company A buys adspace from Google
Company C hosts Google ads for a cut of the ad sales
Company C, through its employees or agents, pays people to commit click fraud against company A, exhausting its ad budget and bringing a "premature" end to their ads (also accuring a nice commission for itself)

If Company C makes revenue in excess of the click fraud expense, this is also rational economic behavior.

In either case, company A gets screwed. "Click Defense" is a putative company A, although they also sell click fraud prevention software so their claims are highly suspect.

Re:Terms of Service

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFPs - I did not post RTFA.

You were talking about Company A, whether you intended to or not. ...the only losers are the company itself and the IRS.

A loser is company A. Company A loses legitimate views and its ads disappear more quickly. Either you were referring to company A in that sentence and you refuse to admit it, or you were referring to company B/C in that sentence and you were facially wrong.

My outline does show that Google is part of the problem. Google collects all of the tracking information used to bill Company A. Has anyone described Google providing a click log to company A that would permit it to prove click fraud, or must company A rely on Google's goodwill to point out odd click patterns, or must company A make a "baseless allegation" of click fraud because its ad budget is suddenly exhausted faster than expected?

It should already be apparent that I'm not a fan of Click Defender.... nevertheless, Google is not free of commercial responsibility, and possibly some legal responsibility, simply because its TOS says that it's not liable. Can a doctor treat you and disclaim all liability? Can a lawyer represent you and disclaim malpractice liability in the terms of representation? Can a a mechanic fix your car incorrectly so that it explodes the next day but escape liability because the back of the bill states that you accept repairs from him "as is" with no liability? In short, even if you believe it to be the case, no, our legal system does not permit things to go that far. Some duties can't be disclaimed.

You appear to think that there should be no protection or responsibility because the advertising method stinks. Even if it stinks, the people participating in the advertising agreement have some practical, or possibly legal, right to believe that the agreement will be performed according to best practices. If there is a legitimate company A instead of buy-our-Click-Defender-software, Inc. that wishes to sue Google, it's not exactly an inconceivable claim.

By the way, your suggestion is equally naive. How does Google, for example, who only knows that it referred someone to Company A's sales site, know that a sale was completed? After all, the probability of a sale remains the same (low). What if company A hires a bunch of people to make paper purchases of the item, then "buys" the item back at the sales price minus a small commission that's less that the ad compensation? Sales figure inflation! Same problem, different party. Have a nice day.

Re:Terms of Service

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and I forgot to mention:

company B just wasted a lot of money paying people to do this.

Apparently you didn't RTFP, or you don't understand economics. If it costs less to practice click fraud than the sales lost to company A's advertising (or, if you're Microsoftian, if you can magnify company A's costs sufficiently more than your own), then you are better off than you would have been if you had not engaged in click fraud, which is not "a waste".

Click fraud between rivals does not occur in a market where there are almost unlimited sellers. There is some quasi-monopoly that makes it worth your time to chew up the competitors capital.

Re:Terms of Service

[robbway]

Apparently you didn't RTFP, or you don't understand economics. If it costs less to practice click fraud than the sales lost to company A's advertising (or, if you're Microsoftian, if you can magnify company A's costs sufficiently more than your own), then you are better off than you would have been if you had not engaged in click fraud, which is not "a waste".

Point taken. This was a constructive response. I guess this volley of lawsuits will prove if alleged fraud is cheaper or not. Even though I understand economics, I am the worst at business dealings. You will do better if you hear my advice and do the opposite of my suggestions. Thanks!

One way to advertise...

[AccUser]

Marketeer #1: "We can't advertise new click fraud defense product on Google, it will cost us a fortune in click fraud."
Marketeer #2: "Let's sue then. The case has no merit, but it will be cheaper than advertising on Google."

I don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) It's ads by auction.
2) Advertiser tracks clicks/sale via googls ads and determines value of clicks.
3) Advertiser adjusts bid accordingly.

Rocket science, it ain't...

Any advertiser who doesn't track advertising ROI is an idiot and will eventually get his ass squeezed out of the market.

That said, one might come up with an algorithm to track trends for detection of gross increases in clicks that are not accompanied by corresponding increases in sales, research the origin of the extra clicks, and via pre-ordained contractual arrangement, apply a weighting factor to the $ pais per click.

TOS problems

[frostman]

I'm not convinced Google is trying as hard as it should to combat click fraud, and I know how awful their customer service is, but...

When you sign up for AdSense or AdWords, you do agree to their terms of service, including things like (paraphrasing here):

• They pay you whatever they think is fair.
• If they suspect fraud, they do whatever they like (including not paying you); if you suspect fraud, they'll "work with you" to investigate it.
• On AdWords, you pay for whatever clicks they say you got.
• On AdSense, they pay you for whatever clicks they say you got.
• On AdSense, they can advertise their products on your site as much as they want, for free.
• Their records are authoratitive (though largely secret), yours are corruptible (though possibly interesting).
• Evil/fraud is what Sergey says is evil/fraud.
• All your base yada yada...

Seriously, Google ads have some great advantages on both sides, but if you go down that path you should not bet more money than you can easily afford to lose. You've basically agreed up front that they're always right - and yeah, maybe you can challenge that in court, but don't forget they have twenty lawyers for every click-fraud investigator. :-)

Re:TOS problems

[Jesus_666]

You've basically agreed up front that they're always right - and yeah, maybe you can challenge that in court, but don't forget they have twenty lawyers for every click-fraud investigator. :-)

Great. Then someone hires twenty thousand click-fraud investigators and bang, Google goes bankrupt.
Remember, you've heard it here first.

Unless the advertiser comes out ahead in court

[blcss]

then clickdefense is worthless.

Two years down the line

[AviLazar]

"Advertising companies rejoice as they win the Google Click Fraud lawsuit. Each class-action claimant gets $2; while the law firm who prosecuted this case gets $2.5 million"

Not fraud

[LiquidCoooled]

I click something once, I might click it a thousand times.
I might buy something, I might not.

I am going to make damn sure I watch the adverts carefully from now on, and I'm going to click on every single one from this click fraud company.

I am going to maliciously, and with intent click links on a website multiple times!

Let them try and stop me.

This should not be googles' fault, and google are not to blame for this.

If the advertiser on the other end doesn't like how many people are tramping through their shop and using all their bandwidth without actually purchasing anything, then they should employ their own security guard.

Stop shopoting the messenger so to speak.

The Irony of the Answer...

[BioCS.Nerd]

I'm not sure how the revenue stream works, but basically legions of people are hired to click ads. Sounds silly doesn't it? However, AFAIK, the website the ad is displayed on gets paid a certain amount, as does Google, by the company paying for the ad to be put on Google's service. Hence the lawsuit.

With my friend Google (Google, meet jasongetsdown. jasongetsdown, meet Google), I was able to find some links that may help you understand the situation better, including TFA we're talking about in the first place :-P

interesting turnout

[srikrishnak]

LoL....smart way of attacking the rivals...but I dont understand how google can be responcible for this... anyway its quite a good idea..

Ok This is Just Plain Stupid To Me?

[Evil W1zard]

Ok first off the company has no right to sue Google for said amount unless it can demonstrate the metrics to prove that it has had to pay Google approx. $5 million for "click fraud (of course that would mean that they have paid Google much more than that because not all clicks on their ads would be fraudulent...) Now that being said if the Company is just suing Google on the premise that it doesn't actively fight against click fraud vs actual damages it has occurred then that is just BS and they should counter-sue. This looks to me like a "didn't use our product" lawsuit and that is ridiculous.

On another note the definition of click fraud that I got from TFA seems to be that I click on an Ad but don't have intent on buying what is being advertised? So what I watch commercials just cuz they are funny sometimes or I click on an ad to see what it is but not necessarily buy... Any definition of click fraud should certainly contain wording to described use of automated tools that go out and actively click on ads without user interaction because that is where the real problem lies now doesn't it. Anyway bit of a rant because frivolous lawsuits tick me off.

Re:Ok This is Just Plain Stupid To Me?

[tomstdenis]

Two sides to this

1. People ought to have fully understood what they were getting into.

2. Google should protect people from rampant clickage.

If an ad would normally get 1 click/day and all of a sudden got 200 or 200,000/day then you can say "wtf?".

That being said most ads on google are tripe anyways. "Blowfish EncRyptor" my ass...

Tom

Re:Ok This is Just Plain Stupid To Me?

[CoderBob]

Technically, in the US, you have the right to sue anyone for anything. In other words- they have the right to bring up the lawsuit. Doesn't mean it has to be heard in courts, it can be dismissed as frivolous, etc., but you do have the right to register a suit against anyone for any reason. That doesn't make it acceptable, either, but you technically do have the right to do so.

I don't know...

[Shads]

... if this suit has merit, but there is alot of click fraud that happens on google. It's been a long standing problem. Shrug.

Fake Chicks

[jolyonr]

I'm far more concerned about Fake Chicks that come up using Google Image search. Maybe we should sue.

I am safe from click fraud

[Georules]

with my Visa CapitalOne Check Card. It's in my wallet.

Restitution unrealistic...

[iNToIT]

..because all Google has to claim is that they take click fraud into account in their pricing.

If the customer is already benefitting from reduced rates to compensate for a known issue, I don't see how a court could fairly award the complaintant.

If googles customers want to pursue this, they will just force advertising rates higher, screwing no one but themselves. Especially, since google is under no onus of having to provide the same rates to all customers. They can impliment a "variable fee" for the perceived threat of potential litigation from their customers, on a per customer basis.
Irregardless of "fairness", this is justifiable.

If banks can get away with it on loans, by "examining the history and circumstances" of businesses and individuals they do business with, then so can google.

Right! Otherwise M$ would be history.

[crovira]

This is a bunch of legal fees piling up. (Like SCO) Nobody's gonna get rich or right but the lawyers are gonna bill their clients per hour anyway.

(Actually I wonder how many lawsuits are started by lawyers when they can find a gulible sucker?)

Got extortion?

[raitchison]

This seems like a rather obvious case of extortion if you ask me. I can picture the "negotiations" now.

Click Defense: Buy our software

Google: No thanks, we're good

Click Defense: Buy it or we'll file a lawsuit and make lots of public statements saying you are allowing your customers to be ripped off (reminding them that people beleive anything they read on the IntArweb)

Google: Pack Sand

Click Defense: You'll regret this, it'll now cost you 10x as much as our shitty software

Why don't we hold companies and individuals criminally resposible for this kinds of abuse of the legal system?

Re:Got extortion?

[ScentCone]

Well, sure. Or, you could go to Google right now, and search on "click fraud protection" and note the ads on the right. The ClickDefense.com ads are sort of begging for an expensive click, I'd say. All your ad budget is belong to us, etc. The point is, one click each from everyone on slashdot cannot be blocked by these clowns' own software, and that's exactly why their suit is nonsense anyway.

Re:Got extortion?

[raitchison]

Interestingly, ClickDefense.com no longer seems to be showing up as a sposored link for that search.

Could Google have removed the link to protect them from click fraud?

Re:Got extortion?

[ScentCone]

Actually, I saw them there just 10 minutes ago (um, and clicked, of course, because I was curious about their fine product - ads can be very helpful in connecting one to important vendors of high tech services, and... never mind).

They've got to know that coverage of their silly suit is going to cause a lot of this sort of traffic, and they've probably set their AdWords daily spending limit low enough that it took them out of circulation for the day already, or put them way down in the bid list so they don't feel so much (well deserved) pain.

Re:Got extortion?

[Peyna]

Why don't we hold companies and individuals criminally resposible for this kinds of abuse of the legal system?

We do, if they lose, they can end up paying the legal fees of the winning party.

If the lawsuit was frivolous to begin with, the lawyer can be sanctioned, fined, and made to pay the other party's legal fees.

Re:Got extortion?

[Schnapple]

We do, if they lose, they can end up paying the legal fees of the winning party.

Don't forget about damages - not only does the losing party have to pay the legal fees but a lot more money since now Google's had to waste time, image, etc. on these peons.

The real abuse comes when the party being sued doesn't have the money to even go to court so they, in this case, would buy the software since that way it's cheaper (see: PanIP).

In that respect it's fantastically stupid that they picked Google to sue - Google's got millions in the bank. If this thing ever sees the inside of a courtroom it'll be amazine.

Re:Got extortion?

[SComps]

Make note of the post above. Once a company's daily advertising budget it blown, the ad no longer shows for that day. Check back at midnight and click again... and again.

Re:Got extortion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we hold companies and individuals criminally resposible for this kinds of abuse of the legal system?

Great idea! Lets sue them.

Re:Got extortion?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

That actually exists, it is called a suit for "malicious prosecution".

http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/m062.htm

Judas Priest!

[Cross-Threaded]

WTF?

I'm sorry, but this whole pay-per-click model has got to be the dumbest idea anyone has ever come up with.

How can this accurately measure any sort of statistic?

The fact that anyone relies on this method of income seems ludicrous, if not, INSANE.

Even more galling to me, is that they are now spending our tax dollars in court pointing fingers at other companies, trying to place blame for their own flawed busines model.

Yes, the Internet is a big marketplace. The sheer number of web-surfers darn near guarantees that if you can get people to a web-site, some will buy your product (unless it is completely worthless). But, come on! Pay-per-click makes almost no logical sense to me. Click-Fraud? Give me a break...

This whole model just makes me want to write a spider routine that loads pages in the background and click on every ad link it encounters, just to emphasize to these dorks, by skewing their data, that their pay-per-click model is really dumb.

Re:Judas Priest!

[martijnd]

Actually I have been waiting for something like this to happen. When I first read the description of pay-per click it sounded like a zombienets wet dream.

Just imagine thousands of computers loading google keyword pages (or Yahoo/Overture's for that matter) and clicking completely randomly.

It would bring this whole click-and-pay economy down in an instant and there would be very little they would be able to do about it.

Who's at fault?

[digidave]

If some company employs people to artificially increase costs for their competitor, why aren't they the ones being sued?

Free advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

The company (who doesn't need to be named again) is getting lots of free advertising out of this nonsense.

Kind of reminds me of the new SCO suing the universe and spreading FUD. The suit isn't about any real damage to the plaintiff. It's about publicity.

I tried to give them some solutions

[tod_miller]

But they didn't seem to want to rock the boat of their solution.

I once asked them, if I click 5 times on an ad, does that get charged 5 times? They said they couldn't say. All they have to do is stop charging someone for the same IP in the same day lets say.

Sure, they would loose 15-20% (guesstimate) of clicks right? But wouldn't the service be better value therefore people would spend more?

Thats all folks.

Re:I tried to give them some solutions

[Slashcrap]

I once asked them, if I click 5 times on an ad, does that get charged 5 times? They said they couldn't say.

They were being polite. I suspect that what they actually meant was something like this :

We have our methods, thanks. We have absolutely nothing to gain and potentially a lot to lose by revealing them to a complete non-entity who isn't a customer and who probably couldn't even afford to put an ad in his local paper. Please go away before we invoice you for the 30 seconds of our time that you have just wasted, since it would most likely bankrupt you. Have a nice day.

That's my guess anyway. But I do tend to suffer from realism.

Re:I tried to give them some solutions

[tod_miller]

Yeah, well the reason I was asking is because my clients always ask where their few hundred dollars go in the advertising, of course, we keep records, but the IP's don't really make a big pattern, plus it was a curiosity question.

The answer was actually: We are not telling you, although I did talk with one google adsense engineer about my ideas for a script that you can employ that woudl feed session info back to google, so google and see how the user behaves when it enters your website, other kinds of things, of course, they have clever ideas too, it just interested me, and google are a very open company when you talk to the right people.

Yes, everyone knows a few hundred dollars isn't a large google splurge, I didn't say it was.

OK, so hi mr realist.

I know Google has an $80 billion market cap...

[Dachannien]

...but come on! Why not sue your competitors directly for click-spamming, and put them out of business? Or could it be that your business is going nowhere because you're inept at running it, and you just want a free $5 million so you can close up shop?

Maybe this was a publicity stunt, seeing as how all of the data you plan to present at trial is ostensibly derived from your own product, and you don't expect to win (except by perhaps being bought out by someone).

Or maybe this was a scam from the start, and you don't actually sell anything in the first place.

google mail sending not working

[timlyg]

Since yesterday, smtp gmail failed to send at port 465 and even 25.

Google is Public; Make Yourself Rich!

[qodfathr]

Now that Google is public, I believe that Click Fraud will continue to increase. Think about it for a second:

1. Buy Google stock.
2. Perform random searches on Google.
3. Click every ad.
4. Google makes $$$ for those clicks.
5. Stock price goes to $300, $400, ...
6. Profit!

It's hard to imaging any other company in which you can invest and, with so little effort, produce revenue for them. Hell, you could be doing something else at the same time! I bet while watching "Dancing with the Stars" you could flow several grand into Google's bank account. If even a small percentage of Google shareholders do the same, it's just like printing money.

Re:Google is Public; Make Yourself Rich!

[Shihar]

Your single individual clicks are not going to make even a small blip on their income. Hell, every single google stock holder could click away and it wouldn't register. You are much better off to just get a job.

Finally, even if you could have an impact on google's profits, the only thing you will do is reduce the how much they can sell ad space for. People click ads all the time and don't buy anything. If the number of dollars recieved per click drops because of fradulent clicks, they will just be willing to pay less for google adds. So, the best you can hope for is to tarnish google's reputation and drop the cost of their ads.

This is supply and demand 101.

Re:Google is Public; Make Yourself Rich!

[chuckw]

And with that you have shown that you haven't the faintest clue about how AdWords works. It's an auction style system. Having the top ad on the page can cost the advertiser as much as $10.00 or more, per click. A few thousand stockholders clicking random ads at the top of the page, can *INDEED* make a difference in Google's bottomline.

Re:Google is Public; Make Yourself Rich!

[Apotsy]

If you want to see your mouse clicks drive up the stock price, just click the "buy" button on ETrade a whole bunch of times.

Amazingly, this works with any stock!

Re:Google is Public; Make Yourself Rich!

[horza]

It's hard to imaging any other company in which you can invest and, with so little effort, produce revenue for them. Hell, you could be doing something else at the same time! I bet while watching "Dancing with the Stars" you could flow several grand into Google's bank account. If even a small percentage of Google shareholders do the same, it's just like printing money.

Yeah. It's easy to fool Google, you just spam the MetaTags. Oh it doesn't work any more? Easy, you create link farms to boost your rating. That doesn't work now either? Well just put lots of keyword text in white on a white background. Oh that doesn't work either huh?

I think Google is more than capable of keeping click fraud to a reasonable level. Even if you have large chunks of non-contiguous IP adresses and some pseudo-random page-grabber, there will probably be a flaw in your implementation that will flag you up (faulty HTTP response or something).

Phillip.

Re:Google is Public; Make Yourself Rich!

[Shihar]

There are two things you are apparently missing. First, people pay for useful advertisement. The more ineffective the advertisement, the less people are willing to pay. This is why the Wall Street Journal can charge more money then your local newspaper. So, if you were dilute the value of google's clicks, you just end up forcing them to charge less. The more worthless clicks they get, the less people are willing to pay.

Further, you VASTLY over estimate how much effect you can have on google's profits. Currently there are 277 MILLION shares of google out there. Each share is worth just under $300. How many shares do you own? Lets pretend that each click is worth a million dollars. That is right, one click and a million dollars appears in googles account. Lets also pretend that 100% of that profit is given directly to the investors. Before you make a SINGLE dollar, you will need to perform 277 clicks... and that is charging a million dollars per click.

Now, if the cost per click is 10 dollars, and you don't reap 100% profit, there are 277 million shares to dilute that profit... do I really need to do the math to show you what a stupid idea this is? Just go work at McDonalds, you will make far more money then you would sitting at home clicking on google ads.

but wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

Marketeer 1: Of course, we could use our software to prevent click fraud...
Marketeer 2: It doesn't work _that_ well!
Marketeer 1: Oh yeah.

Google does try hard...

[Jay Maynard]

...they dropped Schlock Mercenary from AdSense, they say, because of invalid clicks. Whether they're doing enough or not is, of course, open to dispute, but they do monitor clickthroughs.

Valid issue, No standing.

[glrotate]

First, since this company isn't an actual customer my guess is that their suit will be thrown out for lack of standing.

However, there is a valid issue here. I would guess that Google is responsible for two things. 1 Notifying customers when they detected a non-trivial amount of fraud. 2 To make a good faith effort to combat this fraud.

Failure to perform either of these could open up Google to some amount of liability.

Re:Valid issue, No standing.

[monkeydo]

Did you RTFA? They are indeed a customer.

Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure essence of the USA: greed, greed and greed.

Also In Other News...

[taskforce]

Also in other news... P2P client developer Grokster is being sued for failing to stop copyright infringing files from being distrubuted on it's network.

Note: This is a Pro-Google post... or Sears, depending on that example you're using.

cheap publicity stunt

[slashmojo]

Straight out of 'Cheap Publicity Stunts 101' available now from amazon. (probably)

#7 is easy

[FreeUser]

7.???????

7. Die a horrible, lingering, humiliating death

#5 remains ambiguous, however, though I suspect it will read something like

5. Get laughed out of court (making SCO's pathetic and laughable case look good in comparison)

Affiliate programs

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

These are the answer, I think. Its only an area we have been getting into lately, but its showing a great deal of promise. How it works is like this; you get people to put adverts up on their site, someone clicks on the advert, browses your site, then make a purchase. Not until a purchase is made do advertisers get paid. There is no chance for fraud, unless its someone using stolen credit cards, and then there are defences, chargebacks, and well established legal routes that can be taken. Besides, all online purchasing suffers this risk.

Some people use the argument that affiliate programs lead to a lot of spam, but thats easily knocked on the head; affiliate programs can simply set it so that only traffic from a certain domain gets accredited. And besides, how is it easier to spam with affiliates than it is with pay per click? At least there is some value to affiliate programs, to all concerned.

The future of advertising on the web is accredited purchasing; pay per click is verifiably doomed, even if in this case the lawsuit is relatively spurious.

Re:Affiliate programs

[budgenator]

I have to disagree based on the fact that very few internet purchases are made on the first visit so that plan would screw the search engines. typicaly when I research a potential purchase, I google first, visit the site create a bookmark folder for the results and then i poke around a lot, finaly I go back and make my purchase. Most of this is going to look like abandoned shopping carts, and click-fraud from your perspective. Trying to quantify advertising and purchasing to the degree that online advertisers seem to except is deeply flawed.

Re:Affiliate programs

[AstroDrabb]

There are a lot of problems with your method. Here are two examples.

I put an ad on my site to your store. Because of my ad, you get 10 new sales per week. How exactly am I to know that you are getting 10 extra sales per week from the ads on my site? Should I trust that you will report all 10 sales to me and pay me for those 10 sales? What if you want to save some money and only report and pay me for 8 of the 10 sales I generated for you? How would I ever find out? Should I have to go take you to court to prove how many sales per week I generated for you?

There is also the problem of not many people wanting to do this method. For example, if I put an ad on tv, I PAY FOR THE AD UP FRONT. If that tv ad generates 10,000 new sales or 0 new sales doesn't matter. I still pay the same price for that ad. If I advertise for you, I personally do not care if you get a sale from it. I am using my time/property/etc to advertise for you, I want to be paid for that. Once a customer clicks an ad on my site and goes to your site, the rest of the transaction is out of my hands. If your site is slow or poorly designed and you lose the sale, why should I have to also lose money? If I advertise for you I want to be paid, regardless of you being able to complete the sale.

Re:Affiliate programs

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

I have to disagree based on the fact that very few internet purchases are made on the first visit

This is old news in the affiliate marketing world. This fact is taken into account with longer term cookies or other methods of accredation, such as visitor registration, which extend beyond the first visit. Most affiliate programs offer credits beyond the first visit, some extending to five weeks beyond.

Various studies have various estimates, but one of the more recent ones claimed a visitor will come to a site up to 9 times before making a purchase. Affiliate programs have been taking this into account for a long time.

Re:Affiliate programs

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

How exactly am I to know that you are getting 10 extra sales per week from the ads on my site?

Most affiliate programs have an internal control panel where an advertiser can see clicks from their site and purchases that can be tracked back to their site. Can that be set up to cheat affiliates? Of course. Which is why you sign an affiliate contract, which is a legally binding document. If you feel you have been cheated, you can report the affiliate site to law enforcement, the IRS, or whoever you want. But its not in the affiliate's best interest to cheat its marketers, ever.

Remind me again how that is worse than Google's pay per click?

For example, if I put an ad on tv, I PAY FOR THE AD UP FRONT.

Now who's got the flawed advertising model? You pay and take a gamble; with affiliates, you don't pay until you get paid. Which model is better? Also its a mistake to compare the internet with non-interactive models like TV and the newspapers. Think of it more as a sales rep, who gets paid on commission.

why should I have to also lose money?

Its not costing you anything. Even the image for the advert isn't eating into your bandwidth because its sourced from the affiliate server. If you look at the the affiliate site, think it has a good chance of selling, and want a percentage of the sale (a percentage mark you) then you go ahead and apply to be an affiliate.

If you become the affiliate for a two bit website hosted on geocities, thats your choice. Its about time advertisers took some responsibility for their claims. Thats why affiliate programs shine.

Re:Affiliate programs

[Dan Ost]

Unworkable since it relies on people making purchases during the same session
that they were referred to the site.

If I follow a link from an affiliate, leave the site, and then go directly to
the site the next day to make a purchase (I like to research before I buy), how
will you match my purchase to the affiliate that origionally sent me to your
site? What if I use a different computer to make the purchase (think people
who use public terminals at libraries)?

Re:Affiliate programs

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Unworkable since it relies on people making purchases during the same session that they were referred to the site.

Again I have already answered this one above. I will repeat it for clarity. Please read previous comments before posting redundantly.

This is old news in the affiliate marketing world. This fact is taken into account with longer term cookies or other methods of accredation, such as visitor registration, which extend beyond the first visit.

Most affiliate programs offer credits beyond the first visit, some extending to five weeks beyond.

What if I use a different computer to make the purchase (think people who use public terminals at libraries)?

If you are entering your credit card details in a public library computer, you have bigger problems than trying to escape the relentless jaws of the marketing machine. In any case, most of the people making a purchase will do so from the machine that they normally browse on. And there are methods that can be used to track people even if they use different machines.

And it beats the hell out of pay per click.

Re:Affiliate programs

[AstroDrabb]

Now who's got the flawed advertising model? You pay and take a gamble; with affiliates, you don't pay until you get paid. Which model is better?

That depends on who you ask. I will bet any survey will show a 50/50 response. If I am paying you for ads, of course I only want to pay you for that ad when I get a sale. If you are paying me to advertise for _you_, of course I want to be paid for my time/space/property/etc. Why should I only be paid to advertise for you based on your skills as a sales person? whether you sell a product or not, I still had to waste space to advertise for you when I could have used that space for a more profitable company.

Its not costing you anything. Even the image for the advert isn't eating into your bandwidth because its sourced from the affiliate server.

Huh? I can _only_ fit 5 ads on my site so that my end-users do not see too much clutter and so that they do not have a slow experience. Of those 5 advertising spots, I allow you one of them. If you do not return value to me, then I have wasted precious advertising space. So, yes, it costs me a potential fortune to advertise for you if you are not able to turn sales.

Its about time advertisers took some responsibility for their claims. Thats why affiliate programs shine.

Umm, it is not the claim of a company selling advertising space. It is the claim of a company trying to sell their product. I do agree with you though that it _is_ about time companies live up to their claims.

Affiliate programs only work for BIG and well established companies. Who would take a chance on a no-name company with new ProductX when you can be guaranteed a return on ads from BIG CompanyZ? So your "solution" only works for well established BIG corps and again puts the little man out of business.

Advertising is always a gamble. If you want to advertise your product XYZ, it is up to _YOU_ to know how to best market XYZ. If you fail, that doesn't mean that I should fail with you for allowing you to place ads on my site. If you want to advertise, then pay the damn money and take your chances with _YOUR_ product. Don't expect some socialist economy where advertiser will now take a chance with you.

No major advertiser will ever go for your method. It just makes no sense in a capitalistic system. Now if we were in socialist Russia, than maybe you would have a point about sellers and advertiser having to _both_ succeed or fail. But we are not!

Re:Affiliate programs

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Wow.

I find a certain kind of mindset only resorts to "commie" or "terrorist" when utterly backed against a logical wall. So lets deal with this.

One definition of capitalism is the most efficient allocation of resources to maximise profit potential. Affiliate programs are this. Communism has been bandied about so much I don't even know what the most recent definition is, so lets work with stupidity for a while. Faced with a choice where I can load money onto some media train and pray it returns with paying customers (pets.com), or pay only for those customers I get, which seems the more intelligent?

Affiliate programs were never possible before the advent of the internet, discounting sales reps and referrers, and advertising on the internet is still in its infancy, finding its feet. Now that automated affiliate programs are possible, its the only marketing model that makes sense, and its capitalism in its purest form.

Why should I only be paid to advertise for you based on your skills as a sales person?

If you don't like the ads or think they aren't going to sell, don't put them on your site. No one is twisting your arm making you put adverts on your site, they are simply asking you to justify why they should pay you for advertising. Understand the nature of advertising; its not some magical thing that occurs where anywhere a lot of eyeballs gather, its an expenditure made in order to make more profit. Thats the bottom line, baby, and thats capitalism. :D

Of those 5 advertising spots, I allow you one of them.

Incorrect, nice try, but no cigar. Advertisers have the money and you have to make them happy before they give their money to you, who has none. Its you who has to appease advertisers, and you who has to convince them to put adverts on your site.

Umm, it is not the claim of a company selling advertising space.

It will be soon. Affiliate programs make you justify your advertising claims. If you can't live up to your claims, you shouldn't be offering advertising space. Unless you are trying to defraud advertisers?

If you fail, that doesn't mean that I should fail with you for allowing you to place ads on my site. If you want to advertise, then pay the damn money and take your chances with _YOUR_ product.

Actually, yes it does, and no, I won't. Nor should any sane advertiser. Advertisers have the money and its up to them to decide what to do with it. Maximising their return on investment is just good business sense.

No major advertiser will ever go for your method.

Mediaplazza, the single largest seller of mobile phone content in Europe, a cellphone happy place, is one giant affiliate program. Note cellphones are also a relatively modern industry.

sellers and advertiser having to _both_ succeed or fail.

Makes sense to me. Justify your adspace, show me the sales, and I'll give you a cut. You don't win if your visitors aren't into my product. Next time pick an affiliate program that they will like.

Re:Affiliate programs

[thej1nx]

One flaw. What if there is no product to be sold ? For example, I typed "free" in google and ended up with this advertisement.

"Make me famous Check out Indie 101 and listen to one of my songs. Help me win. www.indie101.net"

The link took me to this site. http://www.indie101.net/artists/johnnyrome/

Now I dont really see a "buy this product" link on the site. All these guys are doing is buying publicity for themselves. Firefox is supposedly free. So if they put an advertisement on google, like the one in NYT, there would not really be any credit card transaction!

So how does google get paid in this respect ? There is no magic bullet or one-size-fits-all solution to this problem.

Re:Affiliate programs

[AstroDrabb]

Affiliate programs are this.

Funny, most of the capitalistic world would disagree with you. Otherwise all the major Internet advertisers would be taking your advice, which they are not.

Incorrect, nice try, but no cigar. Advertisers have the money and you have to make them happy before they give their money to you, who has none

Huh? That makes no sense what so ever. I can get a prime time commercial during Super Bowl Sunday for the crappiest product in the world if I have the money to buy the advertising space. Advertisers do not care about my product and I do not have to "make them happy". All I need to do is pay their bill.

It will be soon.

What will be soon? Affiliate programs? And how soon is that? Not one of the major Internet advertisers has shown even the smallest interest in your whole "affiliate programs" stuff.

Makes sense to me. Justify your adspace, show me the sales, and I'll give you a cut.

Again, that is just stupid, and none of the major advertisers will ever go for it. Keep living in your pipe dream. One small time cell phone _reseller_ is far from being an example of success.

Re:Affiliate programs

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Funny, most of the capitalistic world would disagree with you.

Unless you are qualified to speak for most of the capitalistic world, I'm sad to say you aren't qualified to speak here. And as for major advertisers taking my advice, everyone knows large companies are the first to adopt new things...

...

aren't they?

Heheh, anyway, back to more wobbly rolls of fat.

I can get a prime time commercial during Super Bowl Sunday for the crappiest product in the world if I have the money to buy the advertising space.

Can you do an affiliate program on Superbowl Sunday? No. Should you? If possible, yes. To the extent that SS can be justified, then yes, it is justified. The internet will need more justification however, because it can.

Not one of the major Internet advertisers has shown even the smallest interest in your whole "affiliate programs" stuff.

Research, my son, the foundation of any good argument. Until then you are just making noise out your noise hole. Which, ironically enough, you are.

One small time cell phone _reseller_ is far from being an example of success.

Christ, did you even read the link? They don't even sell phones. Why do I bother. Crawl back into your cave, troll.

Re:Affiliate programs

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Not really a flaw, just a different currency. The indie101 guy is buying time, spent on that website, or a vote, while firefox is selling downloads. If a click results in a download, google should get paid, and not before. Not all transactions are purely financial, but on the internet, they are all measurable, and can thus be translated into financial terms for an affiliate program.

Re:Hmmm.... if my advertising is costing me money.

[TapeCutter]

Maybe an "entrepener" with a couple of $M could use a "wizard" and write a click filtering app and make a big noise about a non-existant problem he has the solution for. Google will make a bigger noise when they publicly swat him like bug as a deterent to others.

Heh, generic lawyerspeak.

[Caspian]

"We believe the suit is without merit and we will defend ourselves against it vigorously" Most. Generic. Legal response. EVER.

Mod Up: Happy Activity for slashdotters

[tod_miller]

Click for google search link for 'Click Fraud' then click all the click fraud companies google ads - lets see how long it takes to wear out their daily budgets!

DO IT, DO IT NOW!

PS: Has this ever worked on slashdot?

Re:Mod Up: Happy Activity for slashdotters

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Actually the company sueing google isn't listed in google adds anymore it seems. So clicking on those in the link you posted will just hurt innocent companies which aren't sueing.

While I'm reluctant to post thier website as I don't want to give them more publicity, here is the website of the company sueing (not those listed in google ads).

As I've said below, if you want to screw with them calling thier 877 number would be better as it won't hurt other companies, won't help thier court case, and 877 numbers actually cost more than a click ;-) Just give em a call and ask about the lawsuit or tell them how your day is going so far, or whatever ;-) Again the number can be found on thier website but if you don't want to visit that it is 877-872-5772

Re:Mod Up: Happy Activity for slashdotters

[SacredNaCl]

Every time I hear: "A seller of online marketing tools" the first words that pop into my mind are: Spammer and/or seller of spamming tools, Search Engine Optimizer/Spammer of search engines. When I hear that said "seller of online marketing tools" is suing I think, what your Nigerian investments crapped out?

So is "Click Defense" representing a (spammer) client, or are they the client/spammer? :)

Suing is easy. Winning is hard.

[wheelbarrow]

Anybody can sue anybody for anything. That's easy. It's winning and collecting a judgement that is hard.

I'm sure Google has a line item in their budget for legal defense against this sort of nonsense. That's the cost of doing business when you are a high profile and successful company.

Sometimes you want to cost the advertisers money

[Anonymous Coward]

For instance, if you search for "bulk email" on Overture.com

Look at all those arsecandles offering spamming software and services. If they pay for every click on the "sponsored link", wouldn't you be tempted to add your couple of pennies worth? ISTR that Overture used to list how much the companies were paying per click, and it was fun to think how much your clicks cost.

Some of these companies might actually consider themnselves, in some deluded marketer-speak doublethink, as "legitimate" but really they are offering spamming software and spam support services, and know full well what their "products" are used for. Click away, says I. Pile on the click fraud till they're forced to give up advertisng spamming and spam suppport services, or overture refuses to accept adverts from them. Cut them off from their would-be customers. Then from their genitalia.

shameless

[ajs318]

I'll freely admit that I hate advertising of any description, and will do anything I can be bothered to do that chucks a spanner in some arsehole's works. I have very aggressive advert blocking in place, and I consider anyone attempting to show me an advert is attempting deliberately to bypass my anti-advertising measures -- which is casus belli.

I leave the room and/or mute the sound when adverts appear on TV. During playback of a home-recorded DVD, I fast-forward through the advert breaks; and I even insert a chapter marker at the end of each one, so neither I nor anyone who borrows my DVDs will ever have to see them again.

Sometimes when on the Internet, I will click on adverts for things I have no intention of buying {which is all adverts -- show me an advert and you lose any business I might have given you} just to cost somebody some money.

I do not have any qualms about this. Advertisers know the risks, yet they spend the money anyway. It's their choice to spend the money, and it's my pleasure to help make sure it is well and truly wasted. It is not really much different than inviting Jehovah's Witnesses in for a long chat and then announcing you have no intention to convert to their religion -- all the while you were doing that, you were making sure nobody else would be brainwashed by their evil, perverted cult.

However, most of the time I have more important things to do than play silly buggers, even though I would hold several gold medals if it ever became an Olympic sport. Just as I find that shouting "F**k off" through a closed door has the desired effect on Jehovah's Witnesses and doesn't waste a morning, so I tend to rely on my advert-blocking proxy. And Google advertisements so far have been unobtrusive enough to ignore.

A flawed business model

[erroneus]

Counting clicks as a means of collecting revenue is a flawed business model. It sounds and seems more "precise" somehow, but as it has been pointed out, various forms of employment has actually arisen in low-income countries where people just come in and click away for cash. It's insane and more importantly, easily exploitable.

Other advertising media use demographic polls to determine the approximate number of eyes and ears on their material. This is a fair means by which the value of advertising can be measured. It means the media will have to pay a reliable source to collect this information and all that but it's not as exploitable as hiring clickers in the 3rd world country to run up the advertising costs of a competitor.

There's still room for fraud and falsification but the target for such accusation is much easier to define and because of this, they [the poll people] are more likely to protect themselves with auditing and tracking measures should they be accused of, say, siding with Yahoo! or Google when reporting numbers. It would more or less absolve the advertiser and the medium from this problem and actually simplifies the business model considerably.

The internet advertisers should take a lesson from the rest of the world and simply go with what works. People will cheat every chance they get. It's clear and obvious. So you just have to find ways to reduce that risk.

Re:A flawed business model

[defaria]

Paying people to click away for cash? I don't get it. A web server has no real knowledge as to whether a user clicked to a URL or a URL was requested by a program such as wget. Why pay people to click a mouse perhaps once every second when you can easily program somethign with wget to generate thousands of "click thrus" per minute?

Re:A flawed business model

[sm00f]

Exactly, they need to take a clue from the adult industry that stopped all pay-per-click programs years ago (there are still some but they work on ratios of so many cents per click to number of sales per click so you can't cheat them). The whole point of buying traffic in a pay per click program is you are betting you can make more $ on whatever you are trying to sell vs what you are paying out to get the traffic in the first place, so they just need to figure out some way to track sales (which would be quite hard due to the crazy number of different things being sold and different billing companies etc).

Re:A flawed business model

[sustik]

Here is a solution. Allow the advertiser to provide either a verification algorithm for valid clicks or let them decide about every click whether they are accepting it or not.

This way the advertiser can either accept or reject a click and would pay for the clicks they explicitly accepted. Yes, there are costs associated with this solution, but I think they are far outweighed by the advanteges.

Google attacked under the spirit of communism

[wheelbarrow]

Communism is grounded in the jealousy that unproductive losers feel towards those who are rewarded for making something that other people are willing to pay for.

That is what is happening to Google now. They have built a successful business by creating something people voluntarily pay for in a free and open society. Now, the jealous nit wits who hate success are coming out of the woodwork to attack Google. I'd rather that these communists spent their energy creating rival competitive products in a free and open market.

Re:Google attacked under the spirit of communism

[Anonymous Coward]

i'll nibble.

-how about suggesting that communism is founded on Christian principles?

Re:Google attacked under the spirit of communism

[wheelbarrow]

How come that did not carry into the real world implementations of communism in places like Russia and Cambodia?

Bunch of Ass Clowns

[Comatose51]

Have you guys read the site? These guys are a bunch of ass clowns.

http://www.clickdefense.com/terms_of_services.html

"RISK. YOUR ACCOUNT AND THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. Click Defense, ON BEHALF OF ITSELF AND ITS DISTRIBUTORS, ADVERTISERS AND SUPPLIERS, DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARISING BY LAW OR OTHERWISE, WITH RESPECT TO YOUR ACCOUNT AND THE SERVICE (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT)."

First, you can't disclaim expressed warranties. Also kind of hypocritical that they disclaim all responsibility for their product and turns around and sue Googles for what amounts to a warranty issue.

Very unprofessional. Obviously a bunch of dumbasses.

Re:Bunch of Ass Clowns

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a quick look at their "case study" and google the company involved, Mendara Systems:

http://www.ale.org/archive/ale/ale-2002-10/msg0023 8.html

http://www.spinics.net/lists/rh9/msg04983.html

I wonder if Click Defense and Mendara Systems are all the same "company."

Re:Bunch of Ass Clowns

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: I am not an "Anonymous Coward"... I simply forgot my password, and for some reason /. is taking too long to email it to me, so:

Well, not necessarily. If you think about it, how many people do you know who actually READ license agreements? Also, if you do decide to use their product, then they have the ability to do what they want with your information, your data, and/or whatever else you might give them. I think they're pretty smart to make up that kind of agreement... But then again, to advertise it ... makes them pretty stupid.

The new economy

[nurb432]

Welcome to the new economy, run by lawyers, to benefit lawyers.

The lawyers win either way...

Re:The new economy

[lb746]

I for one welcome our new law-abusing overlords!

subject: thanks a lot

[luckynoone]

to: sales@clickdefense.com

Hey,

I read about your company suing Google.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/30/12 2251&threshold=1&tid=217&tid=123&tid=98

Read that. The entire industry instantly hates you and will be saying prayers tonight that your company goes under.

Your company has zero moral/ethical ground here... Google has been working to fight click inflation. So you are suing them? Ridiculous. Shouldn't you be suing the fraudulent clickers?

Think about it this way... if someone buys a car and decides to use it as a weapon, should someone sue the car manufacturer for not preventing it from being used as a weapon?

Enjoy the 15 minutes of fame. Click Defense probably won't last much longer than that.

- Andrew

Re:subject: thanks a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

Entire industry? What are you smoking? Since when were you installed as the spokesman for all of us?

I am reading the posts here and there are plenty of people who are sharing similar frustrations about Google and click fraud. Google is not doing anything for them, they want a resolution.

I just emailed that address with a link to this thread and let them know that some of us here support them doing the Right Thing.

Cavaet Emptor

[ramblin billy]

I wonder if the next step is suing Google if they let you run an ad that really sucks? Following a (somewhat) logical progression, what about suing if you link to a sucky site? Hell, why not just sue Google if they accept an ad from a company whose product or business plan sucks? Damn it Google, you guys should not have accepted my payments for my "All Pia - All The Time" Pia Zadora streaming site ads! You have a successful business - you should have known better. It's not like Click Fraud would have a reasonable expectation they would experience err..ehh...you know...CLICK FRAUD on Google! Who'd a thunk it? Get a clue, it's a virtual jungle on there. Bogus stuff on the net? Gimme a break, the scammers are always ahead.

I guess we do all owe the good folks at Click Fraud a small 'thank you' for bringing our attention to the situation. If I ever have to deal with the problem at least now I know there are companies out there to help me. I even know the name of one - one who goes for the legal throat to resolve their business (and brand awareness) problems. Thanks Click Fraud, you may have saved me from a huge headache. I might have done business with you. Now I know better.
billy - evil?...no...just stupid

Actually what they do is use proxies and botnets.

[blcss]

I've seen it on my honeypot. They come in from various IPs in the far east (APNIC) on port 3128 and emulate several clicks per second per proxy. I expect Google can look for the Via header line and don't count any click that includes one. My guess is either they don't do this or else the perps think they aren't doing this. And that would only work with proxies, not bots.

Pricing

[proteonic]

My guess is that Google has a very good idea of how much click fraud there is, and adjusts their pricing accordingly, (charging less per click).

The clients, on their ends, should see an increase in sales correlating with an increase in advertising spending. If they suddenly observe a spike in billing for their google PPC ads, but their sales haven't moved, there's a strong indication that some kind of fraud is going on.

I'm sure if a customer went to Google with the numbers, something would be done about it. It's the same principle as watching out for credit card fraud. Watch your montly bills and keep an eye out for unexpected patterns. If you're worried about fraud, don't expect Google to be watching your back, do it yourself.

Click fraud is being In Violation

[xiando]

Google clearly states that you are in no way allowed to ask your users to click on the advertisements. Read the terms of any service which pays pr click or search, you fill not find any such service which does not have a huge legal terms of service document which forbids all kind of click fraud. If you do Click Fraud then you will be In Violation and you get No Money. The same applies to SPAM: Affiliates forbid it, so if you spam then they close your account and No Money for you. The secret organized click fraud terrorism the seller of online marketing tools refers to may be highly over-estimated because any idiot with half a brain understands that Being in Violation is extremely bad for your long-term profit margin.

It will be very interesting to follow this one, because this is a case where any evidence that a Google client has been scammed will have to show which of the Google affiliates who have been involved. The stupid thing here is that they are suing. Google would probably refund if they had any real proof. Lack of real proof is probably the reason they are turning to a government institution which lacks the technological understanding needed to understand what the case is about.

Googles "fix" for click fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

If a site is used as a tool for click fraud, that cancel that sites account, and refuse to pay them. They will not provide evidence of the abuse, and will not listen to the web master when he claims he/she is innocent.

Here are a couple of examples:

http://marc.perkel.com/archives/000056.html
And
http://regex.adnd.com/?p=92

Screw the little guy to protect the big guy seems to be googles motto.

And if you do a google search for "Adsense Sucks" you will see alot of people have this complaint.

Wouldn't it be easy to fix?

[cynicdave]

My web site generates around 200-300 a month (page rank 4) for me and I don't dare piss off google ever or for ever. *looks around* That being that, wouldn't it be rather easy to fix this? They already use javascript so I guess they could cookie the client computer up with some kind of crazy google magic (i.e. unique crypto ids) and make sure that they are still at that IP 10-20 (or whichever timeframe because you KNOW they got crazy computer scientists there) seconds later. Course it would probably slow the internet down a lot with all of additional traffic and all. prolly make email spam look like filet mignon

Also....

[Spy der Mann]

they could impose a say, 1 or 2 hour limit on the same IP/link... this would be more like a low-pass filter on clicks.

1-877-872-5772

[Anonymous Coward]

Plaease call the ass clowns!

It seems to me...

[mister_llah]

... that they are engaging in a policy of "No publicity is bad publicity" ... and this will get them more publicity than some click throughs ever could...

Most of you dont get it!

[new-black-hand]

Microsoft buying Claria has nothing to do with Gator. What they are after is Gain, which is a Claria product. The reason why? Might have something to do with Gain being the most advanced targeted advertising system on earth. Think about it, Microsoft want to extend MSN and have it compete with Google. The main Google attraction at the moment is the advertising model, you get specific ads, and retailers can tailer their ads to only the users who want to see them. For Microsoft to get here, they can either try to re-produce such a system themselves, or go and buy the *best* system for targeted advertising that exists at the moment, so they go to Claria! The net result is that MSN offers extremely targeted advertising, much better than what Google can offer, which increases the value of the ads meaning less ads are required! Quiet the opposite of the scenarios being discussed here thus far. From the Gain site:

GAIN Network advertising programs can generate click-through rates 20 to 40 times higher than traditional banner ads, because through GAIN, advertisers can reach consumers across the Web, at exactly the right time in their buying cycle.

Taking into account buying cycles for ads? Unheard of anywhere else (many other features such as this that Google currently can not match). The one disadvantage that Gain does have is that it installes software (smileys, free screensavers etc.) that are used to collect the information to tailor the ads. What Microsoft will have to do instead is use their MSN services (Hotmail, MSN messenger etc.) to get this data from the users. By extending the collection of data across the whole MSN install base, the value of reaching this network for advertises is orders of magnitude larger than anything else.

Re:Most of you dont get it!

[new-black-hand]

And I have replied to the wrong thread.. these things happen when you have >20 tabs open :)

Re:Most of you dont get it!

[SComps]

Oddly it was closer to topic than many of the replies actually posted here. Congratulations!

Post ClickDefense Ad Links!

[z80kid]

I checked Google, and couldn't find any ClickDefense Ads.

If anyone sees an Ad for ClickDefense, please post a link here!

Must be said..

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, ads click you!

Way off base

[Luthair]

Actually you're looking at it wrong.

A quick look at their site or remember advertisers cannot prevent Google from counting clicks should bring the realization that ClickDefense's product detects click fraud, not prevent it.

That they (apparently) detect fraudulent clicks which Google does not, indicates that their product works. Of course this doesn't change the fact they're probably using this as a publicity stunt.

Re: You all are dizzy

[Anonymous Coward]

First of All if you look at the alleged complaint -- It is about a Class Action to allow users, Agencies and the like who have had no luck or success in being able to get invalid click refunds. Googles position on invailid clicks is quite vague, and position themselves to have the upper hand on any decision for refund. If they feel that their position is stronger on the fact that they have provided 100% clicks w/o click fraud. Two sides to everyting here, and to hang our hat on Google's trust alone is foolish. I will sign up for an account here after this.

I think they're doing *too* much...

[KoReE]

I was terminated from their service for clicking on ads on my page. I didn't have any kind of bot set up, I just clicked on interesting ads. I even bought some things via those ads. Then I get this:

"It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the ads on your web pages. We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including
but not limited to clicks generated by a publisher on his own web
pages, clicks generated through the use of robots, automated clicking
tools, or any other deceptive software.

Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms
and Conditions and program polices, which can be viewed at"

I guess I didn't read the fine print well enough. I didn't realize that I was *completely* forbid from clicking on ads on my own page. I think the problem was that my site isn't terrifically high-traffic, so I was probably one of just a few people actually clicking.

Oh, how true

[The Woodworker]

As an online advertiser for a very small business on the web, kanoodle gives way better results for your dollar. I set up a script to track who was coming through where and when. The result was all of my daily click-thru money for google was going to a couple of people. 200-300 clicks depending on cost for 2-3 users is a bit extreme. At the time, the only thing I could do was to stop using google adwords. It was an easy decision as I wasn't making any money through google. And while I was making nothing on google and spending hundreds per month, I was spending $50 per month with kanoodle and getting thousands in business. No, I don't have any affiliation with kanoodle. Just FYI.

It is a problem

[bugninja]

Most of my customers use Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Adwords generates about 20x the click throughs, and costs more than triple that of Yahoo Search Marketing.

However, the ROI through Yahoo is consistently better. My clients are dropping Google left and right, and I strongly feel that this is due to the nature of adsense.

Ads provided by Google on affiliate websites are typically text based and appear to be designed to trick customers into clicking the ads, thinking they are part of the site they are currently on, and then the surfer just hits the back button because they never intended to leave the site they were on anyway.

My proof of this is in the stats. When someone comes to one of my customers' websites from Yahoo, their typical page views are 2-4 pages. When they come from Google, the page views are typically 1 (or just the homepage).

I don't feel that it is a click fraud issue for some of these smaller companies using adwords, rather it is Google banking on surfer error through the adsense program.

I would like to see the Google Adsense program more clearly render their ads on other websites so people know that they are actually clicking on ads. Yes, I know there is a tiny Google mark on the ads, but when is the last time you saw a surfer read everything on a web page?

They have an add on Yahoo also...

[Bob 4knee]

You could also go to Yahoo, search for click fraud, and click on the add there (it's down a screen or so).

I don't think NAT is a problem

[spitzak]

Really, what possible reason is there for a large number of people sharing a NAT to click on the same ad? In any scenario I can think of, that would not indicate any more interest or likely purchases than even one click.

Even if the boss at a company sent out a letter to all 100 employees saying "I want to buy this, check it out and see if you approve", I really doubt the effect on the company is any better than if the boss had just bought the item without any clicking. Certainly it's not 100 times better.

Therefore it seems that not counting the same IP address more than once would be fine for making an accurate guess of the real interest in an ad. Or maybe take the log of the number from the same IP, that might be a good compromise.

You think this is bad?

[Nathan Weinberg]

Google Video contains massive copyright violations, including major films and TV shows: http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archiv es/2005/06/30/the-worst-copyright-violation-ever/

More importantly

[eddieboston]

How do I get a job as a fraudulent link-clicker? Seriously, I think I'd be pretty good at it. My right hand is very strong... From clicking my mouse, I mean (you sickos!).

Overture (aka Yahoo) is worse at fraud detection

[truckaxle]

Overture now Yahoo are even worse at detecting click fraud. Check out this experience with Overtures click fraud protection

pay-per-click is the biggest rip-off ever, morons

[v3xt0r]

anyone gullible enough to pay to have people view their website is a moron.

I built a system like this

[Anonymous Coward]

They have some pretty bold claims on their site.
Few of them are possible.

They claim that they can detect click fraud if the same person clicks an ad twice from 2 different PC's on 2 different networks.

Impossible.

Not only that, there are only 2 ways to track a person who clicks more than once, and both are unreliable at best and can end up giving false information.

Cookies: cookies don't move from pc to pc. If I click an ad on my office desktop PC, which is connected to LAN, then click an ad on my laptop dialed into AOL, in the same cube, this software won't be able to tell I clicked ad twice. You'd be smoking crack if you thought there was a way that cookies could solve this problem. Not only that, if I have cookies disabled or severely restricted, cookies won't work at all, which leads me too...

IP: IP addresses are not reliable tracking mechanism either because in a LAN or some ISP situations, everything goes through a proxy server. This server has one IP with many many users behind it. Every user appears to have the same IP, therefore it will look like the 200000 isp users are one user. if you are tracking by IP.

This probably accounts for their 38% "fraud" rate. proxy users with disabled or restricted cookies, and/or the click fraud engine isn't sending the right P3P headers.

No click fraud detection system is anywhere near accurate, unless you are on some really good drugs, or don't understand how the internet works.

At best you can determine that if you get 200000 clicks from the same IP that it merits investigation. If AOL or another ISP owns that netblock, the investigation has to stop there. If Doubleclick owns the IP, you might have something to report. It still doesn't really prove much of anything.

All a rival needs to do is find a proxied isp that has a lot of users and do their dirty deeds from there, with cookies turned off.

At that point how is Google liable? Someone clicked the ads, it wasn't google, and google can not block an ISP just because someone is clicking ads over and over again.

This case is probably the most silly thing I have ever heard of, outside of an "accurate" click fraud prevention system.

At best it can tell you some funny business is going on, but can't possibly quantify it accurately, which you would need for a court case.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Compare to Amazon model

[bananahead]

As has been mentioned already, the pay-per-click model of advertising revenue simply cannot hold as a business model forever. The alternative business model that Amazon uses is the pay-for-a-click-that-generates-a-sale version, which is very similar to my rule of 'if you are happy, I had better be very happy' for paying sales people. The Google model violates this rule in that Google can be happy, but the customer isn't because the conversion ratio of clicks to orders is not high enough for the advertiser to be happy.

I developed this simple rule a long time ago while starting my first company and trying to figure out a model for commissioned sales people that actually made sense. I found that this rule applies to a lot of different scenarios in business, and I have found that if a situation involving revenue and multiple players violates the rule, failure of some form is ahead.

I don't think we, as an industry, have fully figured out this online advertising thing, and there are going to be some failures along the way to finding the right model. The question, as always, is the magnitude of the failure.

As a Google AdWords customer, I believe it.

[Brett Glass]

I've been charged for ridiculously large numbers of clicks on a site for which I know there's a relatively limited market. I also checked my server logs and saw that the number of visits was nowhere near the number of clicks Google claimed. When I complained to Google, they stonewalled.

will they release an API to detect click fraud?

[googisgod]

because it's pretty strange that even though nobody would THINK of running a major site with paid advertising without having a third-party traffic auditor, Google apparently thinks it is perfectly ok that all of its traffic logs and records are kept 100% secret.

"Trust us." is their only method of auditing. Would anybody ANYWHERE ELSE in the business world find this acceptable? How long can they keep it up, since they seem to be getting sued for click fraud every other week?

http://www.fuckedgoogle.com/

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Click fraud: the downside of pay-per-click

[jfengel]

Wikipedia is your friend

Basically: some company places an ad with Google and tells Google they'll pay them (for example) $.01 every time somebody clicks on an ad. (That's called cost-per-click advertising. If nobody's interested in your ad, you don't pay.)

Let's steal their money. Google has a service where you can sign up to run ads on your site. Google gives you their ad to display on your web site, and Google pays you (say) $.005 per click. In other words, you get half, and Google gets half.

Now you write a script that clicks on the link as fast as it can... well, if it happens a million times you get $5,000. Free. And the company has paid $10,000 for the privilege.

That's what click fraud is. There are a lot of variations, but that's the gist.

I've tried advertising with google.

[Anonymous Coward]

I sell an application called Seamless Texture Generator which takes photographs of brick, stone, dirt, etc, and makes them seamlessly tile for use in 3D games and artwork.

But all my attempts to gain sales through adwords have been a dismal failure.

At first, I tried using text based ads. But google blocked me from simply allowing the word "textures" to trigger my ad, even if it was in cases where that was the only word entered. "seamless textures" they allowed, but the number of searches for that term each day was low. I tried using much more active terms dealing with various 3D packages, like Maya, because I wanted to target 3D artists, but even though I was getting lots of page hits from that, google eventually disabled those keywords because the actual number of people clikcing the ad versus seeing it was less than 0.5%

Google then implemented SITE targetting, where you could target your ads at a specific website. But they decided to charge for impressions rather than clicks. I was able to find a number of 3D sites to target my ads at with this method, but because the number of impressions was so high and the number of actual clicks so low, I was paying as much as 50 cents per click. I had to stop that campaign within two days because it was much too expensive and I was only getting like 10 visitors a day from it.

Then I tried going back to the keyword method, but using image based ads instead. The image based ad I created got quite a few clicks, but I could never be sure that my keywords were actually displaying the ad on sites that were properly related to my product. I had to use keywords like "Maya" to actually get clicks because "seamless textures" wasn't getting much of anyhting.

Even though I was now getting lots of clicks however, I was still making no sales from it. 99% of my sales still came from 3D art and programming forums. I have to wonder if I was getting fraudulent clicks from my competitors.

I called Click Fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

This is interesting. I called Click fraud to ask about their lawsuit but was placed on hold. The guy called me back laughing, and in the background there was a loud beeping noise from a phone being off the hook. He gave me his cell number (which was the same number shown on my caller Id). Perhaps their phone system is going off the hook so much they are using their cell phones?

Anyway, the cell number left is 1 949 292 1600

Feel free to give him a call directly :)

Costing Click Defense money.

[Charles W Griswold]

You could say go to google. google Click Fraud and click "Click Defense"'s add on the right hand side 10-20 times just for added good mesure :p

On a completely and totally unrelated note (yea, right) I coded up a quick frameset html file (strictly for informational and educational puropses, understand) that automatically reloads a url (like, say Click Defense's Yahoo ad) every ten seconds. It's available on my website, right down at the bottom of the page. Click on the "click_defense.zip" link to download it.

calling their phone number

[Anonymous Coward]

beware, they will call you back

sue 'em

[Kaenneth]

So, why havn't you filed suit against that competitor?