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Google Releases Analysis of Click-Fraud Detection
fragmentate writes "This morning Google released information about their analysis of the exaggerated click-fraud numbers. Without pointing fingers, they mention that click-fraud analysis companies need to clean up their methods. From the post, 'A rigorous technical analysis by Google engineers has found fundamental flaws in the work of several click fraud consultants - flaws that help explain why widely quoted estimates of the size of the click fraud problem are exaggerated.' They even point out some obvious shortcomings of the methods used. The entire report [PDF] is available with their complete analysis."
For the past few years we have had ads running on adsense... 2 weeks ago, we decided we would rather lose the sales that adsense was bringing in than continue to pay google for ads that weren't generating enough revenue.
For comparison, our conversion rates:
Google Search: 3.5%
Google adsense: 0.25%
I don't know what other companies are doing.. but I wouldn't be surprised companies are considering dropping adsense. There is just to much fraud.
Meanwhile, two friends of mine had their google accounts cancelled and funds withdrawn because Google accused them of click-fraud. Of course they had nothing to do with it and when they pleaded their cases to Google they got no reply. Google doesn't have to care because they have so many other willing partners. They were even willing to provide click logs and etc. But they just ignored ignored it. I guess it's cheaper to just cancel accounts who are suspected of click-fraud then actually investigate. But if all it takes is a few malicious users with some scripting knowledge and open proxies to ruin my revenue why should I as a publisher use Google Adsense?
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My company has about 2MM in sales annually, and we spend almost $500,000 a year on Google Adwords. Over 90% of our sales come from Google. We're getting a conversion rate that is less then one percent and it's gotten worse over time. If it continues to drop we'll have no choice but reduce our adwords cost-per-click limit and take our advertising dollars elsewhere. No matter how you spell it, that means problems for the GOOG.
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Google does not pay per impression, they pay per click. This is the reason that click fraud is so frustrating. The parents suggestions are perfectly reasonable. Providing the person creating the add and paying google with a means to audit their bill is perfectly reasonable. Does your mobile phone carrier just sent you a bill at the end of the month with minutes used and a dollar amount? They provide you with a list of phone calls made (at least mine does). Having a bill that you can audit against your records gives the bidder peice of mind. There is no ethical argument against it. As is always the case with business...there is of course a business case against it.
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
You can't modify the AdSense code to do that, or it invalidates the links. *sigh*
You could, however, setup the AdSense in an IFrame and try to monitor it that way.
"Google does not even allow you to ignore clicks and impressions from your own IP for testing" - Not true!
There is a "debug" parameter you can add to your AdSense snippet which will make ads show up but not make impressions or clicks count. I got this info from Google support when I asked them about exactly this issue.
Simply add the following to your AdSense Javascript parameters: google_adtest="on";
For more info, see http://www.gidnetwork.com/b-5.html (no, this is not my site).
What on earth makes you think IP addresses would be in any way useful?
IP address tells you sweet FA about anything these days. AOL used to run pretty much their entire userbase via a caching web proxy, so every single AOL user showed up with a single IP address. NAT is so widespread now that 2 clicks in a short timespan from the same IP address could mean a user clicking twice on an advert, or it could simply mean two entirely different people that happen to be behind the same caching proxy/NAT router clicking once, or it could be two users who happened to go through a DHCP reconfiguration in between the clicks.
I also find the idea that somehow there needs to be regulation like with TV advertising a bit weird. With pretty much any ad campaign except online advertising you get no reliable statistics at all about its impact. How many people saw it? You can only guess. How much traffic did it drive to your business? You cannot know. Even if traffic goes up after the advert run, it might have been due to other factors (mention in a newspaper, other website etc). No amount of regulation will ever give you the amount of transparency you already get with online advertising in another medium.
I'd complain, but you seem to be doing better with my post than I did.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
The parent's comment was just ripped off verbatim from another thread about click fraud. Here's the original.
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