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."

Comments

Our own analysis.

[Jerk City Troll]

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Meanwhile, two friends of mine had their google accounts cancelled and funds withdrawn because Google accused them of click-fraud.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?

Re:Our own analysis.

[FliesLikeABrick]

I ran adsense on a couple of gaming sites I'm responsible for, and my account got suspended (well, more or less I got suspended permanently since they can block me via tons of the personal info they had with my registration). I went through their appeals process and, after a long wait, got a canned response. Nobody was taking the time to personally investigate anything in the appeals, or at least it felt this way. I had logs and lots of other information and background, as well as a compromise to pull the ads from those sites and preserve a good record (aka working account) for future use. I had been planning some new major sites that would use adsense as a major revenue channel (via legit means, not some "omg click and get a free ipod" thing), but they apparently trust no one. Parent post was correct in saying that they seem to just point and close any accounts with a hint of odd activity without thinking twice, since they have thousands (millions?) of other sources of trickle income to them. I'm not a google fanboy, but I'm a strong supporter. This experience is the single, but very large, mar on their reputation, as far as I'm concerned. ... Oh, and also that nonsense with MySpace, but business is business I suppose.

google still refuses third party auditing.

[googisgod]

It takes a set of balls a mile wide for Google to throw out this report that basically says "If you had access to our secret click data, you'd know how completely wrong you are about clickfraud." "Oh, I'm sorry, you don't have access to our secret click data? Tough shit."

Look- Google could end the entire debate over clickfraud and the clickfraud detecting companies by doing one thing- for every click, tell the advertiser/publisher the IP and time of the click. That's it. That's all. They won't do it in a million years, though, not until government regulation starts to force some kind of auditing- like that which exists in every other advertising media on planet earth. (tv, radio, magazines, newspapers)

Remember how Google just recently admitted that they charged advertisers for two valid clicks whenever they "doubleclicked" on an ad? They kept doing that practice from 2003 until march of 2005. They raked in tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits, none of which they are going to return. If Google had been giving out IP and time data back then, independent parties could have spotted what Google was up to immediately and you can be damn sure the practice would have stopped a lot sooner.

Oh BTW- I know Google likes to use the "user privacy" as a reason not to reveal IPs to advertisers. But that excuse falls completely short since both the publishing website AND the advertiser both already should be seeing that IP in their own server logs. The only reason Google refuses to attach IPs to clicks is because it would allow people to see things like the doubleclick scam, or see that their clicks are coming from a country who can't even read the language of their advertisement, etc etc.

Google, stop issuing these stupid public relation stunt "studies" saying how all the clickfraud detection companies are barking up the wrong tree when it is YOUR FAULT for not releasing data that could let people do an accurate job of keeping you in line.

I know it's fun not being accountable to anyone, but Google my friend, you only get to pull that stunt as long as you're a monopoly. Eventually, with increased competition from yahoo and microsoft, you'll actually have to start treating your business partners with some modicum of respect.

Neutral Analysis?

[otisg]

Interesting, but wouldn't it make more sense to have a neutral party do the analysis instead of Google, whose bulk of the revenue comes from those same clicks they analyzed? Having Google do the analysis and reporting is like having Microsoft do Vista benchmarking. That is, if Vista were actually ready.