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Traffic Fraud Inflates Video Site Popularity

Posted by kdawson on from the forced-visit-traffic dept.

Dotnaught writes "A new study by spyware researcher Ben Edelman finds that spyware-driven traffic inflation is common, particularly at video sites. The study identifies Bolt.com, GrindTV.com, Broadcaster.com, Away.com, RooTV.com, and Diet.com as the beneficiaries of spyware-driven traffic. 'Our measurement systems are inaccurate for the amount of trust we'd like to put into them,' Edelman said. 'So that's the puzzle: How do you build an advertising economy when the number can't be trusted?'"

2 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. A video bubble ? by mbone · · Score: 2, Informative

    After the sale of YouTube, video oriented sites are popping up everywhere, and many of them seem to be oriented around a similar exit strategy, so this doesn't surprise me. (Disclosure - I am with AmericaFree.TV and I look at a lot of video sites, but the 6 mentioned were all new to me.)

    It is my feeling that this is a weakness of the entire statistically based advertising and ranking model, which looks at the actions of computers and tries to infer the intent of their owners. Using spyware to bring people to your site will piss them off, and they likely won't stick around, but if all you want to do is to artifically inflate your traffic statistics so that you can do a quick sale, what do you care ? This is beginning to remind me of the dot-com days...

  2. How is that different from anything else? by argent · · Score: 4, Informative

    How do you jusdge the value of advertising anywhere? You look at how it effects sales.