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Advertising "Click Fraud" Rampant Online?
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by:
Jim Edwards
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©
Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
http://www.thenetreporter.com
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"Pay-per-click," by far the most popular form of online advertising,
recently came under fire as charges of rampant "click fraud" gather
steam on the Web.
Google and Yahoo! earn the majority of their money through sales of
advertising to tens-of-thousands of online merchants, companies, and
professional.
In fact, some estimate that 99% of all Google's revenue comes from
advertising sales. Unfortunately, allegations of click fraud may well
rain on Google's otherwise sunny parade and cause a whole scale
revamping of current online advertising practices.
Pay-per-click advertising does exactly what it sounds: advertisers pay
for each click on their ad, usually mixed in among search engine
results or displayed on relevant websites.
"Click fraud" occurs when, for whatever reason, an ad gets clicked by
someone or something (usually an automated "bot" that simulates clicks)
with no intention of ever buying anything from the advertiser.
The sole intention of click fraud is to simply drain an advertiser's
budget and leave them with nothing to show but an empty wallet.
Who commits click fraud?
Usually an unscrupulous competitor who wants to break a rival's bank,
online "vandals" who get their kicks causing other people grief, or
search engine advertising affiliates who want to earn fat commissions
by racking up piles of bogus clicks.
Regardless of who does it or why, click fraud appears to be a growing
problem search engines hope stays under their advertising clients'
radar.
This problem isn't exactly news to the search engine giants.
In fact, on page 60 of their 3rd quarter Report for 2004, Google admits
that they have "regularly refunded revenue" to advertisers that was
"attributed to click-through fraud."
Google further states that if they don't find a way to deal with this
problem "these types of fraudulent activities could hurt our brand."
Bottom line for Google and Yahoo! (which owns Overture, the Web's
largest pay-per-click search engine): as word of click fraud spreads
across the Web, they must act quickly to calm the nerves of advertisers
who could well abandon them over doubts about the veracity of their
advertising charges.
The search engines all claim to carry measures that identify and detect
click fraud, but details about how they do it and to what extent remain
sketchy.
They claim revealing details about security would compromise their
efforts and give the perpetrators a leg up on circumventing their
defenses.
This sounds good, but affords little comfort to advertisers who feel
caught between losing out on their best traffic sources and paying for
advertising that won't result in revenue.
One way to protect your business against click fraud is to closely
monitor your website statistics.
Look for an unusually high number or regular pattern of clicks from the
same IP address.
If you need help, enlist the aid of your hosting provider to aid you in
spotting suspicious trends in your website traffic.
Also, a number of services such as ClickSentinel.com have sprung up
online to help advertisers spot and quickly analyze and compile the
data necessary to effectively dispute fraudulent click charges with the
search engines.
About the Author
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist
and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to
use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to
your website or affiliate links...
Simple "Traffic Machine" brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your
website for weeks, even months... without spending a dime on
advertising! ==> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com
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