Google ‘click-fraud’ solution
p2pnet.net news:- Google, caught in an embarrassing trade dispute with South Korean because of unproven Adsense fraud claims, says it’s going to give clients a way to stop their pay-per-click advertisements from being shown to competitors, “suspected of repeatedly clicking on the ads to drive up their cost”.
p2pnet is on the wrong end of a false click-fraud accusation and the Korea Fair Trade Commission has proscribed Google for unfairly terminated an Adsense contract over allegations of click fraud.
“Google, king of pay-per-click advertising, will allow advertisers to specify which Internet Protocol addresses – numerical addresses assigned to individual computers – will be blocked from receiving the ads,” says CNET News.
The company hopes this will stop rivals from using click fraud to “eat through a competitor’s advertising budget and to prevent them from bidding on the ad’s keyword for the purpose of using it in their own ads,” says the story. “Fraudulent clicks can be generated by people paid to click ads over and over, and also through automated software programs.
“Also beginning in March, Google plans to give advertisers more information on how much money they are saving by filtering out fraudulent clicks, a Google spokesman said. Before July, Google will provide a standardized interface for advertisers to report click fraud and request investigations.”
Does this mean even more sites will be wiped off the board without any form of redress?
As things stand, Google’s position is everyone it says is guilty is guilty, and it keeps its ‘evidence’ to itself, refusing to provide details of how it arrives at its conclusions.
Click-fraud can also be caused by individuals or companies looking to injure others by manually or automatically generating repeated false clicks from victims’ sites. Google then wrongly interprets them as having been generated site owners, cutting them off without warning or explanation.
How effective are click-throughs, something advertisers believe results in busines for them and on which Google developed its fortune?
“One study puts the rate for top-tier search engines at less than 12 percent,” says CNET. “Google claims that click fraud represents a very small amount – a percentage that is in the single digits – of total clicks, and says it catches nearly all of it before customers get charged. Google has said that less than 10 percent of all clicks on ads it serves are dubious in nature and it does not charge advertisers for those. Google provides refunds to customers who request them because of suspicious clicks for less than 0.02 percent of all clicks, the company said.”
Also See:
embarrassing trade dispute – Korea ‘Adsense fraud’ scandal, February 28, 2007
CNET News – Google to offer more click fraud protection, February 28, 2007
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