Experts, as reported in Inc.com, say that 20% to 35% of all clicks are bogus.

Okay, so lets look at it from the advertisers point of view, more so if you are a small business (ie: your marketing budget is stretched), paying for these bogus click-throughs.

I like Inc.com’s view of click fraud:

It’s as if thousands of people are charging you for window-shopping

Click Fraud is a real growing problem that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later by the folks over at Google … right or wrong: their reputation is at stake!

I’ve even heard stories of advertisers being too scared to complain for fear of being blacklisted by the search giant. I hope this is not true.

Further info about click fraud that might be of interest …

A quick primer on What is Click Fraud from About.com

In July, C/Net News.com wrote about it in Exposing Click Fraud.

Popular online forum, SitePoint, has an on-going thread about being banned from AdSense - AdSense Banned Me Today. Another post at the forum - Invalid Clicks on Google Adsense - Help! goes further into fears some publishers have.

feedbuzzard even points me to a WebProNews article on the issue.

I even wrote a small post about it back in June.

There has also been a flourishing industry developing over click fraud and services helping to combat it … ClickDefense.com, ClickDetective, ValidClick.com … to name but a few.

Can you see a trend in all of this?

August 24th, 2005
http://www.homeofficevoice.com/2005/08/24/click-fraud-is-growing/