The AdSense program essentially allows website
publishers/owners to sign up with Google, enabling them to display
Google Ads on their sites. These publishers essentially act as "Google
Partners". The ads chosen by the Google bot for display are contextual
and the ads are related to the contents of the publisher's website,
more specifically that particular web page. The intent for Google is to
capitalize on the traffic to these (in practice) niche sites and
provide highly direct targeted traffic to the advertiser. A subset of
the users of the Google Partner website, click on those ads and Google
charges the advertiser per click. Google shares the booty with the
website publisher but the revenue sharing ratio falls under Google's
"undisclosed "criteria. While the exact amount can be reverse
engineered, the take home lesson is that the final amount is
proportional to Google's income from that click.

In theory it's a match made in heaven. The advertiser gets
good ROI through targeted traffic, the publisher gets to monetize the
traffic on their website and the web browser gets to buy that classic
CD that he couldn't live without. Not to mention that Google gets a wad
of cash. The gods of lucre smile beneficently on all.

Unfortunately, this happy façade hides blemishes. Severe
ones. For all Google AdSense Publishers are not created equal. While
(we daresay) many advertisers have a genuine website, providing a
valuable or interesting service to the world wide community, there is a
significant number of unscrupulous operators who are out there to prey
on the advertisers. These creatures of the night (and we will explain
later why we use that term), make websites for the express purpose of
milking AdSense revenue.

This category of fraudsters deserves a taxonomy of its own,
which we have developed (the other categories, click fraud and
impression fraud are even bigger problems in some industries). In the
interest of not being gender biased, we have alternated between
genders. We hope that our lighthearted tone does not mask the revulsion
that we feel towards these cheats.

Regressive Fraudster ( aka ClickMonkey ):


This guy is at the bottom of the food chain. Inspired by the
riches of his neighbor Ms. Jones, who has been making more than ten
grand a month in AdSense revenue, he plans a course of action. He
"invests" in a clickbot software( a simple google search reveals many)
and gets a list of anonymous proxy addresses. He then goes to register
a few domains and hires someone off of elance to create a "network of
sites"and " click bot " . He hopes that the interlinked sites will
provide each some "link popularity" and increase his page rank. If only
it were that simple! He then proceeds to use the $30 clickbot to start
clicking on the sites. Or he could click on them himself manually using
the proxies. We don't call him click monkey for nothing. He clicks and
clicks all the way to see his account getting banned. No banana for
this monkey! His calls of despair to google fall on deaf ears. This
person is likely to quit, but sometimes retries to get up the food
chain, the Wanna -Be-Fraudster.

Wanna -Be Fraudster ( aka BOZO):


This girl searches for high paying keywords like "home loan
equity" (current ad words rate: $45), or "web hosting" (ad words
costing $20). She correctly guesses that the AdSense payout is
proportional to what Google earns and therefore homes in on such words.
Her strategy is to make a page with contents that are appropriate for
the targeted high payout keyword. She moves ahead by clicking on the
link multiple times and recruits friends and family to give them a
click. Or ten!

Little does she know that Google has a 45 day inspection
period before she get her nubby little fingers on that cash. With
little to no knowledge of Click through Ratio , her greed couples with
her ignorance. Seeing her ill-gotten paper wealth multiplying in her
AdSense interface, she increases the clicks. Google however inspects
the CTR and throws a fit when they see a CTR exceeding 20%.
Furthermore, Google notices clicks mostly originating from a few IP
addresses and that essentially seals her fate (or rather docks her
earnings). That virtual cash is now just some deleted bytes on a hard
disk on Google's servers. She moans, nay she rail against the cruelty
of Google's policy. Some of these people wisely cease and desist such
activities, perhaps philosophizing about the NFL (no free lunch)
theorem. Others however see it as ground school for the next stage of
nefarious behavior. The Almost-There Fraudster.

Almost-There Fraudster ( aka SmartAlec ):

The archetypical ATF is supremely confident in his ability to
fool Google. Like the BOZO, he looks for high paying keywords and makes
appropriate website(s). Let's assume that he is in a third world
country, just to make the case more interesting. The case described
here is 1 year old news. He has read this article and taken the learnt
the subsequent lesson . He knows that that the clicks from the IP
Addresses of USA, UK & Canada are worth much more than the clicks
from the IP Addresses from the third world countries. He therefore
seeks to befriend people from such IP addresses by logging onto
messenger services.

This way, he gets the unique, unrelated IP clicks and (he
hopes) that Google is fooled. Remember "creature of the night". Well,
these people typically are more than a few time zone removed from the
US or Canada and therefore are up at odd hours whenever they feel that
their targets are most likely to be active. Plus they sometimes have to
deal with "inconveniences" like a day job.

AT fraud thinks that the clicks he obtained by trolling on
these sites is a job well done. He has got clicks from the IP address
of his choice .. An interesting factoid is that for AdSense, state also
matters. Clicks from Washington and New York State have the highest
payout for AdSense Fraud.

He has just one problem. His tragic flaw. While he worked so
hard to get the unique IP and high earnings, he is not able to maintain
a good CTR. He is likely to cross the limit of 30-40% of daily CTR and
10-20% of overall CTR. He ends up in the same purgatory as the BOZO.
The account is banned, and he gets the abominated email. Yes, the
"AdSense account closure". Almost-There is never good enough in this
nether world of AdSense gaming. Although it is possible that he would
have made a few thousand dollars before the punishment catches up to
his crime. Crime doesn't quite pay, now does it? Well, gentle reader,
unfortunately crime _is_ paying to the next category. Fraudster Maestro
( aka Satan's Spawn).

Fraudster Maestro ( aka Satan's Spawn):


This category of fraudsters is the most sophisticated and
rarely gets caught by google . She has researched the high paying
keywords as well as the CTR issues well. She has the smoothest lines in
the business of soliciting clicks. She can flirt online, and ask to
click the "link" for her picture. Or she may claim that clicking the
link causes the hungry child to be fed in Ethiopia . Let's follow a
typical "simple" chat session:

US User : hello


FM Fraud: what are your coordinates, handsome?


US User : NY , NY


FM Fraud: Oh! Wish I could be there. Can you help out a damsel in distress?


US User : sure


AT Fraud: I have made a site and want to see if all the links
on this page are working or not. Can you please click on the links and
see if the other page loads?


US User: Sure. Link?


FM Fraud:www.fraudstersite.com/high-value-keyword-page.html

US User : wait! Yes I checked all the links and they are working fine.


FM Fraud:


Thanks


US User : so can we talk about you now? ( Message Not Delivered
as the fraudster has blocked the User and is busy looking for a new
victim)


And she has lots of tricks up her repertoire besides chatting
up strangers. She knows about opt in lists, usenet and blogs where she
can snare the victims. Technically savvy and able to empathize with her
victims she doesn't let arrogance get in her way to success. Since she
is very mindful of the CTR issues she has a secret weapon. She has
optimized her site for some low paying keywords which are really not
competitive. She organically gets lots of traffic (but for things
unrelated to those competitive high paying keywords). In her website,
she may be giving away free greeting cards Or free screensavers. End
result is a fabulous impression count. The second step for her is to
makes unrelated pages on the same site and these pages pertain to the
high paying keywords. These keywords are used to attract the victims of
chat sessions. The process of getting the clicks is different but the
results due to CTR are very lucrative.

So, how does all this geek talk affect the PPC advertiser?
It's a $5 billion+ dollar market(for exact projections onto the future,
please check out our FAQ, and with a 20% + fraud rate, we are talking
about a 1 BILLION dollars fraud per year. Even Dr. Evil may be
impressed by such a number. It's greater than the cumulative GNP of a
few banana republics. And a fair chunk is ending up in the coffers of
these fraudsters. We know from anecdotal evidence, how people are
clearing up to 20 grand a month. All, courtesy of the hapless PPC
advertiser.

We want to emphasize that there are lots of authentic sites
serving genuine content. But unfortunately the existence of these
people (as discussed above) reduces the ROI of many advertisers to the
extent that they rethink their interest in PPC. In the word of one of
our organic SEO customers, with PPC "you always get a little less back
than you put in". It needn't be that way, if you watch carefully where
your ad words traffic is coming from and take some steps (such as
traffic analysis or at the very least a log file analysis) to protect
arm yourself. Look for patterns, some of which are obvious(such as
large traffic spikes from India). Unfortunately other patterns may
require a doctorate in artificial intelligence. Still the keyword is to
stay nimble. Convincing search engines to refund money is a lot tougher
and a lot more work than proactively watching for problem visitors and
taking steps that you deem appropriate. Before the situation goes out
of hand. Remember, an ounce of prevention…


Have we started a revolution?


We have been getting a lot of email from adsense publishers,
not all of it complimentary regarding our piece above. We will be
writing a piece from the point of view of the publisher and the issues
that they face. Meanwhile, send your comments to:

no-fraud-zone@sofizar.com

About the Author:
Aamir Farrukh is an experienced SEO professional working with a US Based company sofizar that is currently developing a click fraud solution applying Computer Science, Statistics, Economics and Behavioral Sciences.

Aamir Farrukh | Contributing Writer | 2005-08-08

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