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April 13, 2006
Google settlement or not, click fraud won't go away
With a planned $90 million settlement, Google could soon dispense with a class-action lawsuit involving so-called click fraud.
But while that may be good for Google, it doesn't mean the problem of bogus clicks on online ads--which advertisers have to pay for--is going to disappear anytime soon. A lack of clear standards for determining what is a fraudulent click, or some sort of third-party clearinghouse to monitor the situation, means some advertisers believe they can't do much more than head to the courts when they think there's a problem.
Certainly, Google and Yahoo, which run the two largest pay-per-click advertising networks, say they're addressing the problem. But some click auditing companies still claim that between 20 percent and 35 percent of clicks on Net advertisements are fraudulent.
Posted by dj at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)
In Game of Click and Mouse, Advertisers Come Up Empty
Radiator.com got a jolt this month from the firm it hired to audit the nearly $40,000 worth of sponsored links it buys every month from Google and Yahoo.
It appears that many of the clicks on the Web site's search-engine ads were made not by potential customers but instead by automated programs or people trying to drive up Radiator's advertising bill. Like other advertisers that place links on search engines, Radiator.com pays only when people click on the links.
After analyzing where and when each click came from, auditing firm ClickFacts Inc. estimated that 35 percent of the referrals that Radiator paid Google for stemmed from bogus traffic. Likewise, 17 percent of the leads that came from Yahoo search results were illegitimate.
Posted by dj at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)
