© 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
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http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com
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