Comments on: Google Fights Back at Inflated Click-Fraud Studies http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/08/google-fights-back-at-inflated-click-fraud-studies.html Internet Marketing News Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:00:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Andrey Milyan http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/08/google-fights-back-at-inflated-click-fraud-studies.html/comment-page-1#comment-626 Andrey Milyan Wed, 09 Aug 2006 02:44:00 +0000 http://localhost:8888/wp_import/2006/08/google-fights-back-at-inflated-click-fraud-studies.htm#comment-626 Correction, Andy. Google is not attacking the companies releasing click fraud studies. It is attacking the click fraud monitoring services. Instead of concentrating on how to deal with the click fraud problem, Google is attacking the sources suggesting that there is a problem. In the study Google decides to pick and choose the problems of the three services by attributing the problems of one to the rest. For example, page reload issue was reported only in one service while it was attributed to all three. As far as the back button issue goes, give me a break. Most of these services need at least 5-7 clicks to report the visitor as fraudulent. Even if some of them do make a mistake of counting back button visits as another click, how many times do you need to hit "back" and "forward" buttons in order to trigger the click fraud warning? Now let's look at the issue of confusing the ad networks. Each of these services works the same way: it generates a unique tracking code for each campaign which user then pastes into his pay-per-click campaign. Because each tracking URL is unique, the only way to "mix up" the ad networks is to have the same URL for all your campaigns on all search engines. So this issue results from users making a mistake of using the same URL for multiple ad networks and has nothing to do with the service itself. These services are not perfect but neither is AdWords, which lacked any kind of fraudulent click reporting up until now. And even now, the definition of "invalid click" is not very clear. Third party monitoring services need to exist in order to keep Google honest, even if they are not always 100% accurate. Correction, Andy. Google is not attacking the companies releasing click fraud studies. It is attacking the click fraud monitoring services. Instead of concentrating on how to deal with the click fraud problem, Google is attacking the sources suggesting that there is a problem.

In the study Google decides to pick and choose the problems of the three services by attributing the problems of one to the rest. For example, page reload issue was reported only in one service while it was attributed to all three.

As far as the back button issue goes, give me a break. Most of these services need at least 5-7 clicks to report the visitor as fraudulent. Even if some of them do make a mistake of counting back button visits as another click, how many times do you need to hit “back” and “forward” buttons in order to trigger the click fraud warning?

Now let’s look at the issue of confusing the ad networks. Each of these services works the same way: it generates a unique tracking code for each campaign which user then pastes into his pay-per-click campaign. Because each tracking URL is unique, the only way to “mix up” the ad networks is to have the same URL for all your campaigns on all search engines. So this issue results from users making a mistake of using the same URL for multiple ad networks and has nothing to do with the service itself.

These services are not perfect but neither is AdWords, which lacked any kind of fraudulent click reporting up until now. And even now, the definition of “invalid click” is not very clear.

Third party monitoring services need to exist in order to keep Google honest, even if they are not always 100% accurate.

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