Exclusive: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%
Monday, December 11th, 2006;
-- Andy Beal |
UPDATE: Ghosemajumder has clarified that my assumptions of less than 2% should be based on “invalid clicks”, which means the actual number is more likely just a fraction of one percent!
Back in November, Google’s business product manager for trust and safety, Shuman Ghosemajumder, declared that click fraud invalid clicks at Google was “on average is in the single digits, quarter over quarter.” I recently sat down with Ghosemajumder to discuss exactly how large of a problem click fraud is at Google. Whether intentional or not, he gave me access to information and shared data never before seen outside of the walls of the Googleplex.
For those of you short on patience or time, here’s the revealing information gleaned from my conversation with Ghosemajumder:
The click fraud rate - as discovered by most AdWords advertisers - is on average, less than 2% of all clicks through Google’s system.
So why did Google break its silence to MarketingPilgrim.com on this touchy subject? How did we manage to get the real click fraud number out of Ghosemajumder? Read on.
Proof Google’s Click Fraud is Less than 2%
Ghosemajumder sat down with me during the recent Search Engine Strategies conference and went thru a PowerPoint presentation that he confirmed was previously shown only to employees of the world’s largest search engine. He explains how Google has a four-stage process in identifying and filtering what it calls “invalid clicks”. Google’s definition of invalid clicks includes non-fraudulent clicks (such as a visitor genuinely clicking an AdWords ad more than once) and “click fraud” (those clicks that are obviously not legitimate).
Ghosemajumder shared with me the following diagram* which explains the makeup of Google’s AdWords clicks.
As you can see, out of all clicks on the AdWords network, Google is able to filter out the majority of invalid clicks before reports a served to the advertiser. You’ll notice a small amount of “click fraud” that falls outside of Google’s invalid clicks filters. That small amount represents the click fraud often discovered by advertisers, through the AdWords console, and click fraud detection companies.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The blue “invalid clicks” circle you see above, represents the “single digits” number Ghosemajumder previously shared in November. By deduction, we can already estimate the actual percentage of click fraud that escapes Google’s rigorous filters and detection systems is barely 1-2%. However, Ghosemajumder then proceeded to share another graphic that more clearly describes Google’s filters and appears to confirm that undetected click fraud is less than 2%.
Google’s Four Layers of Click Fraud Filters
Google utilizes four layers of click fraud detection. The first layer is purely automatic and is used to filter clicks from both “search” and AdSense partners (contextual ads). This filter is able to detect invalid clicks in real-time, with the goal of removing them before they ever show up in the AdWords console.
The second and third layers are aimed at filtering only AdSense clicks. The second layer is what Google calls its “flagging system” and is an automatic process to remove invalid clicks from the AdWords system. The third layer of filtering is a “manual review” process with more than two dozen Google employees manually reviewing and removing any suspicious clicks.
Google’s goal is to have the first three layers of filtering identify 100% of all invalid and fraudulent clicks. Those clicks that manage to escape Google’s filters are what causes many advertisers to raise concerns and has spawned the growth of many so-called click fraud detection companies. The fourth layer of click fraud detection falls to these advertisers and detection companies and is what Google calls “requested investigations”.
Here’s a representation* of the slide shared by Ghosemajumder.
Ghosemajumder confirmed that the blocks representing each layer of filtering were to scale and that the internal version of the graphic includes the actual percentages. After studying the graphic, I asked Ghosemajumder to comment on my perception of the numbers each block represented.
If Ghosemajumder had already confirmed the total amount of invalid clicks represented a number in the “single digits”, which I assumed would be around the 8-9% mark, the amount of user-detected “requested investigations” looked to be a number in the 1-2% mark, at most. While Ghosemajumder would not reveal the exact number, he did confirm that my estimate was on track, “if not less”. Wow! A user-detected click fraud rate of less than 2% is a world away from the 20% number given by some click fraud detection companies.
This is an amazing revelation and clearly shows that Google is getting tired of speculation and rumor filling the void left by the lack of transparency Google has with regards to their click fraud numbers. Ghosemajumder confirmed that internal discussion are ongoing as to whether Google should reveal exact numbers and put an end to the inflated estimates often quoted, when discussing click fraud. The biggest reason Google has for being hesitant about revealing the exact numbers, is fear that Yahoo and Microsoft will be able to leverage the numbers to deduce more information about AdWords.
Not All Click Fraud is Click Fraud
So how does Google explain the 15-30% click fraud numbers that have surfaced over the past several months? Ghosemajumder described how they monitor hundreds and hundreds of different signals in its efforts to detect click fraud. These identifiers are a strictly guarded secret with only the “click quality” teams having access to the information. Many advertisers - and click fraud detection companies - are looking at the wrong signals and often class valid clicks as fraudulent, or request refunds for clicks that Google had already discounted.
He gave a number of examples of how valid clicks could be misidentified. One included an advertiser seeing many clicks from the same IP address and surmising they must be fraudulent. Ghosemajumder described how many of these types of clicks are indeed valid, with so many people using corporate computers sharing the same IP, or ISPs assigning the same IP to more than one customer. Another common example of how click-fraud detection companies get it wrong is when counting reloads of an advertisers landing page. He described how a customer could click through to the landing page, view a product page, and then hit their “back” button, returning to the same landing page. Without correct tagging, Ghosemajumder said that one click and five page re-loads could easily be mislabeled as six clicks from the same visitor.
Google Becoming More Transparent
There is no doubt that we’ll see Google becoming more and more transparent in its efforts to share click fraud information. They have no reason to keep quiet for much longer, as Ghosemajumder explained. Google is already filtering more than 98% of invalid clicks, before they show-up in the AdWords console, their goal is to filter 100% and suggestions they are not doing enough are misguiding in their eyes.
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* The graphics shown above were not supplied by Google, but we believe they are accurate representations of what was shared with us.
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December 11th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
[…] Andy Beal over at MarketingPilgrim.com picked up an “inside” scoop during SES Chicago from Google’s Shuman Ghosemajumder (business product manager). Shuman sat down with Andy and revealed an “inside Google only” presentation about click fraud rate, showing that Google’s click fraud rate is less than 2%, much much less than the 20% that other reports claim. Andy’s full story is an excellent read. Digg | StumbleUpon | Del.icio.us | Newsvine | Furl | Reddit | Yahoo! MyWeb […]
December 11th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
[…] Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% Google utilizes four layers of click fraud detection. The first layer is purely automatic and is used to filter clicks from both “search” and AdSense partners (contextual ads). This filter is able to detect invalid clicks in real-time, with the goal of removing them before they ever show up in the AdWords console. […]
December 11th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Andy,
Great story, but here’s a question.
In Q3 of 2006 Google AdWords brought in $2.69 Billion in revenue, does this mean that there was somewhere around $50,000,000 in click fraud committed in Q3 2006 alone?
If so, that’s a whole lotta click fraud.
December 11th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
[…] Andy Beal had the good fortune to speak with Google’s business product manager for trust and safety, Shuman Ghosemajumder, and has an exclusive story on click fraud concerns at Google. Exclusive: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% presents information gleaned from a discussion Andy had while at the SES Chicago conference in which Ghosemajumder sat down and presented a Power Point presentation that “…he confirmed was previously shown only to employees of the world’s largest search engine.” Click fraud in Google terms: “Google’s definition of invalid clicks includes non-fraudulent clicks (such as a visitor genuinely clicking an AdWords ad more than once) and “click fraud†(those clicks that are obviously not legitimate).” […]
December 11th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
[…] Just in case you haven’t read it yet, I would urge you to check out Andy Beal’s recent post Exclusive: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%. […]
December 11th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Whoohoo. Andy promised and Andy delivered
Good stuff.
December 11th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Nice scoop Andy.
December 11th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Andy, did he share actual data with you, or just pretty graphs?
December 11th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Great story. It was only a matter of time until the Google “thinktank” come up with something. I can see this being very beneficial to smaller ppc networks who have a robust click fraud prevention mehtods as well.
December 11th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
[…] Adsense: Weniger als 2% betrügerische Klicks Gerade bin ich auf einen Artikel gestoßen , in dem der Autor eigenen Angaben nach Insider-Informationen von Google über Klickbetrug veröffentlicht. Demnach liegt der Anteil betrügerischer Klicks auf Adsense-Anzeigen bei unter zwei Prozent. […]
December 11th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
[…] The latest? Andy covers a conversation with Shuman Ghosemajumder. One of the guys (along with another Google employee Salar Kamangar) who I have already clearly pointed out in the past has made conflicting public statements regarding Google’s click fraud detection. […]
December 11th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
This is a better explanation of their process and why they fell confident in that process than Google has yet published, but it fails to address the core issue of whether Google actually knows an invalid click when they see it.
Click fraud technology was developed to influence the original banner networks that paid on a per-click basis. When DirectHit came along and based its rankings in part on click-throughs, the click fraud technology was adapted to manipulate DirectHit’s results. I’ve been told it is also being directed at Yahoo!’s click-through processing.
The more sophisticated click fraud networks use multiple servers in geographically diverse NOCs cycling through dozens of IP addresses that reside in multiple C-blocks. They used timed routines to simulate random but apparently natural surfing activity, whereby the “surfers” stay on pages for certain lengths of time.
Adapting this technology to influence a PPC network like the search engines operate would be child’s play because the technology predates what the search engines have done.
Until the search engines start outing these proxy networks, they have failed miserably to indicate that can even detect their existence.
I would, however, be be better satisfied if the search engines explained — in at least as high a level as this presentation — how they strive to monitor such proxy networks.
December 11th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
This is the case of “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy. On one hand, search engines want to appear as “good guys” to the advertisers and keep this issue from hurting them on Wall Street, but at the same time they don’t want to shoot themselves in the foot with doing too much.
I had a nice chat about this issue with Tom Cuthbert from ClickForensics a few weeks ago and he seemed to be very enthusiastic about coming up with some industrywide click fraud standards that everyone can accept.
Until Google and others continue to encourage services like AdSense for Parked Domains, there is little sense in talking about serious effort to combat click fraud.
December 11th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
They’ll never release the real stats (for obvious reasons). Maybe this is nothing, but 2% is an “acceptable fraud rate” for most etailers.
- Eric Itzkowitz
p.s. If this number’s changed please let me know.
December 11th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
[…] Segun Marketing Pilgrim la tase de fraude en los clicks de google es inferior al 2% gracias a un sistema de prevención de 4 capas. […]
December 11th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Thanks for all your feedback. Dazzlin, while he didn’t show me actual numbers, I quizzed him on what numbers each chart represented, and got the numbers that way.
Ghosemajumder has since clarified that it’s less than 2% of all invalid clicks, which means unidentified click fraud at Google is just a fraction of a percent!
December 11th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
Great scoop Andy!
My gut reminds me of the old Rumsfeld quote, “As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
We all know Google has a ton of really bright people who must spend a great deal of time on this problem since it direct threatens their business model. At the same time the “unknown unknowns” make me wonder.
December 11th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
These statistics are a complete misrepresentation of reality. The point is that 2% is how many of the invalid clicks are accounted as click fraud after merchants “request investigation,” - NOT how many fraudulent clicks are missed by Google, which is the real number anyone cares about. In other words, out of all merchants, 2% are caught by merchants checking for fraud - and I think it’s obvious that most merchants don’t bother doing their own fraud detection.
The reality is, we don’t, and Google doesn’t, know how many clicks are fraud and REMAIN UNDETECTED as fraud. Only a very careful accounting of every single click for some slice of traffic could turn up something close to valid data for that question, but it certainly would vary wildly depending on circumstance. Until we see any actual proof of a valid study, this is all fudging around with numbers in a spreadsheet.
December 11th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
Scott/Hank, you both make great points. Google in effect is only telling us the numbers for click fraud they know about. There’s must be lots of fraudulent activity that goes unnotived by them.
It’s certainly the first time they’ve revealed their own internal numbers - or at least a very strong hint.
December 11th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
I thought so .
December 11th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Well maybe i didnt read it that good … But is there any proof of all this?
Some google guy showing you some powerpoint presentation doesnt prove alot really.
December 11th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Tarta, IMHO it’s pretty solid evidence.
December 11th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
I think the article makes a false assumption that click fraud affects retailers, across the board at ‘less than 2%.’
First, some industries are more attractive to fraudsters. More specifically, completive industries where fraudsters stand to gain more than a pretty penny per click. However, in the areas where the price of a click is at a premium, I would stand to wager click fraud is more than 2%.
We experience no click fraud when promoting car forums, pictures or research. However, when we move into the more lucrative areas, such as automotive loans, we notice questionable clicks not only abound but thrive.
December 11th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
[…] I don’t know Any Beal, but I just read his “exclusive” report about Google’s click fraud being “less than 2%“. I think Andy Beal has been drinking too much Gool-Aideâ„¢. The “report” reads like a combination of informercial and Google Press Release. Think Happy Thoughts: Click Fraud is not a problem. […]
December 11th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Andy - What Andrey Milyan (comment #13) said about AdSense for Parked Domains is crucial to understanding why these numbers reported by yourself and Google are meaningless. Read this Google help page:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=50002
The last paragraph is particularly relevant: “Depending on the design of the site, a parked domain site will be classified as either a search site or a content site. That means your ads may show on parked domain sites if your campaign is opted in to the search or content networks.”
WTF? Google will charge its customers (the advertisers) paid clicks on the search network that originate from parked domains. A company that engages in this sort of practice is not going to appease its advertisers regarding click fraud with a few pretty pictures.
For your next exclusive, can you find out what percentage of PPC traffic comes from parked domains? Of that, what’s the split between search and content network? Now, that’d be worth something.
December 11th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Wow indeed. Great exclusive, Andy.
Proof? Is Google blowing smoke?
I really don’t see why they would. Other traffic sources have, and it has seriously impacted their credibility. Advertisers can easily cross-check this type of info against the tendency of clicks to convert.
If you’re working on real accounts, you can often see during the holiday time the conversion rates and cost per order numbers trending into very affordable territory. You aren’t going to see conversion rates of 5-10% on mediocre, relatively unoptimized ecommerce user experiences, if there is tons of fraud floating around out there. To me, having watched a large number of campaigns closely, Google’s account rings true. I won’t believe it all when it comes to the AdSense network, but then again, we all bid low on that inventory, don’t we?
December 11th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
its less than 2% because not only do they filter out fraudulent clicks, but valid ones as well. I was banned from adsense for supposedly clicking my own ads, but not one time did I click my own. I appealed the case and was denied.
December 11th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Andrew Goodman - With all due respect (I list your book on squidoo.com/adwords-tweaker), your comment “when it comes to the AdSense network, but then again, we all bid low on that inventory, don’t we?” is a little out of touch. Those of us that have been managing AdWords accounts since 2002 have seen the changes at Google that tilt the equation in Google’s favor. Now, I honestly think Google is trying to simplify the PPC advertising process, but they’ve inadvertently exacerbated the perception of click fraud.
What do I mean by this? Take AdWords Starter Edition for example. It hides the complexity of AdWords by not letting advertisers opt out of the search network or content network. It hides the notion of CPC by using the Budget Optimizer. Would you recommend that a brand new advertiser use contextual advertising? Would you recommend they use the B.O.? They can’t “bid low on that inventory” because they don’t even know it exists. Now, when they start tracking their results, they’re going to *think* they’re experiencing click fraud because they’re getting all this traffic that’s NOT search engine advertising.
Note, too, the the newly offered hosted business pages are tied to AdWords Starter Edition. Any business that uses that new product is locked into the content network and can’t set lower bids. Is this going to help with the perception of click fraud? Frankly, I don’t understand why more people haven’t dug into the details. Google should kill off Starter Edition. Yes, we *all* need to bid low on the content network - especially new advertisers.
Google, are you listening?
December 11th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Nice scoop, but I think the Google guys are trying to sell us the green coolaid again. I would bet that this info has been carefully “leaked” to cause just the right amount of distraction in time for a Click Fraud Christmas.
December 11th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Agree with Hank Aaron. This “exclusive google’s less than 2% click fraud proof” is just a nice google’s PR campaign.
If I know my wife meets 100 men a year and I [personally] find her cheating with two guys a year, it doesn’t mean her “cheating ratio” is only 2%! I most likely don’t know about the other 8-20 guys she sleeps with since most of the time I work out of town.
December 11th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
[…] Google Klickbetrug unter 2 Prozent!? Marketing Pilgrim hat einen sehr interessanten Beitrag zum Thema Klickbetrug. Dieser basiert auf Informationen von Google die Andy Beal von Shuman Ghosemajumder (Google-Mitarbeiter) auf der letzten SES erhalten hat. Mir ist allerdings nicht ganz klar warum Marketing Pilgrim zu der Schlussfolgerung kommt, das Klickbetrug weniger als 2 Prozent beträgt. Solch eine Schlussfolgerung scheint mir auf Basis der von den Werbetreibenden beanstandeten Klicks totaler Blödsinn zu sein!? […]
December 11th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
With all due respect, this does not constitute proof. And even if it is true, this does not mean individual accounts cannot experience substantial levels of click fraud. The Tuzhilin report backs this up.
I would also like to point out that there are ways to cleverly generate traffic that looks like any other traffic that arrives at a site. This can’t be reliably distinguished by algorithms, humans, or anything else. Such traffic is generated from botnets, viruses, and click rings.
I’m still unconvinced of these claims.
December 11th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
[…] Marketing Pilgrim brings us some exclusive Google information, which confirms my theory that click fraud numbers are generally being misrepresented. […]
December 11th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
I think Google is intentionally leaving this data vague. It is quite possible that the AGGRAGATE click fraud is only 2%, but the majority of click fraud occurs in the content network and on adsense sites.
Click fraud on Google.com is likely very low, since there is nothing to gain except frustrating a competitor - and few people make the effort to automatically click lots of ads. There is no incentive.
However, there is a huge incentive to falisify clicks on your own adsense website, and this is where the numbers lie.
I also speculate that google may be sharing data from North America only, as click fraud is generally higher in other areas.
December 11th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
[…] First of all, Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim.com proved once and for all that “Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%.†He had the exclusive story that included all the charts, inside man (Google’s business product manager for trust and safety, Ghosemajumder) and of course all the hand waving and statistics necessary to convince the average advertiser that they are not wasting their money on AdWords click fraud. […]
December 11th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
wow - i really hope it is 2 % and not more - Google should give automatic rebates of 5% of ad charge for invalid clicks to all its advertisers as a credit
December 12th, 2006 at 1:27 am
[…] Andy Beal sat down with Google business product manager for trust and safety Shuman Ghosemajumder and got to see some graphs that previously had not been seen by anyone not working for Google. He’s recreated the graphs at his blog, MarketingPilgrim, and explained the whole deal. It boils down to this: […]
December 12th, 2006 at 2:09 am
[…] I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to spot the flaw: […]
December 12th, 2006 at 2:14 am
[…] Shuman Ghosemajumder of Google discusses how the click fraud rate on Google is less then 2% and shows proof to backup his numbers. He also breaks down Google’s click fraud filtering system and how Google is becoming more transparent.read more | digg story […]
December 12th, 2006 at 3:41 am
[…] Vi siete mai domandati su che percentuali di click si posson assestare i click invalidi e in particolare i click fraudolenti in una campagna AdWords? L’han scoperto dalle parti di MarketingPilgrim, e il dato, sorprendente, sarebbe di 1-2% dei click totali. Molto lontano da un valore di 20% dichiarato da diverse società specializzate nella analisi dei click fraudolenti e invalidi sulle campagne ppc. Il dato è emerso all’ultimo SES di Chicago, grazie a una discussione privata con un ingegnere di Google, il quale ha anche spiegato la tecnologia e modalità con cui Google identifica i click fraudolenti. Per chi volesse addentrarsi nella materia, sul sito di MarketingPilgrim vi è una dettagliata spiegazione, in inglese, sul tema. […]
December 12th, 2006 at 6:19 am
[…] In dem Blog von Andy Beal versucht ein Google Mitarbeiter plausibel zu erklären, warum die Fraud-Rate bei Google unter 2% liegen soll. Dabei bezieht er sich auf die Unterteilung der sog. “ungültigen Klicks” in “betrügerische” und “nicht betrügerisch Klicks”. Außerdem erklärt er die Google’s Four Layers of Click Fraud Filters. […]
December 12th, 2006 at 7:45 am
[…] In an interview with Google business product manager, Shuman Ghosemajumder, finds that invalid clicks detected by Google were less than 2% of total.. […]
December 12th, 2006 at 8:52 am
[…] I talk to many business owners who are afraid to go with a pay per click advertising campaign because they’ve heard of so many issues with click fraud. The truth is, click fraud is not nearly as prevalent as it used to be. In fact, according to Google, it’s under 2%. That’s quite a discreptancy from other reports on click fraud which estimate click fraud between 15-30%. Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim recently interviewed Google’s business manager for trust and safety, specifically talking about click fraud.  It’s definitely worth reading if you’ve been considering using Google Adwords to advertise. The big discrepancy seems to come from what the click fraud detection companies identify as click fraud. Read his post to find out more. […]
December 12th, 2006 at 9:31 am
[…] I have to take back my 25% postulate about Google’s click fraud rate. This article talks about the click fraud rate for Google being in the 1-2% range. Which, in my opinion, is incredible. If that number is accurate, which I have no reason to believe that it is not, then Google is doing a great job in detecting click fraud. Still, 1% for Google is like $5 of their share price… […]
December 12th, 2006 at 9:42 am
[…] Shuman Ghosemajumder especialista en fraude de clicks laborando para Google dice que el fraude en clicks representa solo un 2% de todos los “click inválidos” que se perciben, lo que significa que la tasa general de fraude en clicks es tan solo 1%. Más información a través de Marketing Pilgrim. Archivado en: Google | Etiquetas: fraude, ppc. […]
December 12th, 2006 at 11:25 am
[…] Danny Sullivan this morning is talking about Google’s Click Fraud Rate; according to Google’s own figures their click fraud rate is less than 2% (read the article here) and could even be as low as 1 fraction of 1%. […]
December 12th, 2006 at 11:27 am
These figures are generally consistent with my own.
http://www.stareclips.com/?click-fraud-rate
December 12th, 2006 at 11:38 am
The percentage Ghosemajumder shared is interesting, but insufficient. Metrics like this require additional numbers such as sensitivity, specificity, false positive rate and false negative rate. These additional numbers give us a better picture of the measurement system and whether or not it is reliable.
If you’re ruler is not to scale, your measurements will be off the mark.
December 12th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
[…] Clickbetrug nur noch 2% aller ungültigen Clicks? - fragwürdig […]
December 12th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
[…] Marketing Pilgrim Wikipedia zu Klickbetrug Heise-Glossar zu Klickbetrug Klickbetrug und neuer Kommentarspam [7:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download podPressPlayerToLoad(’podPressPlayerSpace_360′, ‘mp3Player_360_0′, ‘300:30′, ‘http://www.goldmann.de/blog/podpress_trac/play/360/0/klickbetrug.mp3′ ); […]
December 12th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Thank you for the points, I must tell, I never received a bigger refund from Adwords. But I often hear and read that Adsense accounts are deleted because of POSSIBLE click fraud. That makes me trust more in Google Adwords.
December 12th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
That 2% is a blanket statement for a channel that is anything but uniform. 2% on low CPC? Sure, why not?
Now, look at the big boys. Mesothelioma. Structured settlements. $100/click. You think those are only 2%? There’s a LOT of money to be made off of those clicks.
If you believe that percentage is accurate for those terms, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
December 12th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
2%, wow… what about overture?
December 12th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
I would like to believe that this was true but just feel the number has to be higher then 2%.
December 12th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
[…] Marketing Pilgrim har mer detaljer. […]
December 13th, 2006 at 2:29 am
oh and what the f…’s a Gravatar?
December 13th, 2006 at 2:35 am
[…] Andy Beal’s recent article about click fraud is notable. Not just because he talked to Shuman Ghosemajumder, a Google program manager who works on click fraud. The more notable reason is that it led to Shuman posting on his blog to clarify and offer more info: Our top priority is to protect advertisers, so that means not disclosing any proprietary methods which would allow click fraud perpetrators to reverse-engineer our systems. However, there is still a great deal of information we can share. I and others on our team have spent literally hundreds of hours on communications and sharing such information outside Google. […]
December 13th, 2006 at 3:19 am
As noted previously, 2% of clicks, not $. If it is anywhere near 2% of clicks, the % of $ is likely well north of 10%, perhaps north of 20%.
December 13th, 2006 at 3:32 am
[…] Marketing Pilgrim Back in November, Google’s business product manager for trust and safety, Shuman Ghosemajumder, declared that click fraud invalid clicks at Google was “on average is in the single digits, quarter over quarter.†I recently sat down with Ghosemajumder to discuss exactly how large of a problem click fraud is at Google. Whether intentional or not, he gave me access to information and shared data never before seen outside of the walls of the Googleplex…link to original text Leave a Reply […]
December 13th, 2006 at 8:16 am
[…] Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% […]
December 13th, 2006 at 8:55 am
Kalena, a gravatar is the pretty picture you are supposed to be able to use next to your comment. Unfortunately, Gravatar.com is going thru a major restructure, so hardly anyone has one right now.
December 13th, 2006 at 9:16 am
[…] Exclusive: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% - Marketing Pilgrim […]
December 13th, 2006 at 10:08 am
I guess my biggest issue with a recent experience with Google on click fraud was that if their system reports to me that a % of my traffic has been flagged as invalid clicks, why not give me that data passed the campaign level only? It would be infinitely helpful to me to know what keywords or even just what ad groups had the invalid clicks so maybe I can implement some negative keywords or contain my bidding for those terms. When I asked for this level of info on my own account I got the “must protect our fraud filter methods” line. How would I reverse engineer anything from knowing what keywords you think are getting invalid clicks? That’s all I want to know, not how you obtained the data, but what the heck the data even is! So basically you’re told you got some crap traffic coming through but don’t you worry you’re pretty head we’ll credit it for you and the crap traffic continues every day from now on! Just give us the info on where the crap is coming from and I’ll do my job and flush the toilet. I really don’t see how allowing that simple info puts anything in jeopardy.
December 13th, 2006 at 10:33 am
While the graphs are pretty and some of the numbers are interesting, it still doesn’t go into much depth. I do appreciate the effort but obviously Google is still hiding the various techniques that they have in place to detect click fraud.
We can all argue until we’re old and grey about what methods Google is or is not using to detect this click fraud but I bet that they’ll never reach that goal of 100% detection. It’s a nice goal tho isn’t it?
G-Man
December 13th, 2006 at 10:58 am
[…] Despite what others claim, Google thinks their click fraud rate is quite low. This subject is unlikely to be taken at face value, because of the nature of click fraud, and how integral fraud-checking would be to the core of Adsense system. Google knows how important the perception of low click-fraud rates is, so they went into great detail explaing to Andy Beal how they’ve arrived at figure of 2%. That would mean they company is, as is being claimed, “98% Click fraud free.” Beal outlines the 4 levels of filtering that Google goes through: Google utilizes four layers of click fraud detection. The first layer is purely automatic and is used to filter clicks from both “search†and AdSense partners (contextual ads). This filter is able to detect invalid clicks in real-time, with the goal of removing them before they ever show up in the AdWords console. […]
December 13th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Great article Andy! This really helps to better understand how the fraud is classified and filtered. I am not surprised by the focus on clicks through Adsense but surprised that more layers are not in place for the search only campaigns as I still see some very questionable clicks coming that way.
December 13th, 2006 at 11:08 am
[…] MarketingPilgrim.com have an interesting article on click fraud, where Andy Beal managed to get an unprecedented look into the internal workings of the Google click fraud team and statistics never before seen outside of Google HQ. […]
December 13th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
[…] Klicks. Bin auf die weiteren Diskussionen hier im Blog oder auf Ayom sehr gespannt.
Trackback URL « « OM-Stammtisch am 25.11 im Berlin | Steigern Sie die Erträge IhrerWebsite! Werden Sie Partner renommierter Unternehmen wie z.B.: Bertelsmann, Conrad, Karstadt, Vodafone und vielen anderen, ohne Risiko und Kosten. noscript-Anzeigen […]
December 13th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
[…] Bericht lesen Posted by k3v Filed in Allgemein […]
December 13th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
[…] But clickfraud has gotten so much negative press that Google and people in the PPC industry are highly motivated to minimize its impact. Google in particular is going out of its way to assure us that the problem is well in hand. But truly, they cannot. Nobody knows how much clickfraud actually happens across multiple domains. The only real way to measure clickfraud is to examine individual accounts and compare them to IP address tracking, something that Google, for the most part, can’t do. This makes reports like the one just produced by Marketing Pilgrim doubly egregious. They indicate the strong desire among most PPC experts to put their heads in the sand and “let Google take care of it”. Donna Bogatin does a great job of dissecting the careful doublespeak that pervades this article. But there is an even more critical issue here: a disturbing inability to analyze and read charts in the online community. Ghosemajumder provides Marketing Pilgrim with a very pretty Venn Diagram which he uses to demonstrate that Google Clickfraud rates are less than 2%. […]
December 13th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
[…] Estimaciones de clicks fraudulentos (aquellos no hechos por usuarios sino por alguien o algún programa automático con el fin de aumentar los ingresos, algo diferente de los clicks inválidos, que incluyen también cuando pulsamos dos veces seguidas en un anuncio por error) las hay de todos los colores. Desde estudios que lo sitúan entre el 15 y 25%, hasta una reciente afirmación de responsables de Google (Market Pilgrim) que estiman que no llega al 2% los que sobrepasan sus sistemas de detección. […]
December 14th, 2006 at 10:42 am
We recently reviewed our adwords account and found a startling increase in content network ad clicks beginning in June 2006. Our ad campaign is highly specific and prior to June we received 10-15 clicks / month total. In the last 4 months the clicks were 60,160,200,350 just on the content network and were set to hit 450 in December. Also note that in the months above the google search clicks remained between 10-15 / month.
After analyzing site traffic and sales the most likely explanation is a recent surge in content network fraud, our estimates point to 90% click fraud.
We also don’t believe this is unique to our company, we have seen similar content network metrics on accounts belonging to 2 of our clients.
The bottom line in our case, turning off the content network completely results in a 90% reduction in ad spending with no change in leads or sales. In a higher volume ad campaign with the same metrics spending would stay the same and sales would increase by the amount of fraud.
We were shocked to see that google claims only 2% click fraud or “invalid clicksâ€. This is a no brainier, is it really in google’s best interest to stop this as they make 70-90 percent of the revenue generated from this fraud without having to commit the fraud themselves.
December 14th, 2006 at 6:40 pm
Frauded,
If this is the worst example of “fraud” we can dredge up, then things must be pretty rosy indeed.
I’m not sure that this really provides much proof of actual fraud, and even if some is getting through, it wouldn’t be hard to combat by lowering bids a bit. Fraud on the search network would be more serious.
400 clicks on the content network should only be costing you around $160 or less if you’re bidding correctly. Just because the traffic isn’t converting on those 400 clicks doesn’t mean it’s fraudulent. It may mean your ad is showing up somewhere it shouldn’t be - somewhere that isn’t very targeted.
Increases in clicks aren’t surprising, either. New publishers are always being added onto the network, or your position may jump up so that you actually appear on pages that would have shown your competitors’ ads previously. This may be a sign that they have lowered bids, so you should, too.
You haven’t offered much evidence of anything untoward, as disappointing as it may be that $160 worth of clicks didn’t convert to anything.
December 15th, 2006 at 4:16 am
[…] Interesting click fraud chorus starting up here. This thoughtful piece, The 12 Ways of Click Fraud by Mike O’Krongli, is a response to the Andy Beal/Shuman Ghosemajumder articles. See also Andrew Goodman’s piece. […]
December 15th, 2006 at 6:55 am
[…] Andy Beal, who’s considered to be one of the top minds of SEM and SEO, has recently reported that Google’s rate of Clickfraud is about 2%. Recently, he has a post challenging that the fraud rate could actually be higher, read the 12 ways of click fraud. For those in a career in Search Marketing, this is a much read co-authored by Mike O’Krongli, click fraud expert. […]
December 16th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
[…] Andy over at Marketing Pilgrim has blogged that Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%. […]
December 18th, 2006 at 9:58 am
[…] It’s no secret that you are irritated by the broad-brush proclamations of click fraud’s pervasiveness. We get this. No one likes to have their mouths bound by lawsuits and PR firms when their company’s good name is under attack. However, the current effort to downplay the click fraud problem with empty charts and statistics—empty because you fail to disclose the underlying data upon which your numbers are based—strikes us as spin, not customer-driven concern. […]
December 18th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
[…] in their eyes. Filed under Adsense, Make Money Blogging, Google | Permalink | Print| Email […]
December 18th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
[…] There’s been a good thread in the High Rankings forum this week about click fraud. It came about after this report that Google claims the figures for invalid clicks are about 2% overall. […]
December 20th, 2006 at 3:55 am
[…] Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim blog has a great recent article about Click Fraud quoting it at 2% on Google, but they like to call it “invalid clicks”, there’s another one for the jargon book. […]
December 20th, 2006 at 10:28 am
In 7 years of monitoring logfiles I can and have detected click fraud rates of 11%-30%.
These are just the non-US clicks that are identified.
Google has never been close to my figures, and when I do get reimbursed its a fraction of the submitted amount.
GaryTheScubaGuy
December 20th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
[…] And that’s a huge amount of money. But Google claim that the total amount of users affected by click fraud is less 2% and the credit goes to their Google’s 4-step filtering system. As online advertising industry is expected to be grow as huge as $29 billion in 2010 in US alone, I am not surprised if these scams will find ways to keep up with the rate too. And, Google have been getting more transparent sharing any informations about click fraud. As an advertiser, their continuous effort to protect their advertisers’ fund makes me feel safe with my multiple advertising campaigns. […]
December 20th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
[…] La percentuale totale di clicks fraudolenti, così scrive Andy Beal, dovrebbe attestarsi attorno all’8-9%. […]
December 21st, 2006 at 4:09 am
[…] Check out this article on an apparent Google report of actual click fraud figures on the markets leading search engine. http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/12/google-click-fraud-rate-two-pe rcent.html […]
December 21st, 2006 at 4:45 pm
My employer owns nearly thirty online businesses and uses Adwords, among others, to advertise. After receiving a frustratingly low reimbursement (less than 0.1%) from the Lane’s Gifts v. Google Class Action Suit, we are researching the details of the case. In hind sight of course we should have done this before deciding to admit ourselves into the suit, but there didn’t seem to be a compelling reason to opt out. That and the utter lack of information regarding the case were reasons enough to sign on as a class member.
Anyways, I had some questions about the conclusions drawn in article above. (1) Am I to suppose that the discovered levels of click fraud by advertisers are equivalent with the actual amount of click fraud that escapes the previous 3 tiers? That I may discover 2% of fraudulent clicks does not mean that I’ve discovered them all. (2) Does anyone have the ratio of allowable clicks to invalid/fraudulent clicks? For example, of 100 clicks on an advertisement how many are fraudulent (before any screening measures)? Google may in fact be rigorously trying to minimize fraudulent clicks, but my concern lies in terms of how many total clicks are fraudulent. Detecting 98% of fraud is a laudable achievement, but are they catching 98% of detected fraud, not total fraud?
I appreciate your comments to these questions. I would also ask that you point me in the direction of further resources to continue my research into the matter. Anyone else involved in the class action suit?
Take care and happy holidays.
December 22nd, 2006 at 12:45 am
Here I go again.
bg, if I may say so, you seem obsessed with click fraud.
Is there a marketing program lurking anywhere in there?
As for the class action suit. Isn’t that a red herring? I’ve been in these before, with other similar situations. LookSmart ripped us off, misled us, and we applied and received a small credit in the suit. That’s class action for you.
Meanwhile it absolutely does not mean that Google has no further obligation to you. Perhaps it means you have fewer options to actually sue them, but you weren’t going to do that anyway.
What you can do, is document any click fraud that may have occurred, if indeed it did. And then directly request a refund. That process hasn’t gone away just because there was a suit.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled marketing program. There is one, isn’t there?
December 22nd, 2006 at 2:43 am
bg,
Only the fraudsters know how much actual fraud there really is. The engines may be able to detect all the fraud, but may not, depending on how clever the fraudsters are in making it look like “legit” traffic. This isn’t that hard to do, when using botnets, spyware, or click farms.
As to the class action, I don’t know that there is much that can be done, since you didn’t opt out. There are some US Congressional inquiries into click fraud, but it’s not clear yet that anyone will see any money from them.
My advice to you is to reduce your ad spend in accordance with the fraud you suspect, and look into alternate, less fraud-prone options such as CPA or fixed fee advertising.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
[…] Even More UPDATEs: Ghosemajumder just contacted marketingpligrim and gave him a nice layout of how the fraud detecting works. Which is through four layers apparently. Check out this exclusive interview it’s a good read. […]
December 28th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
El fraude en los clicks de Adsense es menor del 2%
Por parte de Marketing Pilgrim leo algunas conclusiones y pruebas (que me tomaré con cierta distancia) de que el fraude en los clicks, o como Google quiere llamarlos ‘clicks invalidos’, suponen menos del 2%.
…
January 1st, 2007 at 9:36 am
[…] Andy Beal’s recent article about click fraud is notable. Not just because he talked to Shuman Ghosemajumder, a Google program manager who works on click fraud. The more notable reason is that it led to Shuman posting on his blog to clarify and offer more info: Our top priority is to protect advertisers, so that means not disclosing any proprietary methods which would allow click fraud perpetrators to reverse-engineer our systems. However, there is still a great deal of information we can share. I and others on our team have spent literally hundreds of hours on communications and sharing such information outside Google. […]
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:27 am
I recently was banned from google adwords due to “click fraud”. I would like to know if there was a way to know if some of my users were really clicking on my google ads to give me a hand or if google has a way of detecting how many people click and then go back to my site. Any news on what kind of tech google uses to find this out?
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:55 am
Does this 2% only include Adwords advertisers that noticed invalid clicks? Beal’s statement seems ambiguous, “The click fraud rate - as discovered by most AdWords advertisers - is on average, less than 2% of all clicks through Google’s system.” If that’s the case what about the other advertisers that didn’t notice these “invalid clicksâ€?
January 2nd, 2007 at 6:42 pm
[…] “What if I put up a PPC ad and my competitor clicks on it 100 times every day?” That’s a perfectly logical question, but think about it. If Google and the other search engines couldn’t solve that problem, not many people would pay them for PPC ads, right? While click fraud is very real, it shouldn’t keep you away from using PPC. Chances are that once in a while a competitor might click on your ad, but if they click on it ten times in one minute Google is only going to charge you for the first click. They spend millions trying to combat click fraud because the cost of fighting it is much less than the revenue they stand to lose if they get a bad name by not doing enough to prevent it. The latest research seems to point to click fraud on Google being less than 2%. […]
January 3rd, 2007 at 2:05 am
[…] I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to spot the flaw: […]
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:01 pm
The question is, if a competitor (or some other fraudster) can arrange for an ad to be clicked on 100 times every day from computers that it can’t be associated with, can the engines or networks solve that problem? If the only thing that differentiates those 100 clicks from any other 100 clicks received on that ad is the intent to do fraud, can the engines and networks detect that?
Whenever this issue is raised, it’s met with silence (except from individuals such as Bruce Schneier and Lauren Weinstein from the Internet technical community).
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:10 pm
There ARE ways that aren’t exactly perfect, but can often be quite accurate. Google is silent about the method they use, for good reason. Imagine, for instance, that Google had an alarm system for their building. And those concerned about Google’s building being secure might ask “Is there a passcode for the alarm?”
Google’s response might be, “Yes.”
Then someone could ask, “Is the passcode at least 4 digits long?”
The answer, “yes.”
“Is it at least 6 digits long?”
“No.”
“So it’s just 4 digits? How secure is that?”
“No, it’s not 4 digits.”
“Aha, so it’s 5 digits!”
“Correct.”
“But, is it something easy? Like 12345? That would be terrible if it was!”
“No, it’s not easy.”
“Are there 5 unique digits in the number, or is there a repeated digit? I would imagine one is more secure than another, right?”
“There are 4 unique digits, with one repeated. There are only 30,240 possible combinations of 5 digits if all of them are unique. Many more number combinations are allowed if a digit can be repeated.”
“Ah, that’s good… that’s good. So, it’s pretty secure, right?”
“Very.”
“Can the control panel be seen through a window?”
“Yes. There is a south-facing window where the control panel can be seen.”
“Couldn’t someone point a camera into the window to see what code is being punched into it?”
“When the code is being entered, our staff is trained to block the view from the south-facing window.”
“Ah, good… good. Very secure.”
This hypothetical discussion of security, and making sure the building is secured well, only makes things less secure. With this information, someone is now armed with knowledge as to how to thwart the security. For instance, someone could look through the south-facing window to see which numbers on the keypad appear more worn or used than others, then knowing that one digit is repeated and that the remaining digits are unique, one could come up with a short list of possibilities rather than being faced with the much larger set of possibilities.
So, the more information Google reveals about HOW it DETECTS fraud, the more information they would give to would-be-fraudsters to circumvent their detection.
In any case, I would like to illustrate a method that Google COULD be using. By analyzing the user behavior on a controlled website, Google would be able to formulate statistics that represent normal non-fraudulent user behavior. For instance, they might see that a 90% of typical users spend about 19.3 seconds on a website before leaving the page, that 8% of typical users spend 11.2 seconds on a website before clicking an advertisement, and that 2% of typical users spend 3.9 seconds on a website before clicking on one of the ads. By analyzing this data using various barometers, Google could then detect anomalies in activity. Maybe there seems to be an unusually high number of users in a group that are only spending 1.2 seconds before clicking on one of the ads. These anomalies could be investigated further to determine if there are other patterns of behavior that would suggest fraud. By catching these, stopping the fraudsters, but not revealing their secret formulas, would-be-fraudsters would be stuck trying to GUESS (and mostly failing) what this formula is, or how to appear as a fully legitimate user and not a statistical anomaly.
http://www.stareclips.com/?click-fraud
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:53 pm
The method you suggest has several holes in it, such as:
Since the site is controlled, it is not typical of any behavior except those individuals who participated in the study.
It is trivial for fraudsters to manufacture traffic that looks like non-fraudulent traffic. They can use human clickers, or capture keystrokes from infected machines and replay them (possibly on other infected machines).
What it comes down to is that (except for some very basic attempts to defraud, such as repeated clicks from a small number of machines on a small number of ads), what separates fraudulent traffic from non-fraudulent traffic is intent, not pattern. When (if) the engines and networks are able to determine the intent of a click, they will have solved a far more difficult problem than click fraud. Aside from the security professionals I have mentioned, Dr. Tuzhilin has commented on the impossibility of solving this problem.
January 11th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
[…] Original Post : http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/12/google-click-fraud-rate-two-pe rcent.html « Previous Article | | Related Articles: […]
January 19th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
This is a fact of life.
As your product becomes more valuable - theft whether it is shoplifting, counterfiting or click fraud becomes always more of an issue.
The classic neverending question is always ” Do I as an innovator , seller or manufacturer concern myself with this problem and focus on it or do I focus my efforts on more major areas as profitiability or product research ?”
January 19th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
VCM,
I guess it depends on how much fraud is actually out there. Or how
much expenditure can’t simply be written off as the cost of doing
business.
January 26th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
That’s a lie, that’s a BIG LIE !!! Click fraud on Google is WAY higher than 2%
January 29th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
[…] Shuman posted on Google’s fight against click fraud after giving Andy Beal over at http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/ an exclusive interview during an SES conference, where a two percent click fraud percentage was seemingly inferred. The error made by Beal (www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/12/google-click-fraud-rate-two-percent. html) has since being corrected. […]
February 2nd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
[…] December 11, 2006: Mr. Beal had a little talk with Mr.Ghosemajumder, and here is what he wrote in his article; […]
February 3rd, 2007 at 8:49 pm
[…] Shuman posted on Google’s fight against click fraud after giving Andy Beal over at http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/ an exclusive interview during an SES conference, where a two percent click fraud percentage was seemingly inferred. The error made by Beal (www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/12/google-click-fraud-rate-two-percent. html) has since being corrected. […]
February 8th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
[…] http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/12/google-click-fraud-rate-two-pe rcent.html […]
February 9th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Google telling us that they have a 2% click fraud rate is like the mongoose telling us how many eggs it stole from the hen house (”only 2%, I swear…to the best of my knowledge, I didn’t not take any more eggs than that.”).
Hey mongoose, what’s that behind your back…?
February 13th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
[…] Source: marketingpilgrim.com NowPublic […]
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:28 am
[…] Exclusive: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% by Marketing Pilgrim […]
February 27th, 2007 at 11:02 am
[…] La fraude au clic a été dernièrement le « sujet chaud » circulant dans le monde du marketing Web. Elle menace particulièrement les liens sponsorisés. Alors que certains, dont Click Forensics, ont estimé cette fraude à près de 15% en 2006, Google tente de rassurer ses utilisateurs Adwords en évaluant ce taux à moins de 2%. Lors de la récente conférence « Search Engine Strategies », un responsable a expliqué que Google utilise un processus à quatre étapes, lequel identifie et filtre ce qu’ils appellent des « clics invalides ». […]
March 7th, 2007 at 6:10 am
It is always amazing that even with modern technology it is a question of how you wish to portay the numbers or stats to your advantage or end conclusion.
Two slogans or historic sayings come to mind:
1) There are numbers and there are statistics
2)Figures don’t lie but liars figger.
March 9th, 2007 at 5:01 am
You have to hit the ball on the fairway.
It is amazing how off the mark these experts and pros can be.
March 9th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Are you for REAL Andy- What a Load of BULL***T!!!
As if a representative of Google would be giving you the correct figure for which they have are stealing from their client’s worldwide.
If you are stupid enough to believe this story, then all I can say is you deserve to be RIPPED OFF !!
Next thing we will hear from Google is that they are going to give all the fraudulant money created by their own click fraud to charity - All FIVE HUNDERD MILLION DOLLARS FROM ONE QUARTER ALONE - What a joke,
Truthfully Andy - WAKE UP TO YOURSELF
March 9th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Are you for REAL Andy - What a Load of BULL***T!!!
As if a representative of Google would be giving you the correct figure for which they have are stealing from their client’s worldwide.
If you are stupid enough to believe this story, then all I can say is you deserve to be RIPPED OFF !!
Next thing we will hear from Google is that they are going to give all the fraudulant money created by their own click fraud to charity - All FIVE HUNDERD MILLION DOLLARS FROM ONE QUARTER ALONE - What a joke,
Truthfully Andy - WAKE UP TO YOURSELF
March 10th, 2007 at 1:39 am
Hi
The messages are very useful. Keep it up.
Googlers are watching our site using which technique.Ill show my google analytics a/c. Where my site is popular in world wide which has unique users of 50% and New also in 50%
http://arrif.blogspot.com
March 20th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
[…] Gaining New Advertisers There are still many companies who do not and will not trust CPC advertising, or Google’s click fraud protection, due to the huge discrepancies in reported click fraud which runs anywhere from 2% to 20%, and especially when just a year ago Google was involved in a class action lawsuit where they agreed to pay $90M settlement. […]
April 21st, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I think this number is true. 2% invalid clicks are real for now days.
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:33 pm
[…] Google also is playing a good PR game in the blogosphere, as evidenced by today’s marketing pitch for Google’s “rigorous filters” against click fraud, presented courtesy of the (aptly named) “Marketing Pilgrim” blog. […]
May 24th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
[…] After writing this, but before posting it, I found this article that will probably be of interest. Share and Enjoy eJabs! If you’re new here, or you just enjoy the content, you may want to subscribe to my Email Alerts or RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Email This Post […]
June 20th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
that’s good for advertiser, then ads publishers get benefit.