Exclusive: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%

Monday, December 11th, 2006 by Andy Beal

Exclusive: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%

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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160 comments on “Exclusive: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%”

SoloSEO Blog » Google Insider: Google’s click fraud rate less than 2% Says:

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 [...]
Google Says Click Fraud Less than 2% Says:

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. [...]
Loren Baker Says:

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.
Cre8pc on Usability & Holistic SEO The Big Bad Click Fraud Wolf is not in Google’s Bed » Says:

December 11th, 2006 at 12:27 pm

[...] Andy Beal had the good fortune to speak with Googleâ€™s business product manager for trust and safety, Shuman Ghosemajumder, and has an exclusive story on click fraud concerns at Google. Exclusive: Googleâ€™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 worldâ€™s largest search engine.” Click fraud in Google terms: “Googleâ€™s definition of invalid clicks includes non-fraudulent clicks (such as a visitor genuinely clicking an AdWords ad more than once) and â€œclick fraudâ€ (those clicks that are obviously not legitimate).” [...]
Caydel’s SEO Blog » Google Confirms a 2% Click Fraud Rate Says:

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: Googleâ€™s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%. [...]
Andrey Milyan Says:

December 11th, 2006 at 12:44 pm

Whoohoo. Andy promised and Andy delivered Good stuff.
Jim Messenger Says:

December 11th, 2006 at 12:44 pm

Nice scoop Andy.
DazzlinDonna Says:

December 11th, 2006 at 1:05 pm

Andy, did he share actual data with you, or just pretty graphs?
Simon Chernin Says:

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.
» Adsense: Weniger als 2% betrÃ¼gerische Klicks Says:

December 11th, 2006 at 1:27 pm

[...] Adsense: Weniger als 2% betrÃ¼gerische Klicks Gerade bin ich auf einen Artikel gestoÃŸen , in dem der Autor eigenen Angaben nach Insider-Informationen von Google Ã¼ber Klickbetrug verÃ¶ffentlicht. Demnach liegt der Anteil betrÃ¼gerischer Klicks auf Adsense-Anzeigen bei unter zwei Prozent. [...]
Google Click Fraud Less than 2%? BULL at AGoToGuy’s Marketing Blog Says:

December 11th, 2006 at 1:30 pm

[...] The latest?Â Andy covers a conversation with Shuman Ghosemajumder.Â 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. [...]
Michael Martinez Says:

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.
Andrey Milyan Says:

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.
SpeedyPin Says:

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.
» La tasa de clicks fraudulentos en google es inferior al 2%:: Blog de Marketing y Publicidad en EspaÃ±ol:: netadblog Says:

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 prevenciÃ³n de 4 capas. [...]
Andy Beal Says:

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!
Scott Woodard Says:

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.
Hank Aaron Says:

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.
Andy Beal Says:

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.
Shaun Stevens Says:

December 11th, 2006 at 3:41 pm

I thought so .
tarta Says:

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.
Andy Beal Says:

December 11th, 2006 at 3:57 pm

Tarta, IMHO it’s pretty solid evidence.
Car Says:

December 11th, 2006 at 4:02 pm

I think the article makes a false assumption that click fraud affects retailers, across the board at â€˜less than 2%.â€™

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.
johnon.com - John Andrews - » Andy Beal and Google: Think Happy Thoughts Says:

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 muchÂ Gool-Aideâ„¢. The “report” reads like a combination of informercial andÂ Google Press Release. Think Happy Thoughts: Click Fraud is not a problem. [...]
Richard Ball Says:

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.
Andrew Goodman Says:

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?
OBCENEIKON Says:

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.
Richard Ball Says:

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, donâ€™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?
Kalena Jordan Says:

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.
Rene Says:

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.
» Google Klickbetrug unter 2 Prozent!? Says:

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 betrÃ¤gt. Solch eine Schlussfolgerung scheint mir auf Basis der von den Werbetreibenden beanstandeten Klicks totaler BlÃ¶dsinn zu sein!? [...]
CPCcurmudgeon Says:

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.
» Google Click Fraud Rate is less than 2% (DomainEditorial.com) Says:

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. [...]
cvos Says:

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.
The Dollar Factory Blog » Around the web on December 11th Says:

December 11th, 2006 at 10:50 pm

[...] First of all, Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim.com proved once and for all that â€œGoogleâ€™s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%.â€ He had the exclusive story that included all the charts, inside man (Googleâ€™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. [...]
ReadyCompanies Says:

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
» Google’s Effective Click Fraud Rate: Less Than 2% » InsideGoogle » part of the Blog News Channel Says:

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: [...]
Click Fraud Spin Says:

December 12th, 2006 at 2:09 am

[...] I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to spot the flaw: [...]
Prime News Blog » Blog Archive » Report: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% Says:

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 [...]
AdWords: i click fraudolenti son il 2% dei click! » Posizionamento Google | SEO e Posizionamento motori di ricerca Says:

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 societÃ specializzate nella analisi dei click fraudolenti e invalidi sulle campagne ppc. Il dato Ã¨ emerso all’ultimo SES di Chicago, grazie a una discussione privata con un ingegnere di Google, il quale ha anche spiegato la tecnologia e modalitÃ con cui Google identifica i click fraudolenti. Per chi volesse addentrarsi nella materia, sul sito di MarketingPilgrim vi Ã¨ una dettagliata spiegazione, in inglese, sul tema. [...]
360Search.net » Marketing Pilgrim: Google Click-Fraud unter 2% Says:

December 12th, 2006 at 6:19 am

[...] In dem Blog von Andy Beal versucht ein Google Mitarbeiter plausibel zu erklÃ¤ren, warum die Fraud-Rate bei Google unter 2% liegen soll. Dabei bezieht er sich auf die Unterteilung der sog. “ungÃ¼ltigen Klicks” in “betrÃ¼gerische” und “nicht betrÃ¼gerisch Klicks”. AuÃŸerdem erklÃ¤rt er die Googleâ€™s Four Layers of Click Fraud Filters. [...]
Platinax Small Business News » Google says clickfraud less than 2% Says:

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.. [...]
Should Click Fraud Keep You from Advertising with Google Adwords? Says:

December 12th, 2006 at 8:52 am

[...] I talk to many business owners who are afraid to go with a pay per click advertisingÂ 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,Â specifically talking about click fraud.Â Â 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. [...]
Click-fraud re-hash at The CanningBranch Says:

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… [...]
Google - Indice de fraude de clicks bajo | OptimizacionCR Says:

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 invÃ¡lidos” que se perciben, lo que significa que la tasa general de fraude en clicks es tan solo 1%. MÃ¡s informaciÃ³n a travÃ©s de Marketing Pilgrim. Archivado en: Google | Etiquetas: fraude, ppc. [...]
SearchDaddy Blog » Blog Archive » Google’s Click Fraud Rate Says:

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%. [...]
umopapisdn Says:

December 12th, 2006 at 11:27 am

These figures are generally consistent with my own.

http://www.stareclips.com/?click-fraud-rate
Pete Abilla Says:

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.
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December 12th, 2006 at 2:05 pm

[...] Clickbetrug nur noch 2% aller ungültigen Clicks? – fragwürdig [...]
» Klickbetrug und neuer Spam Says:

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′ ); [...]
Immobilienmakler Hamburg Says:

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.
Curtis Says:

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.
Zoltan Says:

December 12th, 2006 at 4:16 pm

2%, wow… what about overture?
Brett Smith Says:

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%.
Webbsnack Google: “Klickfusket Ã¤r endast 2%” « Says:

December 12th, 2006 at 11:54 pm

[...] Marketing Pilgrim har mer detaljer. [...]
Kalena Jordan Says:

December 13th, 2006 at 2:29 am

oh and what the f…’s a Gravatar?
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » Andy Beal and Shuman on click fraud Says:

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. [...]
john demayo Says:

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%.
Ideal Observer’s Web Analytics News Collector » Blog Archiv » Googleâ€™s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% Says:

December 13th, 2006 at 3:32 am

[...] Marketing Pilgrim Back in November, Googleâ€™s business product manager for trust and safety, Shuman Ghosemajumder, declared that click fraud invalid clicks at Google was â€œon average is in the single digits, quarter over quarter.â€ 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 [...]
Max Design - standards based web design, development and training » Some links for light reading (14/12/06) Says:

December 13th, 2006 at 8:16 am

[...] Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% [...]
Andy Beal Says:

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.
Yes By’e… | I will succeed… Says:

December 13th, 2006 at 9:16 am

[...] Exclusive: Googleâ€™s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% – Marketing Pilgrim [...]
Terry Howard Says:

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.
G-Man Says:

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
Google Claims That Click Fraud Is Very Low Says:

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 â€œsearchâ€ 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. [...]
Mark B Says:

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.
Google AdWords click fraud under 2%? Says:

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. [...]
» Google’s Ã„usserung zu Klickbetrug | Affiliate World | Affiliate Marketing, Website Vermarktung & SEO Says:

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 [...]
Get Your Own Style » Blog Archive » Google Ã¤ussert sich zu Click Frauds Says:

December 13th, 2006 at 4:02 pm

[...] Bericht lesen Posted by k3v Filed in Allgemein [...]
Search Engine Optimization Analysis and Research » Blog Archive » ClickFraud, Google, and the hopeful Pilgrim Says:

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%. [...]
Tecnologia » Blog Archive » El fraude en los clicks de Google Says:

December 13th, 2006 at 8:06 pm

[...] Estimaciones de clicks fraudulentos (aquellos no hechos por usuarios sino por alguien o algÃºn programa automÃ¡tico con el fin de aumentar los ingresos, algo diferente de los clicks invÃ¡lidos, que incluyen tambiÃ©n cuando pulsamos dos veces seguidas en un anuncio por error) las hay de todos los colores. Desde estudios que lo sitÃºan entre el 15 y 25%, hasta una reciente afirmaciÃ³n de responsables de Google (Market Pilgrim) que estiman que no llega al 2% los que sobrepasan sus sistemas de detecciÃ³n. [...]
Frauded Says:

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 donâ€™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 â€œinvalid clicksâ€. This is a no brainier, is it really in googleâ€™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.
Andrew Goodman Says:

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.
Merjis blog » Blog Archive » Twelve ways, plus a bit, less a few. Says:

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 Oâ€™Krongli, is a response to the Andy Beal/Shuman Ghosemajumder articles. See also Andrew Goodman’s piece. [...]
Web Strategy by Jeremiah » A Dozen Click Fraud Methods Says:

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 Oâ€™Krongli, click fraud expert. [...]
Peter Adams Weblog » Blog Archive » Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%? Or Is it? Says:

December 16th, 2006 at 3:18 pm

[...] Andy over at Marketing Pilgrim has blogged that Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%. [...]
The Sausage Manifesto » Blog Archive » 11. Put Your Data Where Your PR Is Says:

December 18th, 2006 at 9:58 am

[...] Itâ€™s no secret that you are irritated by the broad-brush proclamations of click fraudâ€™s pervasiveness. We get this. No one likes to have their mouths bound by lawsuits and PR firms when their companyâ€™s good name is under attack. However, the current effort to downplay the click fraud problem with empty charts and statisticsâ€”empty because you fail to disclose the underlying data upon which your numbers are basedâ€”strikes us as spin, not customer-driven concern. [...]
Google AdSense Click Fraud Rate More Like Fraction of 1% | Andy Wibbels Says:

December 18th, 2006 at 8:16 pm

[...] in their eyes. Filed under Adsense, Make Money Blogging, Google | Permalink | Print| Email [...]
Semfire Search Engine Marketing » Blog Archive » Is Click Fraud a big problem? Says:

December 18th, 2006 at 11:19 pm

[...] Thereâ€™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. [...]
Search Engine Bootcamp » Additional info post Search Engine Bootcamp Says:

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. [...]
Gary Beal Says:

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
Click fraud is a threat - NetResults Says:

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 Googleâ€™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. [...]
Click Fraud sotto al 2% » Controrete - Search Engine Marketing Blog » Blog Archive Says:

December 20th, 2006 at 7:41 pm

[...] La percentuale totale di clicks fraudolenti, cosÃ¬ scrive Andy Beal, dovrebbe attestarsi attorno all’8-9%. [...]
Search on the Beach » New Google stats suggest click fraud rates 2% and under Says:

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 [...]
bg Says:

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.
Andrew Goodman Says:

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?
CPCcurmudgeon Says:

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.
Google: Only 2% Fraud Clicks? at SEO News Blog Says:

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. [...]
SigT Says:

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 tomarÃ© con cierta distancia) de que el fraude en los clicks, o como Google quiere llamarlos ‘clicks invalidos’, suponen menos del 2%.

…
Google program manager, Shuman on click fraud at adsense optimized Says:

January 1st, 2007 at 9:36 am

[...] Andy Bealâ€™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. [...]
Diem Says:

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?
PPC Guy Says:

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 Googleâ€™s system.” If thatâ€™s the case what about the other advertisers that didnâ€™t notice these â€œinvalid clicksâ€?
ConnectBlogs » Blog Archive » What is Pay Per Click Advertising? Says:

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%. [...]
Error Forum Blog » Blog Archive » Click Fraud Spin Says:

January 3rd, 2007 at 2:05 am

[...] I donâ€™t think it takes a rocket scientist to spot the flaw: [...]
CPCcurmudgeon Says:

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).
umopapisdn Says:

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
CPCcurmudgeon Says:

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.
Googles Click Fraud Less Than 2% Says:

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: [...]
Vintage Computer Manuals Says:

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 ?”
CPCcurmudgeon Says:

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.
Donna Says:

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%
How is Google Policing Click Fraud? Says:

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 aÂ 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. [...]
SearchEngineSoup » Blog Archive » History of Click Fraud Recapped, so Far… Says:

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; [...]
seovalidation.info » Blog Archive » How is Google Policing Click Fraud? Says:

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. [...]
New Google stats suggest click fraud rates 2% and under at Vanilla digital Says:

February 8th, 2007 at 6:52 pm

[...] http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/12/google-click-fraud-rate-two-pe rcent.html [...]
Jeff Miller Says:

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…?
Exclusive: Googleâ€™s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% « Official Michael Fomkin Blog Says:

February 13th, 2007 at 4:31 pm

[...] Source: marketingpilgrim.com NowPublic [...]
The Lonely Marketer - a discussion for the small business marketing manager » Simple Steps for PPC Click Fraud Monitoring Says:

February 23rd, 2007 at 7:28 am

[...] Exclusive: Googleâ€™s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% by Marketing Pilgrim [...]
La fraude au clic : Google est-il fiable? - Les bonnes frÃ©quentations Says:

February 27th, 2007 at 11:02 am

[...] La fraude au clic a Ã©tÃ© derniÃ¨rement le Â« sujet chaud Â» circulant dans le monde du marketing Web. Elle menace particuliÃ¨rement les liens sponsorisÃ©s. Alors que certains, dont Click Forensics, ont estimÃ© cette fraude Ã prÃ¨s de 15% en 2006, Google tente de rassurer ses utilisateurs Adwords en Ã©valuant ce taux Ã moins de 2%. Lors de la rÃ©cente confÃ©rence Â« Search Engine Strategies Â», un responsable a expliquÃ© que Google utilise un processus Ã quatre Ã©tapes, lequel identifie et filtre ce quâ€™ils appellent des Â« clics invalides Â». [...]
retro computers Says:

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.
Glendale Winnipeg Says:

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.
Mark levey Says:

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
Mark levey Says:

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
Mohamed Arif Says:

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
Google Pay Per Action Ads - Good and Bad Says:

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. [...]
Salecalls Says:

April 21st, 2007 at 2:28 pm

I think this number is true. 2% invalid clicks are real for now days.
» Google and click fraud: As wholesome as milk? | Digital Markets | ZDNet.com Says:

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. [...]
First BanPaul, now BobMeetsBan! Who’s next for the Google Adsense Ban? Says:

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 [...]
horisly Says:

June 20th, 2007 at 3:31 pm

that’s good for advertiser, then ads publishers get benefit.
links for 2007-07-01 « toonz Says:

July 2nd, 2007 at 6:59 pm

[...] Exclusive: Googleâ€™s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% | Marketing Pilgrim (tags: google Advertising adsense search analysis) [...]
Hans Says:

July 7th, 2007 at 8:18 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?
SEO “Blog Posters” vs “Article Bloggers” | SoloSEO Blog Says:

July 16th, 2007 at 8:44 am

[...] Andy Beal’s blog, MarketingPilgrim.com (although Andy has done some great exclusive articles, like on Google click fraud) [...]
Study Guide Says:

July 23rd, 2007 at 10:21 am

So there is no reason to fear CF? Kinda like Global Warming (wink, wink) huh?

Seriously, Google is doing a great job and people are still whining. I find that distasteful.
Webmaster Money Says:

August 3rd, 2007 at 12:29 pm

I was always wondering how the are detecting the fraud. But anyway it is tempting to click on banner if you know that there is high bid.
mirc Says:

August 4th, 2007 at 6:50 am

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.
All About SEO and SEO Validation Info » How is Google Policing Click Fraud? Says:

August 12th, 2007 at 8:13 pm

[...] 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 [...]
انمي Says:

August 14th, 2007 at 1:43 pm

tanks
hlawton Says:

August 22nd, 2007 at 7:37 pm

Are Google, Yahoo and MSN robbing you?

Why PPC waste/fraud is still continuing and why Google, Yahoo and MSN won’t help you find it.

I have spent time looking at all the reports Google/Yahoo/MSN have been providing it’s customers for some time now.

The one report that none of them provide is “Length of Visit by Keyword”.

This is a report that would help anyone with managing PPC campaigns in a major way.

So, why is this report not supplied by any of the search engines out there?

It’s simple!

If you knew which keywords people were clicking on and then just jumping out you could adjust you spending on those keywords accordingly.

All the major search engines have the data and tools available to provide you with this report.

I also believe that with the data that most of the major search engines collect that they could even provide us with a much better report than the “Length of Visit by Keyword” report I’ve been talking about.

I would love to see the raw data that Google collects on the sponsored ad clicks.

I bet if any of us could analyze that data we would save tons of money on our campaigns.

As a side note…
Wouldn’t you love to know what products have the best conversion rates and lowest advertising costs? Google and the others have this information. What power these people have!

Another note…
Google and the others know what products don’t sell well over the internet. They could come up with a list of products that have never sold well over the internet and at least warn people before they waste your money. I think a large percentage of people who try to sell something over the internet are wasting their money and I’m including the people who really know what their doing.

They won’t help us with this critical data because they know once you see the waste you will adjust your advertising campaigns to reduce it. That would cost the major search engines billions of dollars once you do.

Google and the others are basically hoping people don’t figure this out. Their saying lets give the customers a bunch of reports and analytics and hope they never notice what we’re not giving them.

The report should at least contain:
IP Address, Date/Time, Search term, Campaign keyword(s), Length of Visit, Number Pages Viewed, Conversion.

All the major search engines are guilty of not providing its customers with this information.

I have been looking for a tracking site that provides this information but have not had much luck.

I’m sure I could find a service or piece of code out there that will provide the important data but why we are not getting these reports from the major search engines out there is a crime.

Harvey Lawton
Exclusive: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% - | Green Says:

August 25th, 2007 at 1:23 pm

[...] Exclusive: Google?s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% [...]
Michael Samuel Says:

September 9th, 2007 at 8:38 am

I stopped PPC advertising because of the click fraud problem! I think Google should protect its advertisers more than that…
Gry Gabrielle, WebDesigner Says:

September 15th, 2007 at 3:33 pm

My suggestion is simple:

Just make sure you never go for any other channels than the search results in google.xxx because the fraud is not from your colleges, its from hungry AdSense sites.

Actually we where closed out by our Google Adsense testing, because our colleges in our local network was clicking on adds, and at that time we didnt now that (our colleges) and we went from PR5 to PR4 some days later.

Thats why we decided AdSense didnt make sense for us. I Assume theres a army of AdSense sites who wants to earn money, and they are asumeably very creative in their ways to make webdesign and have people clicking. Random AdWords Roboting who dont target your own pool but only occasionaly i have been reading about. I Love Google, that why i love to critize also, likewise with my husband…
Beware!!! Biased Companies “Research” Supports Product…Part 1 - Click Fraud | AboutResultsMarketing.com Says:

September 30th, 2007 at 6:03 am

[...] Great alarm statistics… but a load of BS in my opinion. I think I’ve got to agree with Andy Beal, that there’s alarmist opinions out there. The amount advertisers get cheated out of is [...]
trademark registration Says:

November 23rd, 2007 at 2:21 am

Even so, 2% is still too much. Some company’s advertising is in the hundreds of thousands. That quickly adds up to thousands of dollars that go to fraudulent clicks. It’s kind of scary to think about.
Jim Jansen Says:

November 23rd, 2007 at 6:15 pm

Here is a URL to an academic research article on this subject — http://ist.psu.edu/faculty_pages/jjansen/academic/jansen_click_fraud.p df

Reference: Jansen, B. J. (2007) Click fraud, IEEE Computer. 40(7), 85-86

I do not believe that the 2% applies to content ads.
Andrew Goodman Says:

November 25th, 2007 at 12:26 pm

Jim, I can’t help but notice you cite your own article. Looks like you’ve done a lot of interesting research relevant to online marketers, user experience analysis, etc. I sympathize with the plight you must face in presenting reliable “trend analysis” in the context of some of these publication processes — for example one of your articles from 2006 is covering long-defunct user experiences from search engines like Excite, Alltheweb; references to user interactions with Yahoo as “directory-based,” and so on. The references seem to be 5-7 years out of date by the time they are published.

As to what constitutes an “academic research article,” we will have to disagree. This looks to me like a short unrefereed overview article in a magazine. Some of your other articles conform more closely to the norm of a refereed journal article that would be worthy of the title of “academic research article.”

Here, I don’t see the research. I see some decent common-sense definitions and terse recommendations and conclusions. But no independent data or critical insight.

@hlawton: Any decent analytics package, such as Google Analytics, will give you bounce rates by keyword, and time spend on site by keyword, if that’s what you want.
Jim Jansen Says:

November 26th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

You know, upon reflecting on this article, the only way to really know the click fraud rate is to run an experiment between a trusted third party and the search engine.

This the only way to get all three data points in the same place — the content provider, the search engine, and the attacker.

Basically, set-up fake online stores with sponsored search accounts. Then, attack these online stores with various click fraud techniques over a period of time.

Then compare logs from the Websites, the search engines, and the attacker logs.

Jim
anonomous Says:

February 9th, 2008 at 3:57 am

My fraud clicks are 6% but would be much higher if i used adsence.

I can only guess the good man Andy was expecting all this apposing feedback.

“Actually the reported 2% invalid clicks come simply from complaints buy advertisers”.
As an advertiser myself,I only report about 1% of my estimated 6%. Its just a hassle, (like getting minutes credited for a dropped call). I think thats also one reason ‘Google Analytics’ wont report the ip addresses.
We spend a simple $40,000 a yr on Google This figure does not including customers you’re charged for, that click on you two or three times in teh same day, for example if the customer needs to re-contact you they often will re-google you and re-click you.

Theres many things Google could do to give us more accurate information and results. Many feel if they do this they would loose millions. A general belief is you only give your customer better service when your forced to by competition, and currently Google has no competitor that offers thees options. But the ROI is much greater foe my company then the blood sucking yellow pages lol.(die) In that comparison I’m very happy.
Joe Williams Says:

February 19th, 2008 at 8:22 pm

Just got banned by AdSense for making too much money on Feb 19, 2008. All websites that we had were generic business websites and everything was legal. Google Adsense’s email indicated a ‘bad business model’. Our translation is ‘We are paying you too much money’. Go figure. We had been up and running for over a year until our websites were getting noticed by Alexa.com and Google AdSense’s mysterious partners.
Gary Beal Says:

February 20th, 2008 at 2:36 am

I spoke with Adam at SES London 2008 yesterday and he shed some light on duplication across multiple websites showing up across multiple Google SE’s. He explained that its not a negative factor except when there are high multiple instances of it.

He also mentioned multiple 301’s in a short time span may have implications as well.

Thanks Adam!

GaryTheScubaGuy
Chris Longwell Says:

February 21st, 2008 at 11:53 am

As a business owner that is just getting started in online advertising…one thing is for sure. Google does not make small businesses feel comfortable with using there services. I would be willing to say the majority of advertisers are small businesses like mine with small advertising budgets. Google put the onerous on business to come to them with all the information. Their training talks about knowing all your competitors ip addresses. The click fraud “training,” if you can call it that, talks to you like your 10 years old and do not have the intelligence to understand what Google does to combat it. “Little Jimmy….little Jimmy are you listening. Don’t you know little Jimmy that not all clicks are fraudulent clicks.” The entire tutorial was them trying to convince me to not pursue because there is nothing to pursue. Give me a break!

The other thing that bugs me is how people let companies like Google and Apple off the hook. “You can’t talk that way about our precious Google and Apple! We believe everything they say is true…because they are not Microsoft.” Any publicly traded company is going to do WHATEVER is necessary to keep up the bottom line. Including showing us silly pictures like the one posted in the article with the three circles. Wake up! That’s insulting!
Chris Longwell Says:

February 21st, 2008 at 12:00 pm

As popularized by Mark Twain. “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”
Selin Says:

February 22nd, 2008 at 1:56 pm

Even so, 2% is still too much.
doug Says:

March 1st, 2008 at 10:42 pm

Google Crick Fraud is 20-30% based on my own experience with adsense. Of course Google would say it is low. Does anyone actually believe Matt Cutts and Google’s PR machine.
Andrew Goodman Says:

March 2nd, 2008 at 1:17 pm

Wow, that was scientific.
Avi Says:

April 10th, 2008 at 6:39 pm

After we installed a tracking code in our web pages, we found that 75% of Google’s clicks were frauds.
We got massive amount of clicks from different countries in hours that people sleep there!
Google placed our adds along with Sex ads and Tourist guides…(we make scientific instrumentation).
Within 24 hours after we complained, all of those clicks disappeard. That clearly shows that Google got a hand in those clicks.
Our monthly bill is now 75% lower with no effect on our sales.
Webmasters, don’t let them cheat you!
Click Fraud at 2% : GeckoandFly How To Money Says:

June 13th, 2008 at 10:56 pm

[...] says the click-fraud rate for their ads is 2% of invalid clicks. Should I believe them? I hope this is true, Google Adsense is a great source of income for many [...]
Is Click Fraud a big problem? | Semfire Search Engine Marketing Says:

July 22nd, 2008 at 1:42 am

[...] was 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% [...]
Flickr Says:

July 22nd, 2008 at 9:22 pm

That’s only the invalid clicks they caught. From our experience, it’s much higher and Google’s customer service staff fight hard to deny any compensations or responsibilities.
Metro Services Wpg Says:

July 30th, 2008 at 8:03 pm

lots of coloured graphs and charts that i do not understand
The simple answer to all of this “Do you believe in the tooth fairy ?”
prasad Says:

September 21st, 2008 at 4:57 am

i think there some element of click fraud on google we had given http://www.tendertiger.com add on google we do received some invalid and dummy click
regards
prasad
Levels of Poor Service Says:

September 24th, 2008 at 10:42 pm

Hate to say it do you believe in the tooth fairy or free pizza and beer ?
Wherever money and schemers are together it does not take too long for ideas of the “easy and softer way ” to arise and develop
Some even enjoy or prefer to earn their money this way
To put it another way – figures don’t lie but liars figger

Levels of Poor Service’s last blog post..pizza e. (1.0/5) on Yelp.com
SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources » Blog Archive » How to Protect Yourself from Click Fraud Says:

September 29th, 2008 at 12:52 pm

[...] figures above, Google claimed that their average “invalid click” rates for AdWords were less than 2 percent. This was later clarified by a post on their Inside AdWords blog stating that the actual figure was [...]
How to Protect Yourself from Click Fraud | Search Engine Optimization Says:

September 29th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

[...] figures above, Google claimed that their average “invalid click” rates for AdWords were less than 2 percent. This was later clarified by a post on their Inside AdWords blog stating that the actual figure was [...]
How to Protect Yourself from Click Fraud | BiggestLobster.com Says:

September 29th, 2008 at 1:53 pm

[...] click” rates for AdWords were less than 2 percent. This was later clarified by a post on [...]
Flat Sceen TV Mounts Says:

November 24th, 2008 at 10:37 pm

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November 24th, 2008 at 10:38 pm

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Cufflinks Says:

November 24th, 2008 at 10:45 pm

I have used google ads before and have often wondered how many of the click I paid for were in fact click fraud
Malson Mahoney Says:

December 7th, 2008 at 2:16 am

This article is a couple of years old now, but I have not seen a tremendous improvement in stopping click fraud. The idea that every business has to watch out for itself reminds me of EBAY and the hands off policy catching fraudulent sellers. Too much money involved for Google to make a change. If it is truly 2% that still comes out to tens of millions in fraudulent clicks.
The bottom line is businesses that use Google services still make money. Enough to put up with fraudulent clicking I guess. For them(google) to come out though and say they will not track IPs for a business is absolute bull. They can instantly create a report on just about everything, but the ip of the machine that clicked through an ad…give me a break.
10 BIG Security Threats to Your Corporate Network « Says:

December 15th, 2008 at 1:19 pm

[...] weblog. While Google said in Dec 2006 that click fraud for their AdSense contextual ad network is less than 2 percent, some advertisers have much higher estimates. Whatever the actual figure, creating click fraud [...]
Search Engine Marketing 2006: Τα 102 σημαντικότερα γεγονότα της χρονιάς » Το Βlog για τις Μηχανές Αναζήτησης Says:

February 6th, 2009 at 11:06 pm

[...] click fraud worries are overblown (9/8) despite the $90 million click fraud settlement (28/7) and Google’s claim that their click fraud rate is less than 2% (11/12). Διαβάστε το δικό μας [...]

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