Comments on: Why We Can’t Trust Click Fraud Numbers

By: SearchEngineSoup » Blog Archive » History of Click Fraud Recapped, so Far…

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 20:51:13 +0000

[...] January 30, 2007: Mr. Beal had another post asking us to question that how we can trust ClickForensics results. When this company has vested interest in increased click fraud. Here is an excerpt from his post; [...]

By: CPCcurmudgeon

CPCcurmudgeon — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 21:28:06 +0000

Jason,

The answer to your question is that advertisers have not been bidding
rationally on clicks. However, they are starting to.

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:28:31 +0000

I can’t come to understand how it is so difficult to know how extensive click fraud is. Jeremy Luebke and Jim Lillicotch both hinted at the answer. The advertisers are answering the question every time they bid on the PPC. If they truly felt as though they were losing money then they would stop purchasing the ads. But as proven by the fact that Google continues to make more and more money every single quarter the companies purchasing Google’s ads have no issues with the results. So Google must in turn have click fraud under control. Or there are a lot of companies out there paying Google for nothing and last time I checked people don’t usually just give away money.

By: Jim Lillicotch

Jim Lillicotch — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:42:38 +0000

It seems to me that if you do your homework and you know for sure that:
A) You are spending $1 and you are making $10, it’s a good deal or
B) You are spending $10 and making $1 it’s not a good deal.
Either way if you know what you are spending and what you are making, it doesn’t really matter what the click fraud numbers really are.

By: SearchEngineSoup » Blog Archive » Click Fraud Statistics - Read The Joke and Decide For Yourself

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:48:03 +0000

[...] It is understandable that the statistical analysis is quite vital for search engine advertising and Internet marketing, yet as Mr. Beal also questions the fact as to “how we can trust click fraud numbers” us another story? [...]

By: CPCcurmudgeon

CPCcurmudgeon — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:35:44 +0000

In general, I place my faith in security and trust analyses, which say
that as currently deployed, PPC advertising is highly vulnerable to
fraud, because of the openness of the Internet architecture, among
other things. For this reason alone, advertisers should be wary, and
consider alternatives (such as fixed fees) if they find they aren’t
getting the ROI they expect.

FYI, Vint Cerf (of Google) recently warned that 25% of all PCs may
belong to botnets. Botnets are known to generate spam, DDoS attacks,
and other things … including click fraud.

By: Jeremy Luebke

Jeremy Luebke — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:42:00 +0000

I have just started ignoring all the noise and I pay attention to only one thing, ROI. If I had some obvious clickfraud I would take it up with Google but for the most part the campaign goes up, we track the ROI and it stays or goes based on that. Just as with retail stores we have to assume some percentage of theft into the bottom line while at the same time doing what we can (which isn’t much) to protect ourselves.