What is click fraud?
The issue has been bandied about for years by online advertisers, yet click fraud remains misunderstood. Even with a spate of media attention devoted to the subject in the latter part of this year, a recent panel at Search Engine Strategies in Chicago revealed a lack of industry-wide consensus on what constitutes an act of click fraud. So ClickZ News asked experts at Google and Overture how the two leading search engines define click fraud, and what proprietary mechanisms they have in place to protect advertisers against it. This is the second article in a series on click fraud. Click Fraud Defined Overture defines click fraud as, “clicks arising for reasons other than the good-faith intention of an Internet user to visit a Web site to purchase goods or services or to obtain information,” according to spokesperson Dina Freeman. Google is a bit more specific, defining click fraud, “or invalid clicks, as any method used to artificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or page impressio
Click fraud is an Internet crime targeting pay-per-click advertising systems. Click fraud occurs when a person or a group of persons, computer software or an Internet bot clicks on an ad for the sole purpose of generating income for the publisher or putting a competitor out of business and not because of any real interest in the products advertised. Click fraud is considered a felony in many places such as California and the United Kingdom.
Yahoo! Search Marketing wants advertisers to understand that traffic quality and click fraud are two very different things. Click fraud is generally considered to be clicks made with bad faith with the sole purpose of generating a charge to the advertiser with zero possibility of a legitimate site visit or transaction occurring. We agree. But from a technical perspective, it is impossible to look into someone’s mind at the time they click to see whether they are clicking with bad faith. In other words, we can’t read users’ minds. Instead, Yahoo! Search Marketing has to look at what identifiable behavior may indicate bad faith. In terms of identifiable behavior, we define click fraud as detected illegitimate bots and certain repetitive clicks. And we have created sophisticated software that identifies this behavior and attempts to filter out charges for these clicks so that you are not billed for them. We do not disclose how we define repetitive clicks or the details about our proprieta
Click fraud is generally defined as any paid-for click that originates in a malicious attempt to drain an advertiser’s budget. Especially for high-priced search terms, advertisers will sometimes attempt to drive up their competitors’ marketing costs by clicking on their ads. Click fraud is sometimes also motivated by revenue generated by pay-per-click (PPC) engines’ affiliate networks. Here, an affiliate is driven by simple greed to run up multiple fraudulent clicks. Most PPC search engines have systems in place that identify click fraud and then subsequently do not charge the advertiser for the fraudulent clicks. Google, the largest PPC-driven engine, seems to be able to detect rapid, successive clicking from the same person or IP address. However, individuals or organizations conducting click fraud are using more advanced cloaking technologies that may circumvent these preventive systems. Google often issues refunds and adjustments based on reported click fraud. The company has also
Yahoo! Search Marketing wants advertisers to understand that traffic quality and click fraud are two very different things. Click fraud is generally considered to be clicks made with bad faith with the sole purpose of generating a charge to the advertiser with zero possibility of a legitimate site visit or transaction occurring. From a technical perspective, Yahoo! Search Marketing has to look at what identifiable behaviour may indicate bad faith. In terms of identifiable behavior, we define click fraud as detected illegitimate bots and certain repetitive clicks. And we have created sophisticated software that identifies this behavior and attempts to filter out charges for these clicks so that you are not billed for them. We do not disclose how we define repetitive clicks or the details about our proprietary technology because we do not want to educate those who are acting in bad faith. Traffic quality clicks refers to all clicks that are not click fraud, which includes everything from
