What is Digg?22 Comments
- elastikos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8With that title I thought Osama was exploiting Google for a second.
- Bisqwit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The flip side of this story is how Google ejects sometimes adsense publishers from the adsense program without any explanation whatsoever, and without chance of getting back.
Here's how my site was victimized: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=67076#67076
They ejected me before I even received the first payment. I have tried to get them to explain what happened, what kind of "invalid clicks" they detected; I appealed, but they only respond with canned replies ("we have indeed detected invalid clicks"), and numerous attempts at reapplying haven't worked, and numerous questions on the rejection reasons have not received a single reply. I have verified the rules of the adsense program many times and I'm quite sure my site agrees with those rules. But Google still refuses, and they offer no explanation whatsoever.
It also appears that I am not even the only person affected by Google's "we owe nobody an explanation of our decisions" policy. http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/05/0139247
In this perspective, I find it ridiculous that at the same time honest publishers are thrown out without any explanation, advertisers are complaining Google is not doing enough. - klepto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6^^^ It's everywhere, my friend got ***** as well.
It almost always happens when they're reaching close to 100 dollars.
That's why I don't bother with adsense, people tell me there is other good avenues but I haven't really found one that sticks out to me. - ojk007, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Its not google or yahoo who this affects. Its the businesses that pay for the ads. They have to pay regardless of whether it is a legitimate click or not.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Google has only three methods of combatting clickfraud, no matter what they say to the press:
1) If you're dumb enough as a publisher to click on your own ads from a computer that has the same IP or cookie you used when you signed up for adsense, you will be immediately banned. (this weeds out the truly stupid people pretty fast)
2) If you click on ads through known proxies like TOR, the clicks will not count.
3) If you click on an ad repeatedly, dozens of times, the clicks wont count and the publisher will probably get banned from adsense.
Those are the only three instances in which Google will not count a click. That's it. Everything else they say is a huge, stinking lie. A have several friends out here in the valley who are making 6 or 7k each month clickfrauding their own sites, and none of them are using any techniques more sophisticated than signing up for flat-rate long distance and using scripts to dialup AOL or earthlink accounts around the country. They use those scripts to drive fake "traffic" to their sites, throw in a percentage of fake clicks equal to less than 3% of that traffic, and voilla- you have a money generating machine.
People are doing this with botnets on a much larger scale. Google has absolutely no way to detect any of this, regardless of how many times they point to all their shiny phds at the googleplex.
They know they can't detect clickfraud, but right now the ratio of fraud to actual real people clicking on the ads is still at least barely profitable for advertisers so the system sorta works. But that day is quickly coming to an end- and Google is scrambling to move to a CPA model before the fraud ratio becomes so high that even the dumbest advertiser realizes what is going on and leaves.
Yahoo is rolling out their YPN adsense clone, but very slowly because they're trying to actually do more to stop clickfraud and thus they've already pulled back from certain areas when the fraud became overwhelming- they even admitted this is why they gave up on their myspace text ad trial run a while back. Microsoft doesn't even have a third party publishing adsense clone yet. - wokethebears, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4where in this article does it define what click fraud is or why people are doing it?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5adsense sucks since they ban people for fraud when they dont even take part in it, they need a better system because a lot of victims arent making these crimes
- navseo, on 04/02/2009, -0/+2Many people who have less knowledge about website and adds, they are also responsible for that
Thanks
Navseo
http://www.sun-promos.com/ - geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Uh, fraud isn't so pervasive everywhere.
With CPC, a bunch of $2 clicks and goodbye budget.
With CPM, a bunch of $.0001 impressions and you're a fly on the windshield. So you generate 1,000 impressions. That kinda fraud is very easy to catch.
Then there's CPA, or cost per action, where you bill the advertiser for each order/signup.
There are plenty of things google could do, fraud doesn't have to be such a big problem. - loftx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's impossible to protect against click fraud completly, as a fradulent click can look exactly like a visitor in some cases. There's been plenty of times when I've clicked on what looked like an interesting advert, but when I got to the advertisors site I found I had been mislead by the ad and left immediatly.
Of course there are algorithms to check for repeated clicks from a set of IP addresses or a sharp increase in clicks, but it's still easy to commit click fraud and get away with it. What advertisers need to do is decide if the level is acceptable and if it isn't cancel their accounts. - algorhythm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Right, anyone that thinks click fraud should be "expected" by advertisers is TOTALLY CLUELESS!!! Click fraud pays money directly to the fraudsters just for scamming the advertiser. In one instance I was involved in, my client's compeditors were clicking on our ads from multiple IPs and cost us an average of $1000/month. It took 6 months for Google to acknowledge this and still they've taken no real action.
- ramsinks.com, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yep, and here is mine:
http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_Adsense_Nosense - klepto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I hate to reply twice in a row but digg's editing time ran out for me---
But it would just be easier on google if they offered different packages for their customers, the companies that pay them to be advertised, as geronimo recommended. It's not impossible to offer all of those types of business models.
It's also not impossible to generate an ip banning mechanism to mitigate those false clicks, just as there is ip banning software for ssh-brute force attacks, to design it for clicks on the otherhand, would be different if not more complex, I wouldn't doubt to implement such a thing, would need human oversight, and that equals to hiring more people and that ultimately puts less money into the google owner's bank account.
Google also has to remember that the internet is just another medium for people to communicate on, they cannot deny that a pissed off person can deliberately click on those ads to make it look like "click fraud" and shut down the webmaster's revenue. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The answer to that is just to stop paying if it's crappy return, as in any voluntary investment.
If people actually use other systems when they are unsatisfied with their current one, the vendors will make the changes necessary to keep their customers. The real problem is that instead of leaving, people keep an unsatisfactory service and just complain. - GamingLab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://www.proxy4free.info/click-fraud.png
but seriously, I can't see a future with PPC ads for the masses like Google currently runs. PPS/PPA and Lifetime Revenue Sharing is where we will be exclusively in a couple of years in my opinion. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I am sure Google has a extremely complex algorithm to catch click fraud. One must realize that it is difficult however. Anyway fraud happens in real life as often if not more than click fraud.
- geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@ morganm
Which is why my wife stopped her adwords campaigns for her site. She bitched about it for a little bit then decided to stop the lunacy. It was amazing, when she first began she got a bunch of orders, then the orders stopped yet the bill to google got higher. Were her competitors clicking on her ads? Quite possibly, we'll never know.
It would be great if google made adwords CPA based but there's a lot less money made when it comes to being that honest. CPC is great for google, crappy for advertisers. - buffalodan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0yeah, but if you pay google per click, and somebody is just clicking away, then you are paying for a crappy return. That is who is mad. Google doesn't care, it is the people that are paying google.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2The word "war" used to mean the population of two countries trying to kill each other. It is now so devalued, we need a new word to describe the activity of shooting at your neighbours rather than simply trying to eradicate an unethical & dishonest business practice. [neighbour: n. & v. & adj. Chiefly British, Variant of neighbor].
- glafira, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Oh this is really getting out of hand, so some people fraud the click things, Google and Yahoo both have enough money anyway.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2I don't know which universe it is where people can't understand that some of the clicks they get are not real leads. It's pay-per-click, not pay-per-qualified-lead-click. The quality of the visitors in general determines the value of those clicks. Google is vastly better than other systems on it, and so their clicks are worth much more. It is simply a number you deal with in that type of advertising, and the bid system and competition deal with it.
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