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80 Comments
- stukdog, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15It's just the cost of doing business, and Mr Schmidt explains that in the article.
Would you sue a billboard company because every single motorist didn't look at your billboard? You grab the attention of some and you don't grab the attention of others.
If you don't want to risk the click fraud with Google, you don't have to advertise with them. But, you'll also miss out on the new customers. - cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14But if I paid a billboard based on traffic of 10,000 cars passing said sign a day, I'd expect 10,000~isy cars a day to pass the billboard. Now if the billboard company told me it was 10,000, and charged me for 10,000 cars, but it is actually 2,500, then we have a problem.
- goodoldharris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Schmidt isn't just making things up. When was the last time a print ad made you purchase something? An ad on television? If you're like most people, you probably can't remember. And even if you did act on an ad, advertisers don't really have a way of measuring it, except in the aggregate. Compare this to online ads, where an ad can lead immediately and directly to a purchase, and advertisers can see when it does or doesn't.
14% (or thereabout) click fraud may introduce a little fuzziness into the evaluation of an online ad campaign, but it's nothing compared with the fuzziness of ad campaigns in print and television. This is one of the reasons online advertising is so much more attractive to advertisers - despite click fraud. Print and TV companies are watching their ad revenue decline, and will continue to do so for years. Google is in a great position. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -20/+28I think google of late are getting rather cocky. I've met some engineers from Google on various occasions and they all sit on a very high horse - their corporate culture by its very nature encourages this.
Reminds me of another company. - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -10/+17"I think google of late are getting rather cocky"
What's cocky about letting a free market correct itself? I believe Google's 100% right on this one; once advertisers realize people HATE those big flashing ads and click fraud becomes so widespread they simply can't afford to continue spending that kind of money on those ads, they'll become more intellegent advertisers.
Either way, Google's still going to make a fortune on it. - jerbaker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8> frequently frauded keywords would come down in price.. but to me it just means the frauders
> will click more
That doesn't make any sense. I think you're missing the point. What Google is trying to say is that advertisers will quickly realize it if their advertising dollars are not being converted into sales. They'll know they spent X dollars per sale on advertising. If X keeps increasing because of click fraud, they will be less willing to spend money and the value of the ads will go down. The cost of click fraud is inherently built in. Advertisers aren't just going to keep buying ads when they aren't getting any sales ... if they are they deserve to go out of business because they aren't acting rationally.
The Internet is nothing new. The cost of fraud is built in to everything. When you buy a steak at the grocery store, the price is a little higher because of the steaks that disappear from the loading docks, and so on. People steal. Perople cheat. That's the way it is. Your life will be a lot less stressful if you just learn to live with that fact instead of trying to make it not so. - Durrok, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9My brother was in the business of managing advertising for a few clients and they used google ads. The way that they delt with it was they only charged for people who actually bought the product. (They had a series of cookies setup on their web server to determine this) They would usually charge $50-$100 for each of these "leads". This promoted both sides not to practice click fraud and it worked really well. It's a great system and it does have it's problems but that doesn't mean you can't find a way to still use it effectively.
- aptiva, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This is different, it's actually more like if you pay per person that goes to your store because he looked at the billboard. But I think his point is that if we let it happen the price per click goes down while the number of clicks goes up hence making click fraud irrelevant
- infradead, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Same goes for spamming Google -- you can email them about it, but they won't do anything except (maybe) tweak their algorithm when it's time for the next Google-dance.
When I'm searching for anything, I tend to use digg.com or social bookmarking sites, at least for specialised techie items. If Google don't take action, they'll end up like AltaVista -- once dominant, now irrelevant. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+12did you read the article?
inly the very end passingly they meantioned click fraud protection
But the article is about letting click fraud happen.. but the google guy IS wrong on this one
his logic.. frequently frauded keywords would come down in price.. but to me it just means the frauders will click more... i personally wouldnt want to lose a whole days advertising budget to fraud.
WITH ALL THAT SAID, if you are concerned with click fraud, dont advertise with google.
They say half of advertising dollars are wasted. FOr me it was a lot more, when i first started my buisness i advertised all kinds of places with out success, I finally found some places and ads that actually worked.. now i dont know that clik advertising is differnt, it is not like my ad disapeared after so many people looked at it, but it might as well have as noone came to me through the ad.
Point is lesson learned and i am advertisiong elsewhere and didnt have to sue anyone.
SO yeah click fraud is self correcting, it will self correct your customers elsewhere - SpeckledJim, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6It's a perfect solution for THEM of course because they get their money either way.
I'm still amazed that this sort of advertising works anyway; I can't remember the last time I clicked on one of these ads. What is the click-through rate?
Get your amazing product/service mentioned favourably in reputable articles, blogs etc. and I may go and look for it myself, but with pretty much all direct advertising being deceptive in one way or another, and sometimes downright dangerous with spyware and such, I'm not going to bother clicking them. - treo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Payout is at 100$
- cleverboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5From the sustainability standpoint, you're wondering why they don't just do a "spot fix" instead of re-working the code that focuses on "prevention"? I know its hard to deal with where the rubber meets the road, but from the standpoint of running a business... you NEED to do it from the "prevention" aspect whenever possible. The larger the company or service, the less time can be spent on the individual "symptoms". I don't see why that can be seen as "wrong" or "irresponsible".
- ksgant, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Proof you didn't read the article as he addresses this very issue.
- Brahma, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6"I think google of late are getting rather cocky. I've met some engineers from Google on various occasions and they all sit on a very high horse - their corporate culture by its very nature encourages this."
The statement might be true but a little out of place. Remember, the CEO mentions that, the Engineers are still trying to get ahead of the click fraud. Actually their cockiness might just help the advertising world (i.e if they are able to eliminate click fraud). - cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Great, lotsa $$$ for the lawyers and a coupon for $5 in free ads from Google...
I read over and over "I smell a class action suit!" on Google, but have you ever taken part in one?
I spent an hour filling out and signing paperwork for a class action suit years ago. My reward? A coupon for $5 off an oil change. I kid you not. Note that the lawyers made millions of dollars. - pickypg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The net effect is that GOOGLE is stealing money WITH the fraudsters, too. I am very surprised that Google has not been sued for being negligent. If Yahoo can do something about it, then why can't Google?
- ogletree, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Click fraud is not that rampent. Advertisers just can't accept that real users are that stupid. Anyone who has ran large accounts and done lots of tracking knows that people are just stupid. A lot of people use google as a bookmark. They type in their term and click on the ad because that is how they remember the site. People click on ads lots of times. People like to click on things. I agree click fraud is out their but every person I know claims somebody is after them. There is no way there are that many people in that many subject areas are doing click fraud. If they were it would be very easy for G to detect. They do have anti fraud measers and only the very best would be able to get past that. The very best accounts for a tiny fraction of clicks.
- martyr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5he's really approaching this from an economics standpoint, not a moral or technical one. and to my surprise, i find that i agree with him; advertising is ultimately economics, no matter what medium you're utilizing or what your pay model is.
- XxXoldsaltXxX, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7Its the same concept as a TV commercial or a ad on a highway, only you can see how many people viewed it.
Doesn't actually mean that they are going to buy the product, it just means that they saw the advertising, which is the most important thing in advertising. - StarCrusher, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3There's a big difference between an act of commission and an act of omission. I don't care if lots of people don't look at my billboard. I care a Lot if someone saws it down. I don't care if lots of people don't see my ad thru Google. I care a lot if someone is running a clickbot to drive up my prices or if google makes millions from clicks that never happened.
Google's goal of "do no evil" fails to justify click fraud that's rampant on Google. It is evil to charge small business owners for clicks that weren't real. It's evil to say "Just leave it alone. It will be alright" when you make millions a day from fraud. It would be like me telling a cop who wanted to arrest me for selling crack to leave me alone and the market would work it all out. Sure.. - john608, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Hmm. I read the whole article, and it would seem to me that it would encourage those who thought about doing click fraud but decided that google was going to go after them. Now with what this guy said it is all green lights go.... click away to your new house baby!
- IQ70, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I sense a class action suit coming soon.
- cleverboy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I've marked this story "innaccurate". People responding that Google somehow has the "wrong idea" about this, is weird, given the fact that the article notes that...
Smidt says: "But because it is a bad thing, because we don%u2019t like it, because it does, at least for the short-term, create some problems before the advertiser sees it, we go ahead and try to detect it and eliminate it."
Is it a "perfect economic solution"? Sure it is... the value of the ad would presuppose "fraud". People would still by, and prices would drop to acknowledge the risk, while small players would mostly shake out as "fraud" begins to become an inherent, black market, operation.
Is it an "ideal" or "perfect moral" solution? No. They do not like it, customers do not like it, they can't stand by and let it happen. I think there's value to Smidt pointing out the "perfect economic solution". It's a very interesting problem, one that the original programmer who attempted to extort them, talked about at length... ranting that in the end... there's NOTHING they can do to eliminate fraud. And ultimately, he's totally right.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke
We need to be able to see all the sides that Google is seeing, and saying that NO policing on their part, would result in a self-correcting system, is a purely academic statement to a group of students, not to the business community at large. Taking it otherwise is pure, woefull misrepresentation. - davidshq, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I think Schmidt is spot on with these thoughts. Moving to pay-per-sale is not viable for webmasters. We wouldn't make any more. I went through the bubble burst days and the hard times that followed, it is not easy to make money on the internet. Pay-Per-Sale discourages affiliate advertising as, unless the webmasters are very good at marketing, they won't succeed (by the way, webmasters can be good at design and content and not at marketing).
I'm glad that they are still working on protecting advertisers from click fraud, as I don't want there to be more click fraud than necessary, but one must accept that click fraud is a fact of business and should be factored into ROI. If the ROI doesn't work - then you stop advertising. But advertisers who use Google see a good ROI. - UncommonSense, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Viewing click-fraud as self-correcting only benefits Google. There are two scenarios here. If no click fraud exists, advertisers pay the correct price, and Google receives the correct revenue. If click fraud exists, regardless of the degree of false positives, advertisers pay extra, and Google receives gratuitous revenue. Google CEO Eric Schmidt claims that eventually, scenario 2 balances itself out and yields scenario 1 (and there will be advertisers who fail to recognize click fraud, translating into extra bucks for the search engine giant). In other words, Google either breaks even by fair game in the first situation or comes out ahead in the second one. Ultimately, it's a win-win situation for the search engine giant. Self-correcting? More like self-generating revenue. Shame on Google for attempting to justify fraud.
- joethepeacock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In the immortal words of Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle and John Cleese:
SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAMMITY SPAM!
(not forgetting terry gilliam or michael palin, they just weren't in that sketch) - betona, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I used to work with them in my previous job (a major client). Google will never lift a finger to fix something directly. If there's a bad result, their style is to go back and work on the algorythms to correct whatever it was that allowed the bad results. So many times they could've made a quick edit or fix but they wouldn't do it. And that cuased a lot of heartburn in my group to the point where we removed their contributions from our pages for months on end, waiting on a fix.
- domr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's more widespread than you realise. I've worked for a company where it's cost them tens of thousands. Of course, Google *will* occasionally refund advertisers, but only if you're smart enough to be able to track the fraud in your own log files. The average small business doesn't stand a chance.
- FishyJoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's the same attitude that has led us to email spam. Is that the direction click fraud is heading? Google better hope not.
- dH2K, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Adwords v2 'pay per buy' system will definitely eliminates this kind of fraud. This is what called evolution.
- tarmithius, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3@stukdog
The actual statement was, “cost of doing business” with Google. He is just talking about Google, and the costs associated with doing business with Google. - gd007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1why can't they program to stop click fraud?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Of course... assuming that their ability to detect it doesn't ring up too many false positives; as soon as it does, it's defection city, causing their advertising arbitrage house of cards will crumble.
All it takes is a competitor who has a better click fraud to false positive ratio and doesn't insist on clipping off such a large part of the long tail with a minimum earning point. - IQ70, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Class action papers I get are usually opt-outs. I need send in papers only if I want to opt-out of the class action suit. Although, the suit will just be more bad PR and take away from the small profit Google makes as of now.
- domr, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Sigh. Click fraud is theft. It's a crime like any other crime.
Google's "let it happen" attitude is akin to the police saying they're going to let muggers just keep mugging people because eventually nobody will have anything left worth stealing and it'll die out.
Click fraud isn't just numbers - it's real money. It's life and death for many small businesses that rely on online advertising. - pickypg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@geminitojanus
Google is NOT going to make a boat load of money if click fraud takes over and all of their customers jump ship because they were too negligent to care about it.
Yahoo is definitely showing that they actually care about their customers, as opposed to what Google is doing here--letting you get scammed enough times that it becomes less profitable to you so you will lower the price that you are willing to pay (which can lower your standings in the ads because the people probably doing the click fraud are staying at the same spot). - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is why I no longer use adwords.
Adwords is one of the worst PPC programs out there IMO. - shepherd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Who wouldn't love the "cost of doing business" excuse when the profits come to their own pockets, the mistakes and experiments happen on somebody elses side?
- gd007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1ok, then simply change it to pay per action or pay per impression. tv ads works like that anyway.
- pauleric, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Exactly. Sure, it's economically self-correcting for google. But the net effect is that fraudsters are stealing money from legitimate websites. Where's the incentive to run ads on your website?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Any experiences with online anti-click-fraud services, where your clicks go to their server first?
- terminalpariah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://digg.com/tech_news/Let_click_fraud_happen_Uh,_no.
- pickypg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@cleverboy
Well, may their CEO shouldn't have said something so naive then. If they really have such a strong backend where they are fighting to protect their end users then their CEO would not be out there saying, just "let it happen." This has utterly destroyed my opinion of Google as anything other than a Search provider. I used to think that they were very aggressive about fighting click fraud, but that was clearly corrected today. - LiterateWolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Google CEO believes that there is an invisible buddy that will fix any economic and business problems without us having to do anything? I guess the Ayn Rand cult isn't for losers afterall.
- rkuchiki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not really. I could just randomly go to some website with AdSense and decide I want to be an ***** and click spam their ads. In return, they get terminated. That is what happened to me.
- cooltom2006, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Quite...Why do Google care if people or machines are click frauding, they are not paying and it just makes the people who are getting payed more, stay with Google. Which for Google, is good, right?
- Coded1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you buy an apple for $1 and after a while you notice the quality of the apples are poor then you will be less likely to spend the money in the future ... right? Well with Adwords who is it that sets the price? You do! So you put a lower bid cause well ... its not worth paying what you did before! So the price goes down! Hence this makes more work for fraudsters to make as much damage to the seller. This makes more fraud and easier to detect for Google as bot nets and clickers will have to generate more traffic to come to the same goal.
By approaching the situation like this it makes a balance rather than the sue-counter-sue practice that we have all come to know.
Just 2c - Wolfman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Payout's $100 (US), and yes I've seen many, many accounts terminated, but it's been in my experience that those whose accounts were terminated, where doing atleast 'something' sleazy. Read the ToS, and abide by it strictly, you should have little problems.
- ionut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There is no site that mentions this quote:
"Eventually, the price that the advertiser is willing to pay for the conversion will decline, because the advertiser will realize that these are bad clicks, in other words, the value of the ad declines, so over some amount of time, the system is in-fact, self-correcting. In fact, there is a perfect economic solution which is to let it happen."
Donna says Schmidt's declaration is from March. Why nobody noticed it and report it until now?
What is she made up the whole thing? -
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