What is Digg?67 Comments
- jakatak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16I am the advertiser. I had to pay for those invalid clicks. See I sell BBQ sauce. So my competitor can go to my google ad and keep clicking my ad and charging me money. See how this system DOESN'T work!
- jakatak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17I sent Google a IP report showing that the same person kept cicking through to my website www.thebestsauces.com
This is Google's reply:
After a thorough review, our team was unable to find any conclusive
evidence of invalid clicks in your account. The clicks your ads received
appear to fit a pattern of normal user behavior. - joshfraz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Sites like these aren't helping any: http://www.clickmonkeys.com/
- devolved, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13From the end of the article:
Google is testing a new advertising model to deal with click fraud: cost-per-action ads. Advertisers don't pay unless the customer performs a certain action: buys a product, fills out a survey, whatever. It's a hard model to make work -- Google would become more of a partner in the final sale instead of an indifferent displayer of advertising
It's not a hard model to make work -- Google Checkout, anyone? Seems like AdSense may end up very closely tied to the Checkout stuff. Makes a ton of sense from the Big G's perspective. - FackBlog, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14He's paying for the clicks, he thinks they're invalid, google says they're not. So he's loosing money.
- recursive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8If you clicked on it once, then it was invalid.
- aresef, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I guess letting it happen didn't work as well as they wanted.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Some idiots will use your ads like a bookmark
you could use this
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Webmasters_Can_Watch_What_Visitors_Do_with_AJAX-based_Service
to get a better id what that ip is doing on your computer
or use one of the many click fraud services like click defence.
I honestly think google should lose business over this but shouldnt be sue for it. I have lost so much money in tradtional advertising it isnt funny. You take risks when you advertise. - jakatak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I know that it was the same person. Each IP address was one or two digits off. Each IP address was one minute apart. There were 14 click throughs from 14 different IP address that were all approx. 1 or 2 digits away. I don't get that much traffic to my site. The odds of this NOT being the same person is astronomical.
- fatsobob, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Google kicked me off adsense because someone who really liked my website clicked the ad every day around the same time. Google told me that they suspected me of a script that clicked it for me, which is totally false.
I use Yahoo ads now, and I have never been happier, better Payouts IMO. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Your friend was cheating the advertisers by clicking their ads just to help you (without any intention of looking at the product or service advertised). If Y! lets you get away with it, it's worse for their advertisers.
- paradoxic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I think he means he was running an adwords campaign that had invalid clicks running his ad budget down.
I've personally ran adwords campaigns, and they are expensive as hell. To get invalid clicks is just like pissing money away. - weaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That site has to be a spoof. Too funny.
- OBCENEIKON, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I was kicked off also, I appealed the case and was denied. I think they improved their fraud-detection tools too much, so much that it is also detecting valid clicks.
I sure wasn't clicking my own ads.
I had just put my payments on hold too, lost a little over $200.00 - patmfitz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Google doesn't own those websites. The owners of the sites are the ones putting Google ads on the site.
- thunderhammer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4bzzzt. People who work at large companies are typically behind a proxy. All 100,000 Hewlett-Packard employees show up as the same IP address. You get the idea.
- LaserLine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4There's a story out there also about a guy who had his competitors clicking on his ads and he finally realized it when he went to a conference where his competitors were there and during that time period there was a significant drop in clicks. That's how he ended up finding out.
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Nothing. I have expressed this concern many times, even asked Google, and no reply. So technically you can kill someone else's adsense account and there is no way Google can see the difference between the owner clicking like crazy, or someone else doing that.
- bitt3n, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4what stops someone from repeatedly clicking the ads on a competitor's site until google cancels the competitor's adsense account for presumed fraud? I would love to know this.
- gasoline, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Google owns company (Oingo) that owns those sites.
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Clicking is done with bots. Imagine you make 200 websites, each with adsense, and have 50,000 visitors on each site, about 0.01% clicking on your ads. And those 50,000 are picked randomly from 500,000 zombie computers.
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Click fraud, site fraud, what's a small business owner to do?"
Learn a little SEO, it's not that hard. Two years ago I wanted to advertise on Google as "Perl Programmer". I decided to look first what I could do with my own website, and in a very short time I was in the top 10 for Perl programmer. I am even #1 for programmer available :-)
My site (a personal page, http://johnbokma.com/ ) went from less then 2,000 visitors a day to over 10,000 visitors a day. Without paying Google :-) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Simple- with pay per action the advertisers would just "forget" to tell Google that a sale was made.
Which would be the exact reverse of the current situation, where google holds all the cards and doesn't let anyone see their logs (which could help prove clickfraud)
If Google were to move to a pay per action model, their revenue would fall off a cliff. - invader, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4he's talking about ads he paid for on sites other than his own.. the user would click the ad, then go to his site. you can track where your users came from, and their ip address... so he was paying per click for the same person to click to his site repeatedly
- pedershk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Sorry, but that's not a solution. Most of the click fraudsters use gangs of "zombie" machines previously "taken over" via malware - i.e. they have a few hundred thousand real, unique IPs at their disposal.
- Radian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm sure everyone here already knows about the site, but anyway:
http://www.*****.com/
I have nothing to do with the site, and have never used Google Adwords / Adsense, but I still visit the site periodically. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Digg for the use of the word... "Fraudsters"
[Also it's a good article] - JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Simple solution: Advertisers are charged a higher rate but pay only once per unique IP. Sure it's still not perfect but it seems like it would be an improvement and would make fraud more difficult.
- paradoxic, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5This problem is really under-estimated. Soo much of adsense is based on fraud, zombie websites and just false pretense clicking it is really amazing.
If google's stockholders knew the extent of this, it would really put a hamper on their bloated stock prices. - ackza, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2yeah someone hated what I had to say about 10 military industrial complex companies on my weak little blog http:;//wwww.iranfromiraq.com about how much money they made off the war, so someone at one of these companies or juts someone with an opposing political view must have sat there and clicked on my ads all day to shut my ad revenue down. I don't need the money but I was going to use it to set up a war profiteering mutual fund to let average americans profit off the iraq war II since we can't stop it. Oh well, maybe someone should go commit clikc fraud against chuck noris's dumb right wing website wnd.com, he deserves an ass kicking, but I am in no way condoning ilegal activity
- logic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2NYT is pay-per-view (ppv)
Click fraud concerns pay-per-click (ppc) - scrollbadguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The proxy thing is true. However, I always wondered why Google doesn't at least use cookies to help filter fraud. Obviously they're client-side and and can be removed/blocked, but I bet it'd remove a great number of fraudulent clicks produced by the technologically-challenged.
- vanadaar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Last I checked Google is taking steps to prevent this. Making it so the user has to perform some action to before Google charges the advertiser.
- vajra918, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2it is a spoof. another site from the same "CEO"
http://www.petsorfood.com/ - viruz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2hear around the world was a collective gasp from internet "entrepeneurs" who's sole business relies on google's adsense income.
you know the SEO type's - awilensky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, my small ad budget was drained by click fraud - I traced the referring pages and found them to be almost certainly not human generated. Google, of course, would not listen to me.
The site based ads, where you pay for impressions is another area of concern - it's much more expensive, but generates Thousands of views. the problem is, that Google knows when you have a geographically targeted campaign, yet includes sites from way offshore - yes, yes, I know it's not the sites but the locality of the ad appearance that is important, but what do you do when a site called, tiko.com, from the Philippines, is in your site list.
Google says that you can remove any site you want from the suggested sites they give you, but really, how would you know - They, google, know your geographical targeting, yet supply these bogus sites.
Click fraud, site fraud, what's a small business owner to do? - Dracker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3What does someone typically have to gain by fraudulently clicking on someone's ad?
Just impose costs on the advertiser? - damonlab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Some clicks are not just from competitors, they could also be clicks from people that just don't like those companies.
As a matter of fact, I can think of a few companies that I don't like. Hmmm... clickity, click, click, click. - gd007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Why don't they install pay per action or pay per impression? Problem solved.
- jakatak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@kaiservunderbar - That was funny. it doesn't matter anymore, though. I paused the ad so it isn't showing up anymore. I threatened Google and told them if they don't credit me the click fraud I would dispute the entire month of charges on my credit card. what I didn't realize was how many people this is happening to.
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Click fraud, site fraud, what's a small business owner to do?"
Learn a little SEO, it's not that hard. Two years ago I wanted to advertise on Google as "Perl Programmer". I decided to look first what I could do with my own website, and in a very short time I was in te top 10 for Perl programmer. I am even #1 for programmer available :-) - kaiservunderbar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I just clicked www.thebestsauces.com 100 times , let me know what happens................ Psych
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I paused all my campaigns too.
The problem is out of control and no one does a thing. - ylikone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2According to http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoaxsites.html the website mentioned in the article that will commit fraud for you is a hoax... clickmonkeys.com
- mohmar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I dont mean to sound like a jerk, and correct me if im wrong, but wasn't there an article in the magazine about 3 months ago that was pretty much this exact same topic? I didnt see a mention on the page but im pretty sure it was wired...
- mulcher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This sounds like the game theoretical solution, but you'd really have to do the math and plots
and a simulation to see if it is true and that the underlying game theoretic assumptions are true.
A few points to consider are are:
1. Are all agents are rational?
2. Do all agents have perfect knowledge of all strategies?
3. Do agents take turns in play? Importantly, do you know when a turn is over?
A game theoretician would say that there is an equilibrium point if 1-3 are achieved. However,
the continuous influx of other agents into the category either as keyword competitors (driving up bid prices) or as fraudsters (clicking ads) may keep the systems continuously perturbed... thus preventing equilibrium within a finite time window... So unless you have unlimited resources you can't keep playing the game.
(this is much like the gamber's ruin problem).
So it is complicated. The market solution is probably the best. But it will hurt the smaller players first... but this is true in all forms of advertising no matter what. Eventually, equilibrium will be reached and it will probably be at the point where rich advertisers (amount they can afford) and poor advertisers (max they will pay).
I would suggest smaller advertisers banding together across related categories to share revenue and their budgets in order to compete with Madison Ave.
- ianjones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2exactly, Google shouldn't permit a situation where a business can be sabotaged by their competitors.
- JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Even so, only allowing one click per IP would have to curtail their effectiveness.
- Dracker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Or rather, transfer some money from advertiser to webmaster.
Given the risks of detection, I don't see how it's worth it. If the webmaster gets kicked off the ad program, they're surely not seeing much money from Google. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I was kicked off too, I appealed the case and was denied too and lost BIG money (I mean big money to me) which I hold.
They said:
------------
After receiving your response, we re-reviewed your account data
thoroughly. We have reconfirmed that invalid clicks were generated on the
ads on your site in violation of our Terms and Conditions and program
policies.
------------
Honestly, (yes) I clicked my ads 10 times. Is it invalid? -
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