What is Digg?34 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17"Proof Google’s Click Fraud is Less than 2%"
Bollocks! They can't prove they're catching everyone who's figured out how to trick them. That defies logic. They might ~think~ they've done a good job at it but proving they have is entirely impossible. That's like saying, "I've proved no one in my study is outside of my study." It means nothing.
Shamless Google propaganda. - JimMessenger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"Google’s goal is to have the first three layers of filtering identify 100% of all invalid and fraudulent clicks. Those clicks that manage to escape Google’s filters are what causes many advertisers to raise concerns and has spawned the growth of many so-called click fraud detection companies. The fourth layer of click fraud detection falls to these advertisers and detection companies and is what Google calls “requested investigations”.
I hope Google gets more aggressive on banning IPs from individuals who fraudulently click on ads. We have a problem in our industry (real estate) with local competitors clicking on ads. I stopped using PPC because I believed more competitors clicked our ads than intended searchers. - HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Will this also help those AdSense publishers who get banned because someone with a vendetta clicks every adv on their site?
- streak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7This just in... half of all fraudulent clicks hit 0.1% of Google customers. And that's just the ones Google knows about.
Averages don't accurately depict distributions. - unidentified, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@mrfoos
Wait, how can you prove that google can't prove their fraudulent clicks are less than 2 percent? You might ~think~ you know more about it than googles network of engineers, but proving it is entirely impossible. That defies logic. Actually, how can you prove I'm not standing behind you right now as you're reading this comment unless you actually look..... - lepton, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I dunno. I suddenly got charged for $1000 in one month before I turned it off, way, way higher than usual and virtually all clicks came from two places, a city in Turkey and another in Saudi Arabia. Google said they looked into it and it wasn't click fraud. Ya, right. So I'd be raising that percentage a tad.
- LeeVal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+52% is a small percentage, but think how many people that is
- halfbrown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There's no way to make such a blanket statement about a percentage of fraud when clearly not every site is the same. The core of a websites content type (shopping, information, downloads, etc.) will draw different parts of the market, and the more active and/or profitable ones will more than likely attract the fraudsters like a fly to honey since there is a greater possibility of conversion (i.e. - money!). Every site will be different; some may have less than 1% fraud, but there are certainly others with a greater percentage.
And PowerPoint, SchmowerPoint... don't draw us a (pretty) picture when what would really be useful to prove the point would be actual numbers, stats, perhaps a case study from a real life victim of click fraud. I understand the desire to keep competitors noses out of where they don't belong, but don't ask us to take on faith that which many of us know to be false to begin with.
I don't know... maybe it's the late hour of this post talking, but the whole article reads like the work of a corporate schill for Google. And don't get me wrong, I love Google, but c'mon. - zoom1928, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4> Google--your content network blows
I agree. For our site for elementary school kids, Google has decided to show ads for match.com and for real estate. Of course not many of the kids click on those ads. Example from a couple of weeks ago:
http://users.upstate.net/zoom/adsense_fraud2.gif
We made less than $3 for over 412,000 impressions. Google really needs to start picking the ads they show so that they're appropriate for the audience. Why haven't they built such a system? - tuxidomasx, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5the problem is, 2% is a helluva lot of invalid clicks when you look at the big picture.
2% can account for millions of dollars of wasted money
it adds up. kudos for google for their excellent (if a little aggressive) filtering system. but just saying all fradulent clicks make up 2% of the total clicks is makes it sound like less of a problem than it really is. - Skitzzo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Um... I have a question. If they know they are missing 2% of the fraud, wouldn't they be able to find that 2%? I mean if they are good enough to catch 98% of the fraud, then they should be good enough to finish it off?
Also, even at 2% that's 50 million bucks last quarter alone. If the number is closer to the 30% that most third party sources claim, thats 800 million last quarter alone or roughly 3 Billion bucks a year.
http://www.seorefugee.com/seoblog/2006/12/11/google-takes-bribe-of-3-billion/ - HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If you want to test out that theory do it on an article with more expensive ads! Go find a Digg about "lawyers wanted for asbestos malpractice law suits who need to pay off college student loans"
- anitab83, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5This is why I always suggest tiny websites NOT use Adsense. Just a few clicks from the same IP address in a few hours, even by someone's mom who just wanted to see what the links were, can easily cause Google to drop a small publisher.
IMO - small publishers should wait until they have 1,000 uniques per day or so until they ad Adsense. That is, unless they have a Made For Adsense site, in which case they probably have this all figured out anyway. - mikeabundo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+198% of all direct marketing spend is wasted. 2% is fantastic by comparison.
- bigellow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Those who doubt the figures, I think, have lost a bit of a grip on reality. Google's properties alone get an average of 20 billion page views per day. The number of ads served as a result of this kind of traffic is astronomical. Add the fact that the Adsense network is vast, and likely adds quite a bit of traffic to this figure, and you've got a lot of accumulated traffic. Click fraud and bots and proxies exist, yes. Many are also undetected, yes. However, in order for these fraudsters to make a dent larger than, say, 5%, they would have to generate a billion page views per day. This would be necessary in order to simulate a typical human user who isn't going to click on every ad they see.
This is why it is so important than Google gets the lion's share of Internet traffic. It's so that they can see the trends of normal human activity, and can compare this to unusual human (bot) activity. If the bots (or human farms) carefully mimic the legitimate ad clickers, they would have to compete with billions of legitimate daily page views in order to generate high percentages.
Think of it this way. Shop-lifting exists. There is no way to stop it. It happens. Companies spend millions of dollars to prevent shop-lifting, but all it really stops are casual or opportunistic shop-lifters. The professional shop-lifters are still out there and still get away with it. HOWEVER, the number of successful professional shop-lifters compared to the number of legitimate shoppers in the world is a small percentage. So, retailers add this into their pricing and live with it. If 10% or 20% of retail inventory started going missing as a result of this, they would definitely ramp up security efforts. As long as it stays in the realm of small percentages, they are better off taking the hit than spending more than they would lose to try to combat it.
The same goes for click fraud. It exists. It will always exist. But, as long as the amount of fraudster activity is such a small minority compared to the amount of legitimate web traffic, eTailers are better off factoring this into their pricing and dealing with it rather than constantly coming up with new conspiracy theories about how click-fraudsters are somehow consisting of 1/5th of the world's Internet traffic. While we're at it, the ISPs of the world should start dealing with the issue of 20% of the web traffic through the pipelines coming from criminal activity. Let's stop 'em at the ISPs. ;) - bigellow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Aside from the fact that the numbers you used were incorrect, you are also using an argument that suggests that anything and everything is debatable to be intolerable. For instance, no matter how much large stores do to thwart shop-lifting, no matter what, there is going to be a certain percentage of inventory that will go mysteriously missing. As a result of this, prices reflect this lost inventory. Shouldn't we be picketing every store until they prevent shop-lifting 100% so that we don't have to pay inflated prices? Hardly. You could use your "baby dropping analogy" in this instance, as well, but it just turns a logical debate into an emotional debate, which doesn't solve anything.
The truth of the matter is, at some point, in order to eliminate shop-lifting 100%, stores would have to spend more on security than they might have lost in inventory. So, we're stuck with even HIGHER prices. Then, we could use the baby analogy once more to get everyone to pick up their pitchforks and torches.
What is being said, regarding click-fraud, is that fraudulent activity likely accounts for less than 2% of total advertisement activity. And that efforts are being made on a constant basis to combat this. However, nobody is going to make a perfectly stable operating system that can't have issues now and then... nobody is going to make a perfect website that cannot be hacked now and then... and nobody can make a ship that might not sink. With this fact in mind, the real goal is to reduce the negative possibilities to as small of a margin as possible. I think Google has done an excellent job in this regard. Others who wish to claim that click-fraud is rampant are those who are likely just the random lynch mob types that love to control the masses through panic, or those who have a service or product to sell you. - ripberge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I'm not buying 2%. I recently opened up an account with google and within a day I had $20 worth of ad clicks from their "content network" partners (adsense). While the search engine ad clicks I had from google totaled $0.
Now you can interpret this massive discrepancy as 1 of 2 things. A) Contextual ads are drastically more effective than paid search or B) its a result of website operators somehow manipulating clicks to earn themselves money.
I chose B and disabled the content network ads. Now I only run search engine ads and I've been happy with the results. Google--your content network blows. - uslacker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2And we should trust Google's internal numbers because....?
Sorry, but given all the money google makes on this, it is time for an independant audit. - ScottWoodard, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I know everyone's first instinct is to question the numbers since no data was actually revealed, but if nothing else this is at least a step in the right direction for Google. A little transparency could certainly help their pr.
- MOGua, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13 clicks from me.
- HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1You raise a good point.
If I was paying $1.00 per click via AdWords and I saw lots of people coming to my site but no sales I would blame AdWords/Google first.
It may just be that what I am selling sucks. People may click on my adv, come to my site and say, "this is a load of crap," and then leave.
Advertisers need to look at AdWords/AdSense for what it is. A click is a guarantee that someone came to your site, it's not a guarantee that they will buy anything.
With that said, if you see a ton of clicks coming from some small site you might (rightly) assume that fraud is involved. It might now be fraud on the part of the AdSense publisher though, it could be that one of your competitors found this small site that was getting your advs to run and just kept on clicking them! Or it might be some irate person trying to get that site banned from AdSense.
If advertisers want to get serious then they should move their advertising to a CPA network. That way they only get charged when someone buys something. The rate will be higher but it ensures there will be no fraud. Well, there could be some fraud if you have a very generous return policy! - EliseWright, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3I always appreciate it when actual statistics are offered to dispel rumors that have been circulating about a reputable corporation. While I am unclear about why Ghosemajumder would not reveal the exact number of invalid clicks, the disclosure of approximate percentages is definitely a step in the right direction.
- echimu, on 10/12/2007, -7/+6Shuman - First name
Ghose - Middle name
majumder - Last name
He is an Indian for sure. - MOGua, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1How about we all use the power of digg to do an experiment of our own?
Let's all disable our ad-blocks and start clicking the Google ads on this page.
Kevin, Alex: If you read this and see anything other than a "2%" increase in clicks, please let us know one way or another. - sonictruth, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1use tor network http://tor.eff.org/ plus tor network java api (to switch circuits)+ smart script :)
- sgirard, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1281,000,000. That's too many babies. You are quoting the number for the entire population of the US in 2002.
- AndreaMessenger, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3It's good to know that Google has both automatic and manual tools to deter fraud. And I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised that they catch approx 98% of fraudulent clicks -- I don't know if they could ever get to 100% because there are always hacks out there constantly coming up with new ways to beat the system.
- zopu, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1If you read the update, you'll see that this is actually 2% of 'invalid' clicks. i.e. the actual percentage of all clicks which are fraudulent is much much smaller.
- LtCarter47, on 10/12/2007, -9/+6Ghosemajumder, that's a hell of a name
- sawyer0413, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3OK, let's look at Google's 2% click-fraud rate differently. According to PregnancyandBaby.com: http://pregnancyandbaby.com/pregnancy/baby/How-many-babies-are-born-each-year-88.htm There were approximately 281,000,000 babies born in the U.S. in 2002. What if I told you that only 2% of those babies were dropped? Is that a good number? Well, that would mean that almost 5,600,000 million babies were dropped. YIKES AND WAZOO! Now, if I told you that it was your baby! How would you feel?
I think the Google click-fraud rate is a perspective, and maybe even industry driven. If you are a advertiser who has been handed a bill, and you don't have the corresponding returns for those clicks you paid for, in your mind, Google just dropped your baby. Worse yet! They dropped your baby, and they are asking you to pay them for doing it.
All of this assumes that either of the extreme numbers is accurate and the whole truth. My experience tells me that the truth is probably some number in-between, and a number over which there will always be debate.
Bottom-line, Google needs to recognize that they need to deliver value to their customers. I can tell you that if you delivered customers to my door, ready to buy my product, I would gladly pay a few dollars for each of those referrals. But, if you deliver window-shoppers (no pun intended), I'm going to be upset. In essence, Google needs to work to drop even fewer babies. ;) - digjedi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Shows that Google is in trouble. Why would it need to "prove" this if not a huge issue happening all the time. All Google is able to prove is that they can catch 2% of the fraud, not that 2% is the total of all fraud.
- topnotchnet, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1this centuries version of a pyramid scheme nothing more nothing less
great if your in at the beginning
ad block ftw - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4What a load of rubbish that article is.
2% fraud, hahahhaha - Google have NEVER released the real fruad figures and NEVER will as they would be nearer 50% than 2%.
Google Adsense is for scamming bloggers and Made For Adsense websites - any advertiser worth their salt wouldnt waste their time with Google adwords these days. - fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2So...what Google's really saying is they catch about 2% of the click fraud perpetuated through their ads, and now claim that this is a good thing.
Way to go! Only 98% of the fraud remains!
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