Adwords Click Fraud - Definition

Over a number of posts I will be discussing the basics of click fraud. What it is, how to detect it, how to report it back to Google and lastly what Google is doing about click fraud.

Part one is a definition of click fraud.

In short click fraud is the nefarious clicking on Adwords ads in an effort to gain an advantage other than that specified by the Advertiser.

Click fraud comes in two main types, clicks to increase a content publishers revenue and clicks by competitors to impact on a company's Adwords budget.

Fraudulent clicks to increase a publishers revenue is when a company or individual is using the Adsense program to monetise their web site content. Using this programme, Google display relevant ads on the website and pay the owner when someone clicks on the ads or in the case of cost per impression for a certain number of visits to the site to display an ad.

The fraud occurs when the owner clicks on links displayed on their site to increase the revenue generated. These clicks may be manual or automatic via a ClickBot (discussed later).

Competitor fraud is when companies or individuals click on the ads of companies competing on the same keywords as themselves in an effort to drive up their advertisig costs or to exhaust the competitions daily adword budget so they can then display their own competing messages to sell the same or similar products.

Click-bots are the way that organised click fraud is committed. The bot is a piece of computer code which is programed to click on a particular ad over and over again automatically.

Should advertisers be afraid of click fraud? Yes they should, it is thought to be one of the main concerns for Google about their future and there are reports of large numbers of hijacked computers which can act as a network of Clickbots launching sustained attacks. These are being employed by organised crime gangs so the report says.

In the next post in this series I will discuss how to detect if your ads are the subject of click fraud.

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(AF) Click fraud software from Who's Clicking Who