Google has consented to pay $90 million after it was sued for click fraud last Feb. Companies usually bid for keywords to get their sites displayed in Sponsored links during the Google search for that specific keyword. Now, every click costs the company. For eg, lets say Bank Of America bids for a keyword "online banking" and settles at $2 per click. Now you google for "online banking" and click on Bankofamerica.com which gets displayed in the sponsored links. Once you click, BofA has to pay $2 to google. The fraud happens when you run a script which just searches on this keyword and click on BofA link thereby increasing the expenses for BofA.
Google is really investing much to identify a fraud click and filter it out. It has roped in Industry experts, PhD's in AI, machine learning and statistics to sort out this issue. But click fraud is still a real challenge to Google.
Any thoughts / ideas to solution this issue ??
Read more about click Fraud here
1 comment:
Whatever Google does, it must vociferously protect the interests of the advertisers.
Also for newbies, the concept of CLICK=$$ must not be openly publicised as that would tempt the integrity. A case in the point is the fact of countless blogs suggesting tips (sic) to bypass the Google's detection mechanism.
Google has a reputation. It should count on it... i.e. users need not know the exact mechanism of how this thing works because then it makes it easier to be manipulated.
Yahoo! is also a worthy competitor BUT they both are in same industry and taking cues from banking industry must maintain a common industry accessible black-list. I believe it'll really help to deter would-be fraudsters.
Also, the fact that Google is spending (I hope they really are) a lot of their time and energy in anti-fraud techniques could be emphasized every now and then.
Related suggestion: Google should try to acquire Cliksor
Why?? because (I am a web publisher too and I believe in MERITocracy and not get rich quick fundas...) Clicksor has an excellent and fresh technology in its kitty...automatic text links and Google has an excellent command in the PPC (Pay Per Click) business. Also Clicksor is not doing so well financially...I believe that the next logical step whether for Yahoo! or Google should be to acquire Clicksor's technology and add more feathers to their cap.
A warning for Yahoo! Publishing Network-they'll also have to deal with such issues quite soon.
It may appear a complex and discouraging issue but no, this field has a lot of time to live I believe and with a touch here and a fix there hoping that the Internet community at large will only benefit...
Take care, With Regards to all
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