Google is to allow its advertisers to see the scale of
the problem of click fraud in an attempt to reassure them that they
are not paying over the odds for their ads placed through
Google.
Click fraud is commonly conducted by website owners wanting to
generate increased demand from advertisers by ramping up increased
views of their ads, or rivals to advertisers wanting to increase
their operating costs by generating multiple clicks on their
ads.
Google will now allow its advertisers to view the amount of
fraudulent clicks it detects on their ads for the first time.
Up until now, the click fraud figures have remained secret with
Google simply removing fraudulent clicks from invoice figures and
not charging for them.
It is making the detection figures available to advertisers to
try and convince them that click fraud is not a major issue,
despite itself being involved in a high-profile court case, where
it is accused of not doing enough to counter the problem or
adequately compensating victims.
Advertisers will now see for themselves what percentage of
fraudulent clicks make up the total views of each advert, although
there is no guarantee that Google detects every fraudulent
click.
More details on Google’s plan are available here:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/07/estimating-invalid-clicks.html
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