Google unveils click-fraud figures

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.

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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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