Google & click fraud auditing
When you tell people that you get money (albeit pence) each time someone clicks an ad your blog, the first thing they ask is: ‘why don’t you just sit there all day clicking them yourself?’
It is an obvious weak point in Google’s business model and a small industry, third-party click fraud auditing, has emerged to protect advertisers. Google’s now hit out at the main players, accusing them of using flawed methodologies that greatly overestimate the number clicks an ad receives. In one example, an auditor accuses Google of charging their client for 1,278 fraudulent clicks, for a period in which Google only recorded 850 in total.
It is tempting to spend a little time mindlessly clicking ads on your own site. It may even be the kind of work a monkey could be trained to do. But I reckon I’d soon be caught out. With cookies, IP address tracking and other complex tricks it’s not difficult to detect that kind of fraud. To avoid detection I’d have to wash my PC down regularly, use lots of different internet service providers and do my clicking at different times of day. Suddenly, it doesn’t look like easy money after all.
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