Surprise! Google Says Click Fraud Problem is Exaggerated

On the heels of reports that Google is joining Yahoo and MSN to address the click fraud problem, Google has released a report criticizing earlier attempts to quantify the problem as exaggerations.

According to this article in the Washington Post:

"Google said reports about click fraud have exaggerated the problem and could scare away advertisers. In its report yesterday, the company attacked the methodology used and conclusions drawn by click-fraud consultants, arguing they either lacked the technology to differentiate between a fraudulent click and a Web page reloading or that their technology improperly counted a single click as multiple clicks. Google cited specific examples of such methodological problems.

The reports ‘have led to vastly inflated estimates’ of the problem, said Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's product manager of trust and safety. ‘We saw media reports and data from consultants submitted by advertisers and it didn't make any sense. This report details the flaws and explains the discrepancy. We want to help consulting firms.’"

As we’ve previously posted, declining advertiser confidence has forced the largest pay-per-click advertising companies (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) to finally address the click fraud problem. Google’s latest report is an attempt at damage control. Hopefully, it will lead to an honest appraisal of the problem and the granting of additional assurances to participating advertisers.

For more information, see Google Says About Click Fraud Are Overblown in the Washington Post and Google calls click fraud estimates overblown on CNET News.

Technorati Tags:  google, click fraud

Comments

[John Diffenthal]

For a fraud to take place, someone has to benefit. On that basis there are only two types of fraud possible:
- AdSense fraud, where a publisher clicks AdWords on his pages in order to generate an income for himself
- Competitive fraud, where a competitor clicks an AdWord, not to generate an income for himself but to incur a cost for the AdWord advertiser

AdSense fraud can be avoided by AdWord advertisers by not placing their AdWords on Google's content network.

Competitive fraud is virtually impossible to eliminate, but AdWords advertisers have to take a judgement about whether the potential costs of competitive fraud outweigh the very real benefits of an AdWords campaign.