Nickname: Steaming

Review: We were also getting excellent click through (not to the same tune as the Hotel Booking) and generic listings in 2004, then suddenly the bottom fell out with no rhyme or reason. We also contacted Google with questions and all we ever got back was vague standardized statements, but our competitors seemed to always stay at the top...is there is "secret" way to pay Google off?

Date reviewed: May 28, 2007 12:57 AM

Nickname: Prosenjit

Review: ClickBot was made as a Web and load testing tool for Web developers. Nowadays people are using this for earning money. Even I have created a solution. You can see its features here: http://prosenjit.info

Date reviewed: May 8, 2006 8:43 PM

Nickname: gregbo

Review: IMO, click fraud is a problem because what is being charged for is actually difficult to reliably account for, given that clicks can be cheaply and covertly generated. What surprises me most of all is that the PPC programs were launched despite the fact that this was well-known by anyone with an understanding of the underlying Internet infrastructure and protocols.

Date reviewed: Apr 18, 2006 9:14 PM

Nickname: Carlito

Review: I think the most fraud is generated from CONTENT MATCH searches. When you allow for a non-legitimate website to get paid for clicks to an advertisers' ad. They will want to make more money. In doing so they could have their friends, and anyone else click the ads for them. In result Google would not be able to find out that those are invalid clicks because it is a different user acting like they are interested. We do a ton of advertising with Google and would never leave them. They try their best to solve the issue when a user is caught by going out of control (like a thief stealing so much that the cops finally catch him). We turned off our Content Search to lessen the fraud. This in result will allow us only to display on credible websites (Google, AOL, MSN). You should do the same NOT SUE!

Date reviewed: Apr 6, 2006 2:30 PM

Nickname: dburdon

Review: Google and Yahoo are so dismissive of click fraud it's unbelievable. They're directly profiting from it. So they should be held accountable.

Date reviewed: Apr 5, 2006 12:25 AM

Nickname: kate

Review: I recently started looking into other means of local advertising and found the BusinessWeek online directory. You can advertise on BW locally, very inexpensively, via the online directory. It is powered by a company called DirectoryM- www.directorym.com. And the best part is it is not CPC. There is no chance of click fraud!

Date reviewed: Mar 10, 2006 5:05 PM

Nickname: mike

Review: I have friends of mine that have looked into a company called DiretoryM. They provide the business directory for BusinessWeek online. Many categories listed.

Date reviewed: Mar 10, 2006 4:56 PM

Nickname: Consultant

Review: The risk is effected by the size and quality of the network your ads are carried on. Contextual "Content Match" ads may have a higher risk since they are carried on a larger network of lesser quality Web sites than regular PPC keyword ads. There is no reliable data on how significant click-fraud is as the article points out. Could this issue be fueled in part by advertisers frustrated with decreasing ROI on their PPC spending and looking for someone to blame for it? Click-fraud is easily detected by looking at your PPC history for a big increase in click-thrus without changing anything coupled with a big decrease in ROI. It's easy to spot. You don't need fancy software or a third-party service. But just as companies cashed in on the media's "privacy scare" regarding cookies a few years ago, now they're milking paranoid advertisers thinking their PPC ROI is poor due to click-fraud. As John Stossel would say on 20/20, 'Give Me A Break.' Avoid Content Match if you're paranoid.

Date reviewed: Mar 9, 2006 7:25 PM

Nickname: John Mc

Review: We ran a small campaign compared to some of the stories I have read. We got very granular in our advertising only advertising a particular product line. We ended up with hundreds of dollars of PPC advertising via an adwords campaign, & eventually gave up.. A lot of the revenues of Google & Yahoo are from essentially bogus advertising PPC and not PPS (pay per sale).. & there is some hick attorney in Texas that is settling the case on my behalf? Dream on. Do you think I want more Pay per click when I know it doesn't work? That's like throwing good money after bad!! No thanks.. John McCarthy

Date reviewed: Mar 9, 2006 5:12 AM

Nickname: SeattleSEM

Review: Google is amazing. Here's the rhetoric they use about click, being used successfully by other large organizations that feel they don't have to explain themselves or be accountable to anyone. "We are living in a post-Google world and click fraud exists. We are doing a great job combating click fraud. We cannot tell you exactly what we are doing or how many people are doing whatever it is that we do because that will only give the click fraud terrorists insight into our click fraud defense." "But what about the click fraud terrorist attacks that we read about all the time, you might ask." In some cases, click fraud does occur and we investigate those cases. I can't provide any further detail."

Date reviewed: Mar 8, 2006 10:03 PM