Nickname: Jeff

Review: If you look within the ad words interface within the reports tab you can find an "Invalid Clicks" report. If you review all your major spending keyowrds for the invalid click rate and a few seem to be too high or too low call Google and say this must be wrong. If you're tracking success on a keyword level, a relatively low invalid clicks rate coupled with a poor conversion rate can mean clickfraud is occurring.

Date reviewed: Feb 3, 2007 3:47 PM

Nickname: MediaSeller

Review: Click fraud is a horror show for the small business advertiser. The resposne from the large engines is similar to that of an oligopoly. What about the fraud in what sites are reporting as far as their visitors and viewers ship? There is a can of worms many don't want to open. A balanced media campaign across many platforms is most sensible and likely to succeed. Ther world is not so very different now as it was whan newspapers were fabricating subscribers.

Date reviewed: Jul 11, 2006 5:15 PM

Nickname: multifunction

Review: Having tried PPC's with most of the major players and felt the austere caress of the faux clicksters on my bank balance I now choose the safety and security of localized ad targeting with Success Through Advertising for my precious dollars. I'd rather have something that works with an emerging new player than be caught again.

Date reviewed: Jul 9, 2006 6:59 AM

Nickname: tosh

Review: Google is being evil by not disclosing all in relation to click fraud.

Date reviewed: Jul 9, 2006 3:56 AM

Nickname: ifor

Review: Then what do you get in return? Bunch of useless morons!

Date reviewed: Jul 8, 2006 4:50 AM

Nickname: Anonymous

Review: The same way the SEC detects insider trading. Your click fraud is worthless unless you concentrate it either on certain advertisers (to waste their money) or certain publishers (to make them money), and your fraud can be detected by comparing with other non-fraud-inflated campaigns.

Date reviewed: Jul 8, 2006 3:13 AM

Nickname: Bob Gordon

Review: This fraud situation is exacerbated by an advertising model in which advertisers have all but eliminated any of their traditional risk. By only buying keywords through networks, advertisers are really saying they don't care where their traffic or leads come from. It's only a numbers game. Any quality of editorial content has become irrelevant to them and gets trivialized in their goal to pay as little as possible in a cost-per-click model. Conversely, these same advertisers can have the final say in this argument by only accepting a metric and conversion rate for the ads they place that "pays out." Wise guy publishers who cheat and steal and bulk click the ads are only creating a (very) short term benefit because at some point when advertisers really pay attention to where their ads are placed and where the clicks come from they can easily determine which sites deliver higher advertising values and are worth more. Bob Gordon President www.theautochannel.com

Date reviewed: Jul 7, 2006 8:18 PM

Nickname: Jeremy Chrysler at ValidClick

Review: Click fraud is, indeed, a problem. But in the long term, the industry will survive. My company has been very successful validating our network clicks with a combination of client side and server side scripting. Not only does it allow us to protect our advertisers and those of our partners from fraud, but our method also allows us to quickly identify the bad apples. In my experience, most publishers provide good traffic, but the bad ones pull down conversions for everyone. The key advantage that publishers have in the fight against click fraud is that they have the freedom to act on suspicion to filter clicks. As soon as publishers get more aggressive in filtering bad clicks and vetting bad publishers, the problem will be greatly minimized.

Date reviewed: Jul 7, 2006 7:11 PM

Nickname: drevil

Review: What is amazing is all the hoopla about click fraud when no one says a thing about paying for x million viewers on TV and running ads there that we know people never even see. If people are so worried about click fraud then they should just go back to paying for having the ad served (that's what you do in TV and radio). And if they try and go to only paying when people purchase, they will run out of places to advertise unless the percent of sale is at least 20%. Why should I drive a person traffic and a sale and not get a large percentage?

Date reviewed: Jul 7, 2006 6:57 PM

Nickname: ClickFraudMafia

Review: If I've got tens/hundreds/thousands of machines (multiple IPs, browser settings/cookies) set up across the country/world, with automated software that searches/browses Web sites and clicks on ads at reasonable times (work hours vs. home hours, weekends vs weekdays, etc.), how can any measure be devised that distinguishes those machines from an actual human?

Date reviewed: Jul 7, 2006 1:41 PM