How Handy: Google’s New Click Fraud Estimation Tool
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Written By Reprise Media | July 26, 2006 | Share This
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If you’re an AdWords advertiser, chances re you’ve wished more than once that Google would just give you the straight story on the bad clicks you’ve been getting. Well, the guessing games could be coming to an end, as the Inside AdWords blog announces a “new AdWords feature enabling advertisers to have a much more detailed picture of invalid click activity in their account.”
Because Google’s been lurching toward increasing openness on the subject of click fraud since their 90 million dollar settlement, this doesn’t quite rate as a ‘flying pig’ moment, but it’s still an entirely welcome development. Two new check boxes, ‘Invalid Clicks’ and ‘Invalid Clicks Rate’ (found under the ‘Account’ tab in ‘Advanced Options’) “will show virtually all the invalid clicks affecting an account,” writes Trust & Safety Business Manager Shuman Ghosemajumder. He goes on to explain the need for the tool:
“One of the most controversial issues related to the topic of click fraud has been estimating how big the problem is. Estimates from third-parties (usually from consultants who have a financial incentive to make the problem seem very large) have been both inconsistent and greatly exaggerated due to their methodologies. Advertisers have always been able to compare their log data with their AdWords charges to calculate an estimate of the number of invalid clicks in their own account. This new tool will make estimating invalid click activity much easier.”
We applaud this move toward transparency, and we can forgive that swipe at ‘third party estimates’ - even though Google’s long-standing opacity on the subject necessitated outside assessments. We wonder how closely the numbers provided by Google’s new tool will match up to the ones we’ve been getting using third party tracking… Check out the AdWords Help tutorial on how to get started with the new tool here.
Topics: Click Fraud, Google |