Click Fraud…Is Google Finally Solving the Problem?
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | March 1, 2007 | Share This
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Click fraud is a common concern for advertisers and search vendors alike. Are we paying for fraudulent clicks? What are the vendors doing to combat the issue? Today, Google released numbers to back up its longstanding claim that Google is well-equipped to handle the dilemma. From the Inside Adwords blog,
“As part of our effort to provide you with more information on invalid clicks, we wanted to give you some additional background on how our systems, processes, and teams work together to manage click fraud for our advertisers, while also sharing what the overall landscape of invalid click detection at Google looks like…
“Our Click Quality team investigates every inquiry we receive from advertisers who believe they may have been affected by undetected click fraud. Many of these cases are misunderstandings, but in most cases where malicious activity is found, the clicks have already been filtered out (and not charged for) by our real-time filters. Because of the broad operation of our proactive detection, the relatively rare cases we find of advertisers being affected by undetected click fraud constitute less than 0.02% of all clicks.”
That’s right - Google claims that their current click fraud rate is .02% (hey, that’s pretty close to their job acceptance rate!), meaning they are able to track 99.98% of all invalid clicks prior to request for investigation from their AdWords clients. To help support their claim, Google describes their 3-step process for detection:
“At a high level, we have a three stage-system for invalid click detection: (1) our real-time filters, (2) offline analysis, and (3) reactive investigations.”
The first two stages are “proactive” and filter out the bulk of click fraud. The third (”much smaller”) stage is reactive and includes “the relatively rare cases where advertisers are affected by undetected click fraud”. The ‘reactive’ stage of fraud detection is that .02% of Google’s click traffic.
Naturally, Google’s critics immediately responded. Some argue that Google’s numbers are a miscalculation, while others wonder why it took Google so long to release this data. Danny Sullivan provides an in-depth analysis of the terminology behind click fraud, noting,
“There are clicks that might get past Google and advertisers both. Potentially, this could be a high percentage. However, if the detected rate is low, I tend to think the undetected rate is also low or near the same level.”
The fraudulent traffic-tracking environment is murky, at best, to most Google outsiders. Google’s technical demonstration of methods (though somewhat above the heads of most Adwords clients) helps reassure advertisers that Google seeks to provide the least amount of error in advertiser-vendor financial transactions. Google reports that moving forward they will implement even more proactive changes to help combat click fraud (as summarized by Search Engine Land):
- IP Filtering: Advertisers can block particular IP addresses that they think are fraudulent. When this happens, people coming from these IP addresses will not see ads.
- Invalid Revenue & Enhanced Reporting: Advertisers will get more detailed information that currently provided.
- Invalid Clicks Resource Center: Further guidance about filtering and click fraud questions will be added.
- Standardized Inquiry Reporting: Google already has a reporting form for advertisers. But some advertisers want to provide even more information, logs, and other data. So Google says it will explore a more standardize way to take material in.”
Topics: Google |