Google's Fraud Squad Battles Phantom Clicks

An anonymous reader writes "It's an open secret that low cost workers in India, China and other countries are hired to boost traffic for online ads by clicking on text links, banners etc. Internet marketers facing high advertising fees on search networks like Google are becoming increasingly concerned about this form of online fraud. This problem has reached a critical stage and even Google recognizes that it has been the target of individuals and entities "using some of the most advanced spam techniques for years". A Google spokesperson said the company has "applied what we have learned with search to the click fraud problem and employed a dedicated team and proprietary technology to analyse clicks.""

Open secret?

> It's an open secret that low cost workers in India, China and other countries
> are hired to boost traffic for online ads by clicking on text links, banners etc.

That's like 'common knowledge', right?

Anyway, I click on lots of lots of ads. The ones that make it through AdBlock, anyway. Shortly before I add them to my block list. I do hope I'm not skewing anyone's statistics. I'd hate for commercial websites to suffer.

Re:Open secret?

> Anyway, I click on lots of lots of ads.

So tell me, have you gained those three inches yet? I, er, have a friend who was wondering...

Re:Open secret?

You would hate to see it if commercially supported websites disappeared. I don't know what percentage of Slashdot's revenue comes from ads versus paying subscribers, but you'd better believe that all this bandwidth we burn up all day long has to be paid for by somebody.

Ads are like taxes.. they support the things that people want to use but don't want to pay for.

-B

Re:Open secret?

For 2004 about 96% of Google's revenue has come from ads.
Here is some more detailed info [searchenginewatch.com].
Because of thier desire for the IPO alot of financial info is now available.

Re:Open secret?

You would hate to see it if commercially supported websites disappeared. I don't know what percentage of Slashdot's revenue comes from ads versus paying subscribers, but you'd better believe that all this bandwidth we burn up all day long has to be paid for by somebody.

Ads are like taxes.. they support the things that people want to use but don't want to pay for.

While this is true, it's also true that the best ads are those that either make people laugh or are innocuous enough not to piss people off.

The pepsi ads during the super bowl are examples of the first

The text ads in google search and gmail are examples of the second.

People will find ways around ads that bother them past a certain threshold. Too many online advertisers think like spammers - in your face, if we piss them off it doesn't matter because they weren't going to buy our crap anyway, etc.

Google's got it right. Small. Innocuous. Relevant to what you're looking for.

Re:Open secret?

Google's got it right. Small. Innocuous. Relevant to what you're looking for.

Yup. Like most of the geeks here, I mostly use browsers that can do things like block images from sites, so as to cut down on the more obnoxious ads. But I've also bought a fair number of things online over the years. And when I'm looking to buy something, I tend to first ask google about it. Both the matches and the accompanying ads are useful in that case.

Dunno how well it works with the general population, but google's approach is fairly good for people who are trying to find something and just get annoyed by irrelevant ads.

We oughta let them know that we appreciate their subtler approach to the whole topic.

In a few cases, commercial sites have asked me how I found them, and I've enjoyed telling them that I used google. That oughta give some of their marketing people a bit of a pause, since they probably "know" that google's approach isn't very successful at selling.

Re:Open secret?

google's approach is fairly good for people who are trying to find something and just get annoyed by irrelevant ads.


I second that. I lost a keyring while on a cross contry hike. The chances of finding them are very slim. They are somewhere in about a 1 mile square wooded area with no trails and lots of underbrush.

I was apalled by the price the dealer wanted for a replacement transponder key and remote. It took some weeding out of the Google results, but I found programming instructions online. Keys varied from $18 to $125 each online. Remotes were about double that. I bought the keys (I got an extra spare) and remote online for less than what the dealer wanted for 1 key. (over $60) The dealer wanted over $150 for the remote. I did the programming myself and had a key shop cut the keys for $1.00 each. Google saved me over $140 for the keys and remote. Needless to say, stuff I wasn't looking for was just in the way. If you are advertising, show up in a search and in good reviews. (yes I check history, discussion boards, and BBB) I'm not a easy target for online fraud. Advertising mobile locksmith services when I'm searching for key blanks is useless. (Nice try Streetkeys) When I need a mobile locksmith, I'll search for one.

Hats off to Coastal Tech for having all the programming information online for the keys and remote for the Prius. Thanks for the affordable keys.

Same thing when I'm looking for bulk inkjet ink, don't advertise your refilled cartridges. I'm looking for supplies to do it myself. Show up in revelant searches, not anything remotely related. It'll save you advertising dollars and me time weeding out the cruft.

Re:Open secret?

There is a good way and a bad way to do ads. Google does ads right IMO. Simple and clear text ads. I block pop-ups and flash ads with Firefox. If someone wants to advertise to me, then it has to be on my terms.

Imagine if a new "no change" bit was put on all tv sets so that when a commercial came on that you did not like, you were not able to change the channel? I have two little children and when smut tv ads come on, the channel is changed.

There are too many pr0n and gimmick ads on the net. I don't mind targeted ads, for example, tech ads on /. I don't mind, though I don't care for graphical and/or flash ads and usually block them. Another thing to keep in mind with text based ads are that they are very hard to block, especially if the server grabs the text ad and sends down the HTML, then you cannot block by server such as *servedby.*.

It is not the job of consumers to keep a business or business model afloat. It is the businesses job to make sure they are changing to meet demand. If most of the internet advertising companies stop with the spyware, popups, homepage jacking, etc and switched to plain text or simple HTML, there would be a lot less effort in blocking the ads and probably many more clicks on the ads.

Re:Open secret?

Exactly. I don't mind ads. What I mind (and tend to block) are ads that interfere with my ability to read the web site content that I want to read, or mess with my browser/computer working the way I want it to. This includes everything mentioned above (spyware, popups, flash, tracking cookies, etc.) as well as ad servers that can't keep up and stall things. I can't count the number of times I've been stuck waiting for some poor server at doubleclick to send something so that the page would finish rendering.

Google's ads have teo more important features

RELIVANCE and HONESTY. So many sites just slather any and every ad they can get. Well this has two problems: First, most of the ads are just for shit I don't want. I have no intrest in it, so I just start filtering the ads out. Second, and probably more importantly, so many of the ads are scam-like in nature. Punch the money and win, you have a waiting message, block popups (in a popup ad), etc.

Well with Google's ads, espically the ones on Google itself, I find them highly relivant and honest. When I search for something, a list of companies that want to sell me that thing pop up on the right hand side. In fact, that's how I find shops to buy things, quite frequently.

I wanted a Bogen tripod. I had used them, and was quite happy with the quality. Problem: I do not know where one gets Bogen tripods. So I use Google. On the left was informational links, such as Bogen's own site, on the right was a whole list of pro video shops happy to sell me Bogen tripods. I browsed a couple shops, chose one, and bought the tripod.

Google holds the record for being the only ad provider that I've ever clicked through and immediatly bought something. Others I've clicked on for intrest (I do from /. once and a while) but only on Google have I gone straight to buying, and I've done so on many occasions. Reason is that the Google ads are completely relivant to what I want, so when I'm in buy mode, they instantly provide me with places selling what I'm interested in.

Re:Open secret?

Not at all. In the contrary, advertising has a lot of externalities.

Let me make a example; You own property, you rent it out to a company wanting to put up a billboard. With this, you make $X profit. The company considers the effects of the ad-campaign worth more than they pay you, so they also come out ahead.

However, the other property around your migth degrade in value as a result of the visually noisy advertising. Or the people passing trough every day migth consider the ads annoying and be willing to pay (in aggregate !) more to be free of the ads than your profit is.

Summa summarum, a net loss, but the loss is on other parts than you and the advertiser.

Other example, which more slashdotters will agree with;

You hire me to send 1 million emails with ads for your product. The sales generated give you $5000 in profit, and I do the mailing for $2000, having costs of my own of $500.

We both come out ahead, you by $3000 and I by $1500. $4500 in sum. Looks good, no ?

Until you consider the loss for the 1 million receivers. If the sum of annoyances at the ISP and end-user exceeds 0.45 *cent* pro message, then emailing the spam wasn't really profitable. It only looked that way to you because you get the profits, and someone else carries the cost.

If you think about it, this ain't rare in advertising, though rarely is it so blatant as with spam.

Re:Open secret?

That seems very shortsighted - what's wrong with well targetted text-only banner ads like Google serves? They're not annoying and they pay for the websites you're visiting (do you want to enter your credit card number on *every* site you visit?

The problem ads are the completely untargetted popups, stupid annoying animated gifs, flash, and increasingly DHTML floating objects (see the Dilbert site for details).

Rather than discouraging sites from using adverts at all (which will result in many useful sites shutting down), shouldn't we be enouraging them to use acceptable, and dare I say it - useful advertising? If for one find Google's *targetted* ads useful.

The same can be said of TV ads - if I see an ad that looks funny while watching TV I'll actually watch it, but if (like the vast majority) the ad is designed to be as annoying as possible, I'll just fastforward through it using my MythTV box. The advertisers need to be trained that spamming the consumers with annoying crap is unacceptable, but providing them with well targetted and not annoying ads is worthwhile.

Gee.

Thanks for the link to Google.

Does anyone have a mirror just in case?

Re:Gee.

Here you go [google.ca].

Re:Gee.

Thanks for the link to Google.

Does anyone have a mirror just in case?

Sure, no problem. The mirror is here: http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:zhool8dxBV4J: www.google.com/+google&hl=en [216.239.59.104]

Re:Gee.

Hmm, from Google's cache of www.google.com:

"Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content."

That is shirking corporate responsibility if ever I saw it.

Stuart

Re:Gee.

Google mirror [alltooflat.com]

Perhaps the next form of spamming?

Imagine a worm that infects machines that, instead of being an open email spam relay, surfs ad-heavy sites and simulates webclicks.

Already exists, kind of.

There are worms out there that make computers dial expensive premium phone services (phone sex and the like) using their modems. This is a godsend to the guys running phone sex lines... in the past, they had to (and did) break into phone line distribution boxes and install small electronic diallers (or pay a phone company repair guy to do this). Now they can just spread these things from the comfort of their own home. I still have a modem in my computer (for faxing stuff), but the phone line is disconnected when not in use. A normal virus might send my personal data (which is encrypted anyway), or trash my hard drive (which is properly backed-up), but this stuff might run up a god-awful phone bill. And no, phone companies will not refund any of it; they did not even do so in cases where rogue diallers were installed on people's phone lines.

I wouldn't be surprised if the operators of certain sites (usually with the more obnoxious and dubious ads) would stoop to such methods to boost their income from ads.

Golden opportunity

Google has a golden opportunity to avoid being snipped. Please deliver 40,000 advertising clicks now, or we will be forced to go through with our operation.

Best regards,

419

I wonder how many times they've punched the monkey

Hopefully they've gotten that damn thing at least a few times.. he's always too quick for me

"proprietary technology"

When people talk about "proprietary" or "patented" technology, do they think it will actually make their product look better?

how much

How much can a site make with fraud schemes like this?
I was under the impession internet ads didn't pay that much anymore.
Would the cost of even 3rd world workers not be almost the same as the profit from clicking links all day?

Clicking helps their ad karma ranking

Last time I used google adwords, I noticed that they had a mechanism where ads that got clicked on a lot got some sort of karma points. So if you click on your competitors ads, it will cost them money, but maybe also help their ad karma. I don't know the specifics about this. Maybe it is a google secret. Does anyone else know more? My guess is the cost per click hurts a lot more than the karma gained in most cases.

Re:Clicking helps their ad karma ranking

the position for your adwords ads is based on CTR (clickthroughrate (%), as in clicks divided by impressions * 100) and the price you're willing to pay

Automate it

Why would someone hire people to click banners when you could automate it?

You just need a bit of programming to parse webpages looking for Google (or other companies' ads).

Add some ip-spoofing (easy if the destination web server runs Windows) and make the program distribute clicks using some kind of probability distribution (for instance, a Gauss distribution), and it will look perfectly legal.

Indeed, if you find any ads company that still pays per click, and set some of those banners in a site of yours, you could earn a lot of money.

I described deeply this procedure in 1999 in a paper called Simulating hits to a HTTP server [teleco.upv.es]. Sadly, it is only in Catalan (if you have interest, e-mail me and I'll try to translate it for you).

Re:Automate it

With Google it is not as easy as some other companies out there.

Google's code is placed on the site as a javascript include that then gets rendered to the screen at runtime when a browser executes it.
That means if you have a script hit the page and get the source for it, all you get is the javascript include.

If you write a page that onClick let's you view the content of the Google IFrame (the Javascript include dumps out an Iframe that then fills with a page off of Google), you will then see more of the code.
They have several layers of javascript and none of the pages render out links directly, so it is hard to scrape them with a bot, since a bot only sees the source.

You could load up the pages individually (outside of the iframe) and take a look at them, but it doesn't always work and also when you load that page, it sends back a reference to Google of what the site/location/name of the page you are loading looks like.
So if you have a site ballsweat.com that has Google Ads on it so that you can look to see what the ads look like, as you start messing around with it to get a better idea, they will see that it is no longer showing up on the site and instead showing up on your hard drive (or if you like you can put it on your server and then they can read your code that you are using).

That alone will tip them that you are looking into it - but then you could claim that it was someone else and not you (assuming it was on a drive), but then that could also mean that you just use someone else's site to test.

So anyway, back to getting the data, you would have to load up the source, and then either parse the javascript and execute it to build it the same way a browser does (hopefully there are objects in Windows that let you simulate this and then dump the post rendered contents into a variable which you can scan - don't know about that),.
OCR is out of the question since that is not going to get you the proper link (the links are listed, but the payment only goes out if you click on the link which first routes it through a Google site so it can register the click and track the stats and then redirects you to the site). When you mouseover it shows the regular site link, but that is done via javascript.

Then you run the issue that Google would have to be retarded to just let a single IP crunch through a ton of ads everyday.
So then you have to worry about spoofing - in this case it could arguably be blind spoofing - but the problem there isn't that you want to load web pages - that would actually work with blind spoofing (say I am computer A, and I want to tell server B that computer C is connecting to it, and that it should send the page data there), but the problem is again that it is only going to send raw HTML/javascript source down that connection and it is them going to drop off of that machine.
So the site (Google in this case since you loaded a page and then "clicked" a link) registers the hit, but the page never gets rendered, so the Google page is never displayed and the redirect never happens - one could assume that Google is aware of this and wouldn't count that as a hit since the other page never gets loaded.

So even if you could past all of that (heh, feels like shades of Oceans 11), then there is the issue that Google (technically it isn't Google, but a series of companies that they farm out the AdWords content - learned that from an investment bank friend that sat in on the IPO workings - yay) monitors this shit and looks for anomalies.
So while you were getting 200 hits a 2 clicks every day for a month, if you all of the sudden are getting 2000 hits and day and 200 clicks, they are going to investigate your site.
If nothing has changed to show that there should be new interest in your site (new ad placement, new content, etc) and they can do searches and see that there aren't any new sites pointing to you - then all signs point to you cheating.

And then on top of all of that, we can show that a Gaussian distribution

One answer is simple...

the answer to one of the three cases in there is simple...the cost-per-click payment model is eventually going to go away...what's gonna replace it? i dunno...if i knew that, i could probably be a marketing exec for google...

seriously though...this doesn't solve the problem of judging how popular a link it, by how much traffic it gets (since much of the traffic can be false), but it does solve the "drive-by-clicking" technique that can cost companies money...

You saw it here first.

Here's an idea. Don't charge per click but per sale generated. The advertizer is happy, because he gets what he pays for. Google is happy, because the customer pays for what they get. There wouldn't be any idea in boosting up the click rate, and fraud would be virtually impossible.

Re:You saw it here first.

and if the advertise doesn't sell anything?

if they want to generate traffic to a page where you can download a paper which might generate a sale, which takes place via phone and take weeks to complete?

if google switched over to CPA they'd lose a looooot of money

Re:You saw it here first.

Don't charge per click but per sale generated.

Which then gives the advertisers incentive to trick people into comming to their site.

Then, they get nobody buying the product advertized, BUT they get more recognition, etc.

In fact, I don't like click-counting at all... only views. Why should the web-page designer be held repsonsible because the advertiser makes crappy ad-banners, or tries to sell junk products?

Do you get to pay for TV ads based on the number that go out and buy the product? No. You pay for your chance to display your ad to X number of people, and it's up to the advertisers to create an effective ad, as well as advertising the products they THINK people want to buy.

As WWW ads currently exist, there's a lot of burden on the site operator, for no good reason.

Geez.

Really, I've always thought that ad programs that pay per click were kind of stupid. The way to go is really affiliate programs. It makes perfect sense, don't pay people when their site brings people to your site, that's not where you get the money, pay people when their site brings people to your site and they buy something. Granted, this isn't a silver bullet because not all people that advertise are selling a product (or aren't selling one through their site), but for a lot of companies it just makes sense.

Why not use Perl?

"It's an open secret that low cost workers in India, China and other countries are hired to boost traffic for online ads by clicking on text links, banners etc"

Ever hear of LWP?

Re:What incentive?

What incentive does Google have to seriously reduce this type of fraud? The more clickthru's, the more they get paid!

If Google just let this happen, they would be saying to advertisers "you're getting screwed, but we're profiting, so we're happy." This might tarnish Google's saintly image and make people not want to pay them money.

You might as well say that cellphone companies shouldn't stop phone cloning, because if someone steals my identity and starts making calls to Nigeria, the phone company can bill me big time! But if they didn't do their best to stop the fraud, they would soon lose my custom.

So that's what I need to do!

I quote the article:

" In certain sectors, such as travel, legal advice and gaming, the cost can reach several dollars per click.

Step 1: scrap my free software based www site.
Step 2: welcome to my FPS-holidays-for-lawyers website!
Step 3: Profit!!

This could be big

Advertising is Google's main revenue stream, so any sort of fraud would be taken seriously.

No doubt fradusters will keep dreaming up more innovative schemes to get this done. I wonder if the Google API could be used towards this goal or in fighting it. Perhaps by setting up a Google Alert [googlealert.com] to search for fraud schemers, the good guys can stay a step ahead.

Country-specific clicks?

A significant number of ecommerce ad sites only do business with certain countries, and it seems like a simple and somewhat effective solution is to allow the company to opt not to pay for or receive traffic from countries outside their sales zone. In other words, a reverse ad block based on the visitor's IP address.

I work with a mail order business which does zero orders to third world countries like India, and it's no skin off our back of we were to simply "ban" our ads from India.

Clickety-Click

I've found one of those companies that encourage their members to click on any and every link.

Go ahead! Slashdot them [slashdot.org]! That will teach them to steal ad revenues!

Click through rates

I didn't think the pay rate would be high enough to make any money by employing people to look at these ads, I mean if you automated it then it might be profitable,

Anyway, more worrying about this scheme would be false positives meaning some people were getting less ad money than they were entitled to.

Moving off topic (so stop reading now if that bothers you), there's a lot of extensions for Firefox and Mozilla (and probably other apps - not looked) that do things with Gmail including provide a new notification icon in your toolbar (weblogs.mozillazine.org/doron/), upload contents of a Mozilla, Thunderbird or any other mailer that uses the standard mbox format and probably tools to download Gmail and serve it to a regular mail client.

Currently these methods are unsupported by Google - in fact some violate their terms of service. It'd be good to see Google to make some of these extensions official and make Firefox the number one Gmail browser, I mean MS do this with Hotmail in Outlook Express and as Firefox uses Google as a default search engine then they don't have to worry as much about an IE service pack resetting the browsers default home and search pages to MSN.

Gmail users - you have a feedback option - in the top right click on help. In the new page there should be an option down the left for feedback.

sweet

"It's an open secret that low cost workers in India, China and other countries are hired to boost traffic for online ads by clicking on text links, banners etc."

Wow, just like what I do at work everyday right here in US, Surfing the web and get paid.

When I contacted Google...

I don't make much from my Google ads, but it's fun to watch the stats. So when my stats tripled -- views, clicks, and cash -- at the start of May, I sent Google a note. No way did I want to be accused of click fraud, that $10 a month (oops, I shouldn't tell you that) takes the place of my dearly-departed CDNow affiliate kickbacks!

I got a nice form letter suggesting I check my referrer logs, but basically brushing me off. Understandable, if frustrating. What did I want them to do, say "OMFG WERE TOAST!"?

Strangely, though, the bump lasted exactly a week. May 1-7 had triple volume or more, then the stats settled down to exactly the pattern they've followed since the site's subject [dixie-chicks.com] dropped off the face of the planet. I don't know if Google found the problem and fixed it, or if perhaps they were giving me catch-up credit for some previous bug.

All in all, though, they still look like the Good Guys. Hope it can last longer than CDNow.

Why didn't google act faster?

Maybe Google is hiring those Indian IT guys to click the ads . . . that way Google increases their revenue. . .

Ok, that wasn't fair . . . in all seriousness, this would devalue google's most significant revenue source by increasing the number of clickthroughs that happen per dollar revenue for the companies that pay for the ads. The bid price for clickthrough ads would invariably go down.

I'm surprised that Google hasn't been working on this problem harder, because if I remember from the article correctly, over 90% of google's revenue comes from ads. If Google fails to correct this problem, their whole business model may be destroyed (or at least crippled) by this problem.

Is it a secret? Or simply an urban legend?

It's an open secret that low cost workers in India, China and other countries are hired to boost traffic for online ads by clicking on text links, banners etc.

Hard references, please! If you don't have any, then we know this is an urban legend. The big flaw in this theory is that it would be much cheaper and simpler to simply write a little program to send the HTTP requests than to have people clicking on links. It would be like paying people to copy text off of web pages when you could just print it out instead.

I Have To Ask

At what point do all these stupid marketers wake up and say 'Oh, gee... the internet was not created to be a worldwide marketplace, it was created to share information and we attempted to usurp it. Maybe we should have thought of that before we stuck our greedy fists into a network we didn't understand.'

I couldn't a shit less about the problems all these stupid marketers face. The Internet is meant to share information, it's not meant to be a global market. That's the reason you have all these problems with spam and abuse of the traditional marketing mechanisms - it's a system to share information with minimal checks and balances.

Outsourcing would really work here!

Outsourcing would really work here! Only instead of outsourcing link clickers, perhaps they should outsource product buyers.

Except Googles approach doesn't work...

It's also an open secret that a number of Google Advertisers have had their accounts suspended and payments withheld because of "Fraudulent Clicks" on a website. Google refuse to disclose any details of what they think is causing the issue when this happens - I've been warned by Google about "violations of the Acceptable Use Policy" with absolutely no other detail as to what I'm supposed to have done. Any queries are met with canned replies. (They would not actually be able to get away with this in the UK or many other European countires due to the Data Protection Act and similar - they can be forced to give up any information they hold)

They are very much throwing the baby out with the bathwater -- it's perfectly possible to kill a rivals cash flow if they're using Google simply by running a bot to click on all the ads on their site. (I think this is what happened in my case) Of course, as Google present no evidence you can't then sue your rival.

I would immediately switch to some other advertising network if there was one available for smaller (~8-9 million hits a month) web sites in the UK. Sadly, there isn't - yet.