Google Releases Analysis of Click-Fraud Detection 117
fragmentate writes "This morning Google released information about their analysis of the exaggerated click-fraud numbers. Without pointing fingers, they mention that click-fraud analysis companies need to clean up their methods. From the post, 'A rigorous technical analysis by Google engineers has found fundamental flaws in the work of several click fraud consultants - flaws that help explain why widely quoted estimates of the size of the click fraud problem are exaggerated.' They even point out some obvious shortcomings of the methods used. The entire report [PDF] is available with their complete analysis."
Our own analysis. (Score:5, Informative)
For comparison, our conversion rates:
Google Search: 3.5%
Google adsense: 0.25%
I don't know what other companies are doing.. but I wouldn't be surprised companies are considering dropping adsense. There is just to much fraud.
Meanwhile, two friends of mine had their google accounts cancelled and funds withdrawn because Google accused them of click-fraud. Of course they had nothing to do with it and when they pleaded their cases to Google they got no reply. Google doesn't have to care because they have so many other willing partners. They were even willing to provide click logs and etc. But they just ignored ignored it. I guess it's cheaper to just cancel accounts who are suspected of click-fraud then actually investigate. But if all it takes is a few malicious users with some scripting knowledge and open proxies to ruin my revenue why should I as a publisher use Google Adsense?
Standards-based Web Design (Score:3, Insightful)
Google Search: 3.5%
Google adsense: 0.25%
This is what kills me. Companies are so willing to fork over a ton of money for cost-per-click (CPC) advertising, when so many sites are not friendly to search engine spiders for organic (non-paid) searches. It's one of the biggest, and most overlooked reasons to use standards-based design practices. And it's free to do so (at least, if it's done the first time)!
In many cases, CPC advertising is another example of throwing money at a problem for a band-aid.
Re:Standards-based Web Design (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Standards-based Web Design (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow! 28% of revenue is for adwords? What the heck are you selling?
Just curious...
Re:Standards-based Web Design (Score:2)
Nice site. Nice story. I will keep you in mind in the future.
Re:Standards-based Web Design (Score:1)
No. Not hosting. The link you clicked on is an affiliation link to DreamHost, which he'll get money if you sign up with their hosting plans. I presume he has nothing to do with running DreamHost, other than making money from it. See DreamHost promo-code [hostingfu.com].
In my book, people who posted direct affiliation link on Slashdot should have their creditibility discounted. Because of his affiliation link, I can wildly guess his industry might be affiliation related. Because of his high proportion of advertisement cos
Re:Standards-based Web Design (Score:2)
It is not some "flame" or "Troll" moderators should handle. It is directly abusing Slashdot comments. Anyone posted it should be banned.
Does that crook have homepage with dozens of affiliate links, IE exploits etc? You can bet. There is one more thing you can be sure. Google adsense embedded.
That is the root of problem. Zero quality control.
Re:Standards-based Web Design (Score:1)
Also people who have the word 'troll' right in their user name.
Re:Standards-based Web Design (Score:3, Interesting)
Just look at tv advertising. 2.5 hours per day times 17minutes is over 40 minutes per day. Using a salary of $10, and assuming only half of advertising time is wasted time for the watcher (The rest is spent going to the toilet), that makes $100 wasted per month and perso
Re:Standards-based Web Design (Score:1)
MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Standards-based Web Design (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Standards-based Web Design (Score:2)
Uh, people still use meta tags? Google certainly doesn't pay attention to them - allowing the website owner to specify keywords is far too unreliable, far better to work them out from the content.
Re:Standards-based Web Design (Score:2)
We dropped adsense a while back... (Score:2)
Re:Our own analysis. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Our own analysis. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not saying that they may not be closing accounts without proper reason, but they are certainly NOT closing accounts as some kind of evil strategy.
Re:Our own analysis. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Our own analysis. (Score:1)
Trolls! (Score:2)
Re:Our own analysis. (Score:2)
Google do no evil?
Re:Our own analysis. (Score:1)
I would think that there is something else.
maybe you have too much overseas traffic that can not generate conversion. I would research again before you state black list.
Onepoint
Re:Our own analysis. (Score:2)
The blacklist isn't some gigantic state secret. What is secret is how to get removed from the blacklist.
Re:Our own analysis. (Score:2)
They allow those criminals, lamers to advertise. They allow pirate software forums to have Google ads and they expect to overcome "fraud".
Check http://groups.google.com/ [google.com] and see the crap posted to Usenet using Google groups. People naively report those criminals to Google groups and get "We don't
A quarter of a percentage point is a normal rate (Score:1)
Re:Our own analysis. (Score:2)
Interesting enough, those numbers come very close to mine.
My company also dropped adsense/adwords as means of advertisement. The ROI just isn't worth it.
On the other hand, Adwords/Adsense proved to be the most effective method of having people e-mailing resumes to us. So, for recruiting, it really works. The number of resumes received during our campains was 3 times the usual number we receive.
Re:Recommend you Open Source ! Go UBUNTU !! (Score:1)
Super off-topic much?
"Bad grammer intended"
Yea I'd say there's something wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
So how many total clicks did they claim to get including the fraudulent ones? Or are they claming >100% were fake, heh.
Are you sure? There is a *lot* of fraud. (Score:2)
The biggest problem is tracking the click through to the action verifiably. Once a user clicks and ad and goes to WidgetsForSale.Com, the WidgetsForSale folks would need to track their activity and determine whether a sale results (q: within how long?), and report those sales results to
Re:Are you sure? There is a *lot* of fraud. (Score:2)
If you're paid to cry wolf... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, yes, basically that's what they claimed in that case: that 150% of the clicks were fraudulent. Literally.
Are you surprised?
All these "click fraud consultants" are people making their money by crying wolf. Unlike any other kind of consultant, they don't even
Follow the money... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure click fraud exists, but I imagine these "consultants" are advertising themselves as a way to pay Google less, while still having a high volume ad campaign. Taken to the logical extreme, any click-through that doesn't result in a sale was a fraudulent one.
Re:Follow the money... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Follow the money... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why stop there? One group took it even farther- they said that some clicks which resulted in sales were still fraudulent!
Yeah! Follow the money... (Score:2)
Re:Follow the money... (Score:2)
After reading all the stories on here that are rig
gasp (Score:5, Funny)
Purchase callbacks fix this, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has a great solution for that. If the transaction is online, you can embed a small piece of HTML/Javascript code in your 'thank you for purchasing' page that allows Google to check the value of a cookie they placed on a customer's computer when they clicked an ad.
The cookie links the click to the sale. And there is value to the advertiser as well: Google can then help you track which ad resulted in a sale, and which keywords it was linked to. (So you don't have to buy an expensive but poor-return keyword.)
(I may be mis-describing: Check Google's docs to be sure.)
Re:Purchase callbacks fix this, but... (Score:2)
Re:Purchase callbacks fix this, but... (Score:4, Informative)
google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Look- Google could end the entire debate over clickfraud and the clickfraud detecting companies by doing one thing- for every click, tell the advertiser/publisher the IP and time of the click. That's it. That's all. They won't do it in a million years, though, not until government regulation starts to force some kind of auditing- like that which exists in every other advertising media on planet earth. (tv, radio, magazines, newspapers)
Remember how Google just recently admitted that they charged advertisers for two valid clicks whenever they "doubleclicked" on an ad? They kept doing that practice from 2003 until march of 2005. They raked in tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits, none of which they are going to return. If Google had been giving out IP and time data back then, independent parties could have spotted what Google was up to immediately and you can be damn sure the practice would have stopped a lot sooner.
Oh BTW- I know Google likes to use the "user privacy" as a reason not to reveal IPs to advertisers. But that excuse falls completely short since both the publishing website AND the advertiser both already should be seeing that IP in their own server logs. The only reason Google refuses to attach IPs to clicks is because it would allow people to see things like the doubleclick scam, or see that their clicks are coming from a country who can't even read the language of their advertisement, etc etc.
Google, stop issuing these stupid public relation stunt "studies" saying how all the clickfraud detection companies are barking up the wrong tree when it is YOUR FAULT for not releasing data that could let people do an accurate job of keeping you in line.
I know it's fun not being accountable to anyone, but Google my friend, you only get to pull that stunt as long as you're a monopoly. Eventually, with increased competition from yahoo and microsoft, you'll actually have to start treating your business partners with some modicum of respect.
Re:google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Click-fraud hurts Joes Pizza because hey's paying Google to show his ad to potential customers, but during click-fraud, no-one is actually seeing it. He's paying for nothing. Google just takes a cut of what Joe paid, and passes the rest on to the websites that actually displayed the ads (or claimed they did).
Google only cares about this because if Joe thinks he's paying for nothing (i.e. no real people are actually seeing his ads, and all the "clicks" he's charged for are actually fraud), he might stop paying Google to farm out his ads. If that happens, Google loses their revenue stream.
Lots of clicks are good for Google, they get to charge Joes Pizza more. But they're only good if Joe thinks he's getting his message out to lots of people.
Re:google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:1)
Yeah if a you get 100 clicks on an ad from the same IP its obviously click fraud. But then google bans them for that now anyway. And google is better able to detect this than the advertiser because they can analyse all clicks over their entire adsense system whereas the advertiser can only analyse the clicks for just their ad.
The difficult thing to detect is when open proxies and zombie networks are used. How does and advertiser know going to know if those 100 distinct IP addresses are a zombie network o
Re:google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:2)
Re:google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:1)
well google is in the best position to determine if a third party is click frauding you. If you think google is click frauding you themselves, then what's to stop them from providing false information in your detailed bill? It's one thing to want a detailed bill from a mechanic, because then you can check to make sure the parts he billed you for are actually there and you can ask around to find out if the amount of labour he charged you for is reasonable. But what does a detailed bill from google do for yo
Re:google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:2)
Re:google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:1)
Google just libeled the hell out of those guys, so it should be quite easy for them to win a lawsuit, even against the scary Google. They grab a lawyer, they sue, Google can't use the one absolute defense against such a sui
Re:google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:1)
Nice try, but this shows you didn't even look at the report. The report prove that the auditing firms are making exagerated estimates using just the data provided by the auditing program and the advertiser's server logs.
They did mention t
Re:google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:3, Informative)
What on earth makes you think IP addresses would be in any way useful?
IP address tells you sweet FA about anything these days. AOL used to run pretty much their entire userbase via a caching web proxy, so every single AOL user showed up with a single IP address. NAT is so widespread now that 2 clicks in a short timespan from the same IP address could mean a user clicking twice on an advert, or it could simply mean two entirely different people that happen to be behind the same caching proxy/NAT router cli
Re:google still refuses third party auditing. (Score:2)
If you would read TFA you would realize this statement is incorrect. The click auditing firms and site owners themselves have the necessary data to filter out page reload double clicks. The problem is the auditing firms are typically on
Solution = custom Apache access_log (Score:2)
The Quota Hypothesis (Score:5, Insightful)
If Software X must discover Y amount of fradulent clicks, then there will eventually be a means that makes certain that Y amount of fradulent clicks are discovered.
For Google, how much of the budget depends on discovering X number or Y percent of fraudulent clicks?
For Microsoft, how many pirated copies of Windows must be discovered each day/week/month/whatever?
The hypothesis may apply in other cases. How much of a town's civic budget depends on income from traffic violations? What happens if traffic violations fail to raise that revenue?
Look for quotas. Sometimes the numbers are the answer.
Neutral Analysis? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Neutral Analysis? (Score:2)
Kudos to Google .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is click fraud an issue? Certainly.
However, these companies purporting to provide analysis and actually providing nonsense are just as guilty of defrauding the advertisers as the click fraudsters they purport to guard against.
but it's not public ... (Score:2)
But it's not really public is it, since google have used their own secret data - unavailable and undisclosed to the public - to do the analysis.
You see facts here? (Score:2)
There's been a simple solution to all of this for years and that's to truly open up AdWords to the people that are paying for AdWords; the advertisers.
They won't do that because being open hurts Google and they know it. Google has something to hide.
Re:You see facts here? (Score:1)
Don't trust the auto-tags? Compare the number of unique tags you've seen to the number of clicks Google is charging you for.
What data are you saying Google is hiding that th
Log Analysis? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't this 'fraud' be detected through log analysis (referrers, refearing search phrases, etc)? I would think that you could also configure adsense to link to a specific page (yoursite.com/adsense.php), and monitor it that way.
Am I way off base here?
Re:Log Analysis? (Score:2, Informative)
You could, however, setup the AdSense in an IFrame and try to monitor it that way.
Adlogger (Score:3, Interesting)
Years ago... (Score:4, Interesting)
My gut feeling is that Google is scamming the world. They took a model that was broken, applied some superficial "fixes" to it and got everyone to believe that banner/text ads are "in" again. Meanwhile, they hide all of their logs in the name of privacy so nobody can really tell who is clicking on what. I would not be at all surprised if 'net advertising has become like email is today... 80% fraud and junk. I trust the consultants over the companies (Google) who have an interest in protecting they're primary source of income. But that is just my gut feeling. The facts could be completely different.
Re:Years ago... (Score:2)
Re:Years ago... (Score:1)
I think these clicks are accidents that earned me a few dollars. Ignoring people who own huge sites like MySpace.com who earn wads of cash from millions of accidental clicks, I don't think anyone's making real money on banner ads.
Re:Years ago... (Score:1)
But don't the consultants have an interest in proving google is doing something wrong? If they spend a lot of money and come up with a study that basically says "there is some click fraud but its not really that big of a problem, adsense works pretty good" do you think they'll get allkinds of articles written about that? Do you think anyone is going to hire the consultants to commission further studies, or fire them to devise systems to detect click fraud or whatever?
You remember Y2K, right? Consultants
Re:Years ago... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've never imagined "advertising" can -itself- be the bulk of any economy, as it appears to be online. (goog stock goes up, all tech stocks go up... and vice versa).
I think what's happening is google set themselves up as middleman, they charge folks to have ads listed on their sites... and they pay folks to have stuff appear on other sites. This naturally generates fraud (people want to get paid more)---which results in google charging more---which results in more money flowing -through-
The Secret to Advertising is one word: (Score:1)
Honestly. Advertising can work for the very select top tier products that become the establishment product, but in the long haul, there is only one way to make a product successful and profitable: quality.
It doesn't have to be the best, it has to work in the customer's situation. If you sell service, do it happily and as close to perfection as possible.
In all my years of being in business, I have never seen a good return on advertising that turned i
"Search engine optimization" convention this week. (Score:2)
The "search engine optimization" crowd now has a convention. [searchengi...tegies.com]. It's on, right now, at the San Jose convention center. New strategies for click fraud are probably being discussed right now.
All that evil in one place...
Re:"Search engine optimization" convention this we (Score:2, Funny)
If there were any justice in the world, the road to the San Jose would be lined right now with large billboards giving misleading instructions, trapping conventioneers in endless loops to nowhere.
Ah, well. A man can dream.
Who's clicking ? (Score:1)
For example, check out Download.com. The number two most popular download is somthing for getting rid of advertisements & spyware.
Television, there's tons of service providers pitching things to get rid of advertisements.
The most popular things seem to be applications to share files, freely.
Browsers, popup blockers, has been for years.
Sometimes I find it hard to believe that anyone is actually clicking theese ads that really wants what's being sold.
Re:Who's clicking ? (Score:2)
Well, I clicked on several in the past week alone. Usually because what was being advertised happened to be what I was looking for and the organic search results didn't show me anything interesting. Let's see, this happened for a couple of careers pages I was checking out for a friend, and an advert for an economics discussion forum. I don't remember clicking on any AdSense ads, but I guess it could happen. I don't remember actually buying anything, but then again, the advertisers weren't selling.
Remember
Re:Who's clicking ? (Score:1)
My Father and all people over 60, that's who! (Score:2, Insightful)
I spend a few hours a year cleaning his PC and making it usable again. I installed tinyPersonalFirewall a couple of years ago, and that helps with a lot of stuff.
Adsense's Biggest Flaw... (Score:1)
Re:Adsense's Biggest Flaw... (Score:4, Informative)
There is a "debug" parameter you can add to your AdSense snippet which will make ads show up but not make impressions or clicks count. I got this info from Google support when I asked them about exactly this issue.
Simply add the following to your AdSense Javascript parameters: google_adtest="on";
For more info, see http://www.gidnetwork.com/b-5.html [gidnetwork.com] (no, this is not my site).
Re:Adsense's Biggest Flaw... (Score:1)
When will people ever learn... (Score:1)
For example, I really like
Similar to how lawyers practice (Score:1)
IP Addresses and Phone Numbers Are Created Equal (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:IP Addresses and Phone Numbers Are Created Equa (Score:1)
Re:IP Addresses and Phone Numbers Are Created Equa (Score:1)
CLick fraud vastly *under*estimated on content ads (Score:1, Informative)
Hey google, clear out the bogus sites first! (Score:2)
Here's an example.
The other day I was trying to do a search on a Dimplex DS5804 electric fireplace stoves.
So I did a search using: Dimplex DS5804
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=dimplex+ds5804 &btnG=Search&meta= [google.ca]
(today) I get 105 hits but only the top 4-5 are real site (YMMV)
The rest are these bogus sites, IF they come up at all.
Since Google does
Re:Hey google, clear out the bogus sites first! (Score:1)
This is why I'm looking for an alternative SE (Score:2)
These days, even targeted searches
I thought Google had a solution for this already? (Score:1)
Adsense will save the Internet (Score:2)
Adsense gives a steady flow of money to micro-publishers. Little companies giving money to little publishers. Finally, publishing in the web is economically viable.
Sure, the announcers get more from their money from
Thank you for excellent karma whoring material. (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=191136&cid=157 14932 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=191136&cid=157 14605 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=191136&cid=157 14541 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=191136&cid=157 14582 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=191136&cid=157 14572 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comme [slashdot.org]
Another thing Google didn't mention (Score:1)
Re:As I said last time this came up... (Score:3, Insightful)
I often hear the same stupid analogy: "Click fraud is no different than getting up to go pee during a commercial break and not watching the commercials, or tivo'ing through them in fast forward."
WRONG. With clickfraud, you can make REAL, ACTUAL,
Re:As I said last time this came up... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:As I said last time this came up... (Score:1, Insightful)
1) the networks had some way of counting the number of TV's on a certain channel.
2) TV's were cheap enough the Joe Scammer could buy 10000 of them and have them all turned on to a particular channel.
Then the rates for those ads would go up (because your ad is hitting more people, right?), and the networks could give some % of the resulting money to Mr. Scammer.
Bam. Click fraud. Or rather, view fraud.
The differences are:
A) 1) and 2) above don't work for TV - they do for the internet.
and to a lesser
Re:As I said last time this came up... (Score:2, Insightful)
Because you get a return that you're happy with. Although Google does not have an independent auditor to go over their click data, advertisers still pay. Some feel they are not getting enough conversions for the money they invested in their ppc (pay-per-click) campaign, some feel they do. Some cancel their accounts and move on to a different kind of web marketing, some stay and use the Google system.
In the end, it's a service, not an obligation, and even though most countries already formalized auditing
Re:As I said last time this came up... (Score:1)