Click Fraud: The Fight between Search Engines and Advertisers
Click fraud or invalid clicks as some like to call it in a effort to minimize its definition, is an area of contention between pay per click search engines and advertisers ever since PPC ads have become a popular means of advertising for small business owners and an equally popular means of earning revenue for website owners and bloggers. While search engines like Google claim that they have their own internal mechanisms to detect Click Fraud and that they do not charge advertisers for clicks that are not genuine, critics of PPC advertising point out that Click Frauds are being done in increasingly innovative ways that are too difficult to detect by software programs.
For example, one of the newest ways in which Click Fraud happen is to use spyware to capture user behavior in a website. These programs would then automate the click on the Google adwords. The advertiser would assume that it was the effective ad that brought him traffic while in reality he would have got the traffic even otherwise. And because it originates from the same IP that ultimately visited the site, Google and other search engines would definitely charge the advertiser for the click. Thus all traffic to the site, whether it originated naturally or through PPC ads, will get accounted for as PPC ad effectiveness. This may even have a spiraling effect as the advertiser may spend more and more dollars on PPC ads, making him increasingly vulnerable to frauds.
In a way the fight between search engines and people perpetuating Click Frauds is like the fight between software viruses and virus protection firms. Each group keeps devising new strategies and the war goes on. Meanwhile, you as a small business owner need to keep your eyes open to identify any signs of Click Fraud in your website and quickly try to make amends. Read up on click frauds, how they happen and learn about all that you can do to protect your site. After all you are paying your hard earned dollars for internet advertising and you deserve to get protection against frauds and should be paying only for genuine clicks that have good conversion rates.
Bookmark this site. You probably have many questions and concerns. We cannot possibly answer all of them in one article. Or please leave a comment or question. We will be happy to respond.
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