Online Money

 

PROLOGUE TO THIS SECTION: DO NOT click on your own AdSense ads!!! It is ABSOLUTELY prohibited by Google and the other pay-per-click companies, and will most likely get you booted off the program … and it’s EXTREMELY difficult at that point to get re-registered!

 

Having said that (and don’t say I didn’t warn you!) …

 

Elsewhere on this site, I talked about the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system, and how great and targeted it is for advertisers and 3rd party website owners alike (not to mention the search engine giants and other companies that provide this service.) But, of course, every great system has abuses of power, and the PPC vehicle is no exception. In fact, click fraud is the single biggest problem facing both advertisers and the PPC powers-that-be.

 

There are two types of click fraud. One occurs when rivaling companies use people or computer programs to repeatedly click on their competitors’ ads to drive up their advertising budget, with obviously no potential sale behind the clicks. For smaller companies, this can prohibit them from affording effective campaigns, and in the worst case scenarios, forces them off the system due to these artificially escalated advertising expenses. No matter the size of the company, this is a particularly cutthroat way of damaging competitor’s advertising efforts.

 

The second type of click fraud involves web site owners devising ways of clicking their own ads to reap AdSense money from Google. This scheme has gone to such elaborate lengths as full-fledged ‘click farms’, where organized crime groups set up groups of individuals and/or computer programs to click on ads around the world. There are even ‘zombie’ computers or programs, which are embedded in networks to perform this. Others participate in ’splogging’, or spam blogging, in which they publish websites of little or no informative value — simply a cluster of ads, which a searcher frustratingly clicks on to get to a site with actual content, but is led to another splog, and so on …

 

It is for these obvious reasons that Google and the rest of the PPC industry take click fraud very seriously. If advertisers lose faith in the system, it loses paying participants and profits to all involved will suffer. ‘Splog’ websites of only ads is a form of spam which weakens the integrity of the internet as a whole — it’s like buying a magazine to read about a particular author, only to see most pages full of advertisements for lawnmowers, for example.

 

The main problem with stopping this scourge, however, is the effort it takes to effectively minimize this activity (it’s IMPOSSIBLE to completely eradicate it), the changing and decentralized nature of methods used, and of course, the huge sums of money involved. There are many who believe that Google and others COULD do more to drastically curb these unfair practices — including improving their human and computerized tracking systems, etc. –, but that they are simply making too much profit to rush to put a serious dent in the trade. Google — who derives 99% of their profits from this system — assures that they are doing all they can to curtail click fraud, including working closely with web publishers and programmers to offer tips on responsible usage and firewalls for prevention.

 

How do you steer away from click fraud? If you’re a website or blog publisher wishing to benefit from this system, again, the best practice is to ABSOLUTELY AVOID clicking on your own ads! Even if it’s an honest mistake, all the computer recognizes is your fingerprint, and will unceremoniously dump you. It has happened on occasion to people who swear that they’re innocent of any abuse, but this just shows you the low tolerance threshold afforded.

 

If you’re an advertiser, set realistic budgets using the cost information given to you through your ad campaign set-up, and watch for unusually high click numbers not corresponding to actual visits to your site. Watch for sudden spikes in clicking activity, particularly if you can track the computer(s)’ ISP address(es), and even more so if it is coming overseas from an unlikely region.  And as tempting as it may seem, compete fairly and don’t play the ‘click the other guy’s ads’ game. If you’re in a tight, lucrative market, focus on high-quality content on your site and products — losing your privilege in such a win-win-win system is hardly worth risking being expelled from it in the long run, just to rattle an opponent.

 

Although Google and others have provided waiving of fees and some compensation to some proven victims of click fraud, the major challenge for this industry is to prevent these undermining tactics to begin with. But with revenues continuing to explode and with new media merging with this system regularly, the watchdogs will have a lot to chase after for a very long time.

 

Read more on pay-per-click.

Start your own online business, or boost sales, using affiliate programs.