click fraud - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

The latest Click Fraud Index from Click Forensics is out today, and the company says that the problem is getting worse.

The index, which gathers data from 4,000 online advertisers and agencies, reports that the overall industry average click fraud rate rose to 15.8% for the second quarter of the year.

Click fraud is still on the rise, according to new figures for the first quarter of 2007 from Click Forensics.

The numbers, gathered from more than 3,500 online advertisers and their agencies, show a rise to 14.8% from the 14.2% click fraud rate reported for Q4 2006.

Chinese search engine Baidu has launched a new service in Japan, the first time the service has launched outside of its home market.

Baidu has chosen Japan as the next step because of the high levels of internet penetration in the country, as well as the similarities in language between the two countries.

Advertisers on Baidu, the largest search engine in China, appear to be losing confidence in its ability to deal with click fraud, according to a new report.

The search engine has 58% of the search market in China, compared to Google's 17%, but the click fraud problems could help its rivals to catch up.

From next month, Google is to provide more data, as well as tools to help its pay per click advertisers detect and combat click fraud. 

The online ad giant will allow PPC advertisers to specify which IP addresses will be prevented from receiving their ads, in order to stop unscrupulous rivals wasting ad budgets with repeated clicks.

This is a smart move towards the greater transparency many advertisers have been demanding.

According to figures from US-based firm ClickForensics, click fraud is continuing to rise, reaching 14.2% in the last quarter of 2006, the highest level all year.

Q4 numbers from the Click Fraud Index suggest that the overall industry average click fraud rate was 14.2%, compared with 13.8% for the third quarter, 14.1% for the second and 13.7% for the first.

Andy Beal at MarketingPilgrim has an interesting article, in which he reports claims from Google that their click fraud rate is less then 2%.

Andy has been talking to Google’s business product manager for trust and safety, Shuman Ghosemajumder, about click fraud detection. He was shown a PowerPoint presentation which was normally for Google employees' eyes only.

Google has allowed a case against a click-fraudster to be dismissed, amid speculation that the search engine giant was reluctant to open up its click fraud procedures for public scrutiny.

The charges against Michael Anthony Bradley, who attempted to extort $150,000 from the company by threatening to generate millions of false clicks through his 'Google Clique' software, were dropped on November 22.

Google is facing its third and probably not its last court appearance this year over click fraud, after the filing of a new class action lawsuit in Pennsylvania.

Samuel Lassoff, the owner of two US websites, has accused the search giant of exposing publishers to click fraud through a breach of contract, negligence, unjust enrichment and unfair business practices.

Google has responded to calls for greater transparency on click fraud by introducing a new tool for Adwords users that displays "invalid clicks".

Google business product manager Shuman Ghosemajumder explains: "The metrics of 'invalid clicks' and 'invalid clicks rate' will show virtually all the invalid clicks affecting an account."

This should provide advertisers with an overview of how Google is dealing with clicks already identified as possibly fraudulent, aka 'invalid', though for many marketers this might not be enough.