What is click fraud?

In simple words, skewed Pay Per Click statistics constitutes Click Fraud. Different stakeholders may define click fraud differently, but stated below are definitions used by 2 of the online search behemoths, Google and Overture.

Google defines click fraud as "Any method used to artificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or page impressions"

Overture defines click fraud as "Clicks arising for reasons other than the good-faith intention of an internet user to visit a web site to purchase goods or services, or to obtain information"

Although online advertisers have bandied about the problem of click fraud for many years, it’s only recently that click fraud has been portrayed as a problem that could threaten the very existence of the web.

The issues underlying click fraud

Lets walk through 3 user scenarios to understand what click fraud is, and its potential implications on online advertising spend. Jane owns about 10 web sites, and the front pages of her websites host about 10 advertising banners each. She receives 5 cents each time a visitor clicks an advertising banner. In an attempt to drive up her advertising related revenues, she employs Joe and Jack to periodically click one of the advertising banners on her various websites, and gives them $ 8 for an hour’s work.

Lets walkthrough Harry’s case. He is a lazy website owner, who loathes updating his website, but wants to get rich quick. Besides using stealthy SEO practices like cloaking and font matching, he has decided to push his online advertising revenue income by purchasing a bot program that clicks on ads on his website at random intervals.

Lee’s use of click fraud is for very different reasons. He is the CTO of an internet marketing company and enjoys clicking on his rivals' text ads on Overture, Google, and Yahoo because his competitor must pay atleast $5 per click, and that acts as a drain on their advertising budgets.

How click fraud protection systems work?

Most click fraud protetcion systems in place use iterative processes to improve their existing offerings. They usually use a combination of:

• Proprietary technologies


• Filtering systems


• Human intervention

to analyze whether advertising clicks are valid or not.

Proprietary technologies include methods to determine the visitors IP address, browsing session information, and other pattern recognition methods.

Filtering technologies include methods to determine whether a click is generated by an unethical user, an automated robot, or is generated by a valid user.

Human intervention usually takes place to analyze the results of the above 2 processes, and/or to analyze web server log files of host websites

Most advertisers are aware of the click fraud issue but haven’t yet delved into the issue because of the steep learning curve involved. However, looking at potential click fraud losses that a big online advertising campaign can entail, it’s just a question of time before more companies begin building click fraud expertise in-house, or outsourcing such specialized expertise from third parties.

Convonix Inc

Convonix Inc is a search engine optimization firm that offers customized SEO optimization and PPC campaign management solutions. We manage hundreds of SEO and PPC campaigns. Our clients include Web design firms, adveritising agencies, fortune 500 companies and SMEs. Other internet marketing companies can also Outsource SEO to us in India.

You may reprint this article on your site only if you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way and include the author's name and the full footnote.