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“I see click fraud.” This might be one of the staple lines out of a new suspense-thriller coming soon to a YouTube near you. Since the advent of pay-per-click advertising, its dark shadow click fraud has been haunting advertisers who place their ads on author’s pages. PPC advertising ostensibly seems like a great way to ‘hone in’ on potential customers by its relation to specific keywords. Rather than posting an ad on a billboard somewhere random or it being showcased in the corner of a magazine page, advertisers can present themselves to web users who are already searching for terms germane to the advertiser’s services and products.

They’re Here
Unfortunately, this process has been tarnished with ghouls (both detected and undetected) who commit the heinous act of ‘click fraud.’ Click fraud can commence through a number of methods. The most common involves online minions or ‘robots’ to plague advertiser’s links with numerously insincere clicks in order to increase the bill owed to search engines. Another ghastly method involves third parties who have become possessed by the idea that they can make money by fallaciously clicking repeatedly on ad links. A third form involves competitors not hiring helping fingers, but doing the dirty deeds themselves by continuously clicking on ads to deplete the competition’s marketing dollars.

Fraud Busting
The terror of click fraud has been around for quite some time, but recently the scare (or lack there of) has been a topic of debate. One of the main search engines, Google, has released data on their AdSense blog describing their actions taken towards the exorcising of ‘click frauders.’ Their system comes in two forms (proactive and reactive) and entails online filters, offline analysis, and close investigation by their fraud busting team.

To further assuage the fear of clients, Google has altered the language. Google does not address the horrific entity of click fraud in terms of fraudulent vs. non-fraudulent clicks, but as valid vs. invalid clicks. Google has also offered the designations of ‘activity’ and ‘impact.’ Google assures clients that they need not worry about the total number (activity metric) of invalid clicks (which they suspect to be under 10% of all clicks), but to pay attention to the number of clicks that, in a specter-like fashion, float under the Google radar and could be invalid (impact metric) which they suspect comes to a total number of about 0.02% of all clicks.

Google goes to other measures to diminish client hysteria such as discounting ‘grey’ area clicks were it is difficult for them to decipher (“for lack of clear, scientific proof”) if there were in fact ill intentions by the clicker. As another act of good faith, Google has provided clients with the option to completely eradicate all traffic from any suspicious IP. This tactic has been celebrated by Google enthusiasts, but has cynically been snickered upon by those who are aware that Quigo gives clients the opportunity to choose where the advertisements are showcased to begin with.

Unbelievers
The most vitriolic vociferation comes from a recent post by Donna Bogatin on ZD Net’ s Digital Markets blog. Bogatin is not so convinced of Google’s efficiency of fraud busting, nor is she pledging complete faith in their ‘0.02%’ fraud rate. She is warning Google followers to read between the lines: “Google is NOT affirming that for every ten thousand clicks on AdWords ads, fewer than two are fraudulent clicks. Google is actually saying that for every ten thousand clicks on AdWords ads, the number of advertiser submitted invalid clicks claims that Google agrees to reimburse the advertisers for amounts to less than two.”

Ms. Bogatin raises a good point of distinction. Google may have skewed the data to imply that the fraudulent clicks are defined as:

1. Clicks assessed by Google to be fraudulent manually (after the proactive check)
2. Clicks assessed by Google to be fraudulent only after it has been brought to their attention by advertisers (assuming that the ‘manual check’ is foolproof)

Are You Spooked
How many ‘click frauders’ exist? We are still left to speculate and walk the line with trembling knees between what is just paranoia and what may warrant full-fledged, code-red fraud busting. A good idea would be to know what fraud may look like:

- A sudden rise in total number of clicks on all of your keywords for no special reason (season, promotion, etc.)
- Multiple clicks from the same IP Address or Class C IP Address
- Activity for specific keywords in your campaign become increasingly popular with no provocation
- A decline in conversion rates that were previously popular
- Visitors clicking on ads and then leaving the site within seconds
- A rise in visitors from countries that you do not generally sell to
- Potential competitors clicking on ads

Who Are You Going to Call
If you do not want to rely on Google and other search engines to be the fraud busters, there are a number of click fraud services to choose from. If you’re not sure who to go with, you can request multiple quotes from VendorSeek.com. These services can aid you in:

- Monitoring all incoming traffic
- Analyzing every click
- Detecting suspicious activity
- Organizing reports
- Assisting in submitting reports to search engines
- Provide assistance and advice for getting refunds

So, the enigma remains to be solved. Just how many incidents of click fraud are occurring?
Are the perpetrators that translucent or is our heightened sense of paranoia creating these supernatural events?
Do you see click fraud?