Click Fraud, a "problem" advertisers do nothing about.

It was a curious set of arguments that followed Google’s release of .02% click fraud. Most centered a round the concept of “we don’t know what we don’t know.” Therefore in our perpetual state of ignorance, we should expect that Google solve all our problems. We have gone from wanting them to stop click fraud, to wanting them to make up for technical issues SEMClubhouse.

What I found most intriguing was the argument that since the .02% click fraud rate is based on the advertisers who have actually lodged a complaint , then it can not possibly accurately reflect the true state of click fraud. Why? It is because the vast majority of advertisers do not lodge complaints. In fact, they do not even measure it.

(Donna Bogatin does a good job of discussing the soundness of the number itself and Gord Hotchkiss on why he believes the Google Number here)

Think about it. Click fraud is an overwhelming problem. The evidence to back this up: Since the vast majority of companies do not measure click fraud, then they must be victims of it.

So lets get this straight. Google says they block most invalid clicks – ranging up to 10%. Of those they do not block, but are brought to their attention by advertisers, they find .02% is what made it past their detectors, and was actually billed to the advertisers (See Donna’s discussion, as this may be .02% of all Google generated clicks, not .02% of the clicks for the audited advertisers – big difference).

What the antagonists are arguing in this case is that the real click fraud is not present with those who lodge complaints, but is actually taking place with those who are silent.

Well, here is my good old capitalist perspective. If a business is not concerned enough to take the steps to detect and report click fraud on its own, then we should not force the search engines to baby sit them. If they bring it to the search engines’ attention, then they should receive a fair and vigorous response designed to make them whole.

The bottom line is that (despite the anti-Google block’s contention), click fraud is bad business for Google. As soon as the metrics are not profitable, companies will stop and the engines will lose. Keeping the issue in check is in their interest.

However, perpetuating panic is in the interests of ‘click-fraud-detection’ companies. Keep in mind that these companies measure the clicks you received that should not have been billed (Shuman Ghosemajumder addresses some of this). What they are not doing is identifying the click for which you were billed, and segmenting them out for reconciliation. When the companies presented the findings to Google, the vast majority of the “fraudulent” clicks were never billed – things like quick multiple clicks, back button clicks, etc.(see Google’s explanation here)  If all you look at is the log file, then you might well believe that you are a victim. But, when you actually count the clicks for which you were billed, the argument falls apart based on Google’s response.

What I have not seen is a counter response to a Google reviews. I have not seen a company show that they were billed for 100,000 clicks, but their log file clearly shows that there were only 80,000 valid clicks, and Google ignored it ( I have heard some say they’ve gotten 10s of thousands of dollars in credits from Google, but no proof). If you have seen it, please provide the links.