superclown2 - 10:36 pm on Jun 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

I detected bots clicking on our Yahoo ads last year. I spent a long and fruitless time trying to get Y to block their IP addresses from showing our ads but they wouldn't or couldn't so our group hasn't advertised on Y since then. G of course allows us to block up to 20 suspicious IP ranges, but when we got more clicks claimed by them than showed in our log files they refuse point blank to tell us what the IP addresses of these disputed clicks are (why? Is it such a state secret?) so most of our budgets go into SEO and we only buy clicks when we really have to.

The problem is that too many people are too trusting of these search engines, and search engines are vulnerable to a lot of very inventive fraudsters. If every advertiser was as savvy as the average contributor to webmasterworld they would have to sharpen their act up and the bad guys would have to get even cleverer than they already are. I certainly don't think that they would give up though, fraud will be with us forever IMO.