How many clicks equal a visitor?

[powerstar]

Business.com claims a click from the same IP is valid if it's more then 1 minute a part. Looking at their clicks report almost every IP shows 2 times and sometime 3 clicks. They say it's industry standard and Overture and Google are doing the same. So if I pay a $1.00 per click a visitor to my site will cost me $2.00 and some time $3.00. They say IP is not a valid measurement because a visitor could come from Earthlink, click on the link signoff and another user signon get the same ip and then he could come to the site search and click on the link all within a minute and 2 seconds. I think it's highly unlikely or almost impossible.

Anybody knows Overture and Google policy what is a valid CPC?

[bodine]

With Overture and Google, if the clicks are 1 min apart, they count as one. I don't know how far apart the two have to be before they count as two...anybody?

[sudden]

Someone from Overture (Germany) once told me, they would only count one click per "user session". How they define a "user session" or keep track of it, I donīt know. In the context of media metrics I think a "user session" ends after 30 minutes (and is not at all the same as a "unique user").

Espotting said they would only count one click every three minutes per IP. However, at that time (6 month ago), it was obvious that this wasnīt true, they seemed to count everything. A few weeks ago, Espotting anounced they had improved their fraud protection again (... ;) ), I donīt know any details.

[IB_Brains]

Almost all CPC engines have some type of fraud protection. I didn't realize that some were down to the minute for multiple clicks. Ours is max of 2 in 24 hours, some only validate 1 in 24 hours.