Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Nonetheless I feel it necessary to openly state that webmasters who click on their own ads are reaching a new low in our society. I make no accusations; you know who you are.
If you think it is OK to play the system this way, much as it seems ok to game the SEs for page rankings or PR or traffic, or spam a guestbook or make up a consumer review to get a backlink, you are horribly incorrect. Sometimes it takes deep, deep thinking of scholars to tease out ethics in our practical world, and we do not have the time nor often the brainpower to do that ourselves. Some things though are more obvious.
Influential copywriting is not unethical, even if you yourself believe the message to be false. Scholars have studied this and there is good argument to support it. Copying of copyrighted works is also a gray area worthy of challenge... legal derivitive works may be subtly different, or fair use doctrine may be reasonably argued in many cases. Writing a false review? In many cases the choice of language can be such that it makes the message clear without being patently false.
Gaming the SEs using every grayhat trick in the book (and some black hat ones) is not patently unethical either, provided you do not unequivocally violate a clearly-stated rules of the game. That includes leaving in place methods which are banned (you haven't gotten around to fixing them yet), innovating new twists that are likely to be banned based on the "spirit of the TOS" (you don't need to support the spirit of the TOS, just the words of the TOS), and so forth. There are ways to bend the rules in your favor without breaking them, and often that opportunity drives innovation and, coincidentally, profit. It is the burden of Google to ensure the TOS is adequate to protect their interests, and that all players are properly bound. That is one reason they declare their unilateral ability to amend the TOS at any time.
Clicking on your own ads however is fraud and theft. Plain and simple, if you click your own ads or cause them to be clicked in order to be paid marketing message distribution fees, you are breaking the rules and breaking the law.
There is no doubt about it. It is illegal and wrong.
As I said, you know who you are. If you find yourself spending brain power to craft ways to click your own ads whilst avoiding detection, please recognize you have crossed the line from savvy entrpreneur to thief.
I feel it is necessary to discuss this in the open forum (a professional webmaster's forum) because it appears that some people consider this sort of thievery akin to SEO and gaming the system. I just sat through a lunch where the common majority opinon was leaning that way - and I am astounded.
Read "A Cheating Culture" (you can look it up) if you want some additonal insights into the damage this sort of thing does over the long term, but I don't feel we as a community can ignore these trends.
Click fraud has been talked about in many other threads. The real world situation is that fraud happens all the time, and has happened for thousands of years. Fraud will continue to occur, as well legit business practices. Nothing anyone says or does is going to change that, especially a book.
It has nothing to do with morals - I didn't project any morality. It has to do with theft.
You imply that in business you do what you have to do to get ahead (and that may mean stealing). You imply that to say theft is wrong is to project morality onto business.
It seems we disagree. I do not believe it is ok to steal, even in business. The common law agrees with me, no matter morals.
(not sure what you mean by arrogant or elitist...I think they are deserving of their success as much or more than any large company out there)
If you value your long-term ability to make money on this program, I think it is best to do it the right way.
[edited by: dvduval at 4:52 am (utc) on May 23, 2004]
Those who can really promote their website, need not ever click on their own ads if they can drive plenty of traffic, it will turn on the rewards on itself in terms of impressions and ROI.
Why?
Because I open my email everyday dreading an account termination email from google.
If people didnīt click their own freaking adsense then google wouldnt be so quick to delete low earning accounts like mine when they see even the slightest amount of suspicious activitiy.
I think Google must do something in the near future or the programme will die or be heavily discounted ,
they have a few options
1 Continue to monitor and look at clicks from Proxy servers or withheld / unregognised IP addressess ( maybe produce black list of proxy servers and discount the clicks and investigate accounts with large number of clicks from those AND BOOT from programme any fraudsters ) most of the general public use a standard ISP with their information for all to see it is really only webmasters or very savvy surfers who don't
2 Monitor much closer new sites added and do not serve adds till some checks are made i.e. current traffic levels prior to adsense added and then traffic levels after adsense added
3 Create a new tier of preferred adsense publishers ( which the publisher would apply to join and agree to allow access to site logs AND FULL LOSS OF ANY OUTSANDING EARNINGS IF FRAUD IS DETECTED ON ACCOUNT ) Advertisers could opt in to preffered list without chancing ROI as per current situation
steve
I believe the issue of click fraud is why Overture has not moved into context advertising , and if the levels of fraud continue more advertisers will continue to choose no context advertising .
I think Google must do something in the near future or the programme will die or be heavily discounted
It's been discounted since April 1. Also, as someone pointed out yesterday, conversion tracking could discourage (or at least compensate for) fraud by increasing the discount for clicks from accounts that have low conversion rates. More fraudulent clicks = lower conversion rate = less money for the publisher.
Continue to monitor and look at clicks from Proxy servers or withheld / unregognised IP addressess ( maybe produce black list of proxy servers and discount the clicks and investigate accounts with large number of clicks from those AND BOOT from programme any fraudsters ) most of the general public use a standard ISP with their information for all to see it is really only webmasters or very savvy surfers who don't
I suspect that Google has all kinds of fraud-catching tricks up its sleeve. The small-time cheaters probably aren't sophisticated enough to anticipate Google's fraud-control measures and find workarounds, while the bigger-time cheaters face a challenge that someone else pointed out on this forum several months ago: the need for increasing traffic to mask fraudulent activity. In other words, if John Doe tries to rack up 1,000 clicks per day at an average EPC of 50 cents to earn $500, his clickthrough rate will jump and alarms will sound unless he's generating many thousands of page views. It shouldn't be too difficult for Google to see if any sudden, sharp increase in impressions is accompanied by an upward blip in search referrals to the pages in question. Google has a lot of data at its disposal, and I can't believe that Google isn't leveraging its search data to identify fraud.
2 Monitor much closer new sites added and do not serve adds till some checks are made i.e. current traffic levels prior to adsense added and then traffic levels after adsense added
That's an interesting idea (assuming that it isn't already being done).
3 Create a new tier of preferred adsense publishers ( which the publisher would apply to join and agree to allow access to site logs AND FULL LOSS OF ANY OUTSANDING EARNINGS IF FRAUD IS DETECTED ON ACCOUNT ) Advertisers could opt in to preffered list without chancing ROI as per current situation
An "AdSense Select" or "AdSense Preferred" tier would be useful not only to protect fraud, but also to make AdSense more acceptable to mainstream advertisers and media buyers who aren't used to buying a pig in a poke.
zulufox said ...
I hate these people! Why? Because I open my email everyday dreading an account termination email from google. If people didnīt click their own freaking adsense then google wouldnt be so quick to delete low earning accounts like mine when they see even the slightest amount of suspicious activitiy."
which touches exactly on the issue. With increasing fraud, can't we can expect not only a lack of tolerance for irregular looking activity, but a lack of opportunity to address concerns as well? If you innovate you may be banned. As banning is so harsh, best to just stick to the plain vanilla methods and not risk banning. Stifles innovation.... perhaps good for Google, but what about the long run?
steve40 wrote "...Create a new tier of preferred adsense publishers"
This appears to be a good method, but alone it can do more harm than good. Once you create an inner society and an outer society, you lose innovation on the inside and encourage protectionist practices, which further alienate innovators. I often look at DMOZ as an example of how NOT to create an inner circle. The advertising industry of yesterday might be another example... and the music industry.
europeforvisitors wrote "
It shouldn't be too difficult for Google to see if any sudden, sharp increase in impressions is accompanied by an upward blip in search referrals to the pages in question. Google has a lot of data at its disposal, and I can't believe that Google isn't leveraging its search data to identify fraud."
Here again it sounds good, but is dangerous. If the process is not out in the open (like the Adsense processes) it creates further opportunity for abuse and perhaps misalignment. While today a majority may rely on SE traffic, what happens when offline activities generate a large proportion of traffic (postcard mailing, for example)? It's not obviously an increase from the SE so it must be fraud?
It appears that click fraud is terribly harmful to everyone. In my opinion, if there isn't a culture of shame associated with it, we will all suffer. When I see fraud being considered as just another savvy business tactic.... I cringe.
The main reason I addressed this is because many of the VALID innovations around search engine marketing may inadvertently raise suspicion in any algorithmic or automated raud detection attempts.
If you innovate you may be banned. As banning is so harsh, best to just stick to the plain vanilla methods and not risk banning....many of the VALID innovations around search engine marketing may inadvertently raise suspicion in any algorithmic or automated raud detection attempts.
I have no idea what you're referring to in these comments, or why it would be connected to click fraud. Do you have some specific "innovation" in mind?
This appears to be a good method, but alone it can do more harm than good. Once you create an inner society and an outer society, you lose innovation on the inside and encourage protectionist practices, which further alienate innovators. I often look at DMOZ as an example of how NOT to create an inner circle. The advertising industry of yesterday might be another example... and the music industry.
What do you mean by an "inner society" and an "outer society"? And what does DMOZ have to do with it? AdSense isn't a community; it's an ad network. Besides, Google already has tiers within AdSense, though they aren't identified as such. I refer to "smart pricing," which (according to Google) provides discounts to advertisers based on the type of content on the page.
It isn't hard to envision a future where advertisers would be able to select or exclude broad categories of content (search, editorial, e-commerce, forums, blogs, gmail, DomainPark) or to use include/exclude filters similar to the exclude filter that publishers already have. There's nothing new about this concept; media buyers in the offline world make decisions about ad placement every day, and direct-response advertisers often apply selective filters to mailing lists. As Google works harder to reach mainstream advertisers (as it's already doing with the new "image ads"), we'll probably see the network offering many more advertiser options. That doesn't mean that every advertiser will need to take advantage of every option; it simply means that more choices will be available to advertisers and agencies that want greater control over their target audiences. (And who knows--one of the options might be CPM pricing, which would require filters and other audience-selection tools.)
I understand that G shows little tolerance towards people who click on their own site's ads, even by accident, and that an account can be terminated for this reason. OK, so be careful, don't click on them.
I run an Adsense tracking script, so I can monitor what happens at my site in terms of Adsense clicks.
Open proxies and pattern behaviour (of the housewife in India, clicking on ads, per recent article) are imho pretty easy to spot. If I can filter posts to my formmail.pl using RBL of open proxies, I'm sure G can do much more.
If I were an advertiser, I would be more concerned with people clicking on ads by mistake on some adsense sites, as they're placed in very inconvenient places (e.g. next to nav bar with drop-down menus)
Once you have tiers and the members know who is in what tier, you get a form of collusion, where "best practices" are defined by acceptable behavior according to those inner circle members. The vendor starts to accept input from the members, who gain some influence, tend to network among themselves, and informal alliances promote protectionist activities.
Consider any one of the debated gray-hat SEO practices as an example. There is no agreement as to acceptability, yet and it is not clearly against the rules. Once the inner players agree not to do it, it becomes practically "banned", doesn't it?
And what does DMOZ have to do with it?
DMOZ is widely attacked as an insider's game in forums frequented by people who understand the value of inclusion in DMOZ (like this one).
AdSense isn't a community; True, but the adsense benefactors (webmaster publishers in this case) have formed communities (such as this one).
Google already has tiers within AdSense, though they aren't identified as such. I refer to "smart pricing," which (according to Google) provides discounts to advertisers based on the type of content on the page.
Yes, that is a case in point. How many webmasters have been hit with decreased pay for performance, because of assignment to a particular payout teir in AdSense after April 1? Is it true that all of those webmasters deserve the rate they were assigned? Or does it make for a new game, as legitimate publishers who have been misclassified (with no opportunity to make a case for themselves) are forced to find new ways to "fit the model".
Is it "smart pricing" or is it "price fixing"? It's not too much of a stretch to see collusion enabled by "smart pricing" like this. I have seen sites which convert very well go from high pay per click to low pay per click and back to high pay per click. Is this smart pricing at work? It is certainly not pay-for-performance, snce performance didn't vary.
How many webmasters have been hit with decreased pay for performance, because of assignment to a particular payout teir in AdSense after April 1? Is it true that all of those webmasters deserve the rate they were assigned? Or does it make for a new game, as legitimate publishers who have been misclassified (with no opportunity to make a case for themselves) are forced to find new ways to "fit the model".
Look, it's no secret that Google relies on algorithms, and algorithms aren't perfect. By nature, they're based on assumptions that may or may not be true in every case. If the assumptions work to your advantage, great. If not, you'll need to decide whether continued participation in the network is worthwhile. Fortunately, AdSense is non-exclusive, so it's easy enough to continue testing AdSense and switch back if the effective CPM returns to acceptable levels.
Is it "smart pricing" or is it "price fixing"? It's not too much of a stretch to see collusion enabled by "smart pricing" like this. I have seen sites which convert very well go from high pay per click to low pay per click and back to high pay per click. Is this smart pricing at work? It is certainly not pay-for-performance, snce performance didn't vary.
'Lectric Law Library defines "collusion" as "an agreement between two or more persons, to defraud a person of his rights by the forms of law, or to obtain an object forbidden by law." Are you suggesting that Google is guilty of a crime?
That the person knowingly and willfully devised a scheme to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false pretenses, representations or promises
How is sending bad referrals fraud?
Let's say a car dealer offers to pay me $20 for each person I send to him to look at cars and maybe buy one. Is it fraud if I send people I know cannot afford to buy a car?
In msg 13 you suggested Google could interpret a sharp increase in impressions that didn't also have an increase in search activity as fraud. I noted this is based on some dangerous assumptions, which can and can easily be incorrect (and I provided an example). Was I incorrect?
In msg 16 you suggest that since media buyers have always enjoyed the right to choose where they advertise, and seemed to relate this to Google's middleman function. You also note Google uses smart pricing to offer discounts to advertisers.
It is one thing for media buyers choose their outlets. It is another for a middleman to characterize sites based on broad characterizations, and offer only a "take it or leave it" option for media buyers. They never get to see if my site meets the criteria, and assignment (by whatever algo or reason) is the end-of-my-options for those media buyers. This is about as monopolistic a practice as I have seen from other monopolies.
In msg 21 you suggest that one can accept Google's methods or go somewhere else. You also suggest that if it works to your advantage, great.
This is exactly the kind of "inner society" attitude that I described. Obviously AdSense is working for you. You seem defensive about anything that questions it, and you are quick to discount critical thinking or the validity of questions.
In msg 21 you state "Are you suggesting that Google is guilty of a crime?" which I would consider flame bate, since i did not make such a suggestion. As for suggesting that collusion might be enabled by secret "smart pricing" methods, I refer to collusion among media buyers (advertisers), not Google. They may be enabled by Google to pigeonhole sites into large categories where the costs are pre-negotiated (by the G middleman's weighting factors applied to a bid price). If a keyword bids up to $30 per click based on market pressures, so the publisher recieves say $10 AdSense per click, why should a media buyer get it for $2 just because Google characterizes a site as "less likely to lead to a sale"? Can you see how that characterisation might be "protectionist" for the class of sites who are characterized for only $2 per click eligibility? Of course no one can answer that without knowing more information -- which Google carefully conceals. I am sure it is quite nice to be in the $10 per click club, and worthy of protection.
You seem to be astute with the law; I am surprised you would take my comments as a claim of Google being guilty of a crime.
by my interpretation that is not fraud -- every person is able to be sold on buying a new car, or being positively branded with respect to that dealership. He is paying you to send him people. I grant that my interpretation is not fact; the point that this behavior is debateable makes it less illegal, in this argument.
Clicking on your own ads is not the same as sending people you may think are not likely to buy cars.
I have a hunch that 99% of the folks over here are not interested in stealing or theft, but making the most out of adsense through legit practicies, no one is arguing that.
The people who want to click on their own ads are the ones are not willing to take the time out and read up over here and ask questions, they want to make a quick buck and get on with the next activity.
People have always and will always do questionable things to get ahead or try to stretch the potential of a program out (like clicking their own ads). To me and you, this is wrong and makes me angry that someone is ruining the integrity of the program by doing this, but sitting around and trying to make people feel bad is not going to do anything. People have always and will always do this, so it is up to Adsense to find a way to control this while rewarding members who do not participate in these activities.
Sure i fear "the email", but I know I have no reason to, i do not click my own ads or put a big "click me" in H1 tags above my ads. I have a feeling that Google does respect the users that abide by the rules, and rewards them by including them in the program.
I have a REAL hard time with the people who get the boot and "have never click an ad". Google will not kick anyone out for playing by the rules. Awhile back Brett stated something along the lines of "I am sure Google has never kicked anyone out who occassionaly clicked a few ads". I think this is true, google is not trying to kick people out, but they have to find a healthy balance betwen legit conversions for adwords advertisers and day to day random clicks.
Adsense is a typical program with two backbones, the folks that advertise and spend money on advertising, and the ones that publish the ads. The program cannot exist without both aspects. If one is unhappy, the system fails.
It is the job of Google to make sure the advertisers stay happy by keeping invalid clicks at bay, and keeping the publishers happy by heafty payouts and christmas gifts.
The minority of people that do ruin the system by cliking their own ads are far outwieghed by the ones that follow the rules. I find it impossible for a few "bad eggs" to ruin the whole batch. Google obviously has a vested interest in keeping this program going (as it makes up a large portion of revenue). They are not just picking names out of a hat and throwing them out of the party. Keep your nose clean and Google will reward you handsomly.
I identified with that, because recently some of my friends have applied to adsense. To my horror and disappointment, the random banter I overheard turned to all the myriad ways they could generate clicks. What were the best keywords? What paid the most? Are questions I was soon asked.
At this point I switched off, suggesting that Google will ban them all at the first sniff of falsehood. I was really quite disappointed. This is the kind of "beat the man and get paid" attitude that is rife in the community.
I still think a hand-review "approved" or "preferred" category is necessary. It was great when it felt like Google was carefully reviewing new applications, but they seem to be giving accounts away nowadays... approval within days on Blog sites, stuff like that.
Edit.. and stuff like this: [webmasterworld.com...]
Not sure about that specific example, but if it was you every time pretending to be different people, then surely you agree that would be fraud.
What if I hired a bunch of people at $5 a pop?
Clicking on your own ads is not the same as sending people you may think are not likely to buy cars.
What about hiring people to click on my ads?
Thanks you for another example. I will guess you have a content site, and you feel sites which are not context dedicated are not worthy of AdSense?
Let's innovate a little.. I will make up an example that could very well be real. Suppose I am an expert on lung cancer, and am giving a talk to 55,000 people at Madison Square Garden. I put up a single page with the names of my favorite lung cancer doctors and professionals, which also draws high payout ads on lung cancer attorneys. I tell the audience to visit it for more information. Let's say my CTR is 80% for ads that pay $15 per click, from day #1, with no SE traffic at all, and nothing indexed in the search engines.
Are you suggesting that this is wrong or improper? Are you suggesting that Google should properly discount my ads to $1 per click because I don't appear to be a content site (that discount is likely shared between Google and the advertiser)?
As an advertiser, I would LOVE to have my ads appear on that page. As a speaker/event promotor, I certainly deserve those advertising profits, no?
What some of you are suggesting would force me to move this business through a broker... who will certainly take 30% at least -- why should that be?
It's a made up example... since I am already an insider, I would likely call Google beforehand and discuss the situation, but isn't adSense supposedly "open to everyone"?
Let's innovate a little.. I will make up an example that could very well be real. Suppose I am an expert
Actually that is a great example, I would think that as a clear expert in your field you would certainly qualify for the fictitious "preferred program".
The problem is that once some dubious webmasters found out how much was being paid for your topic, they would rush off to make copy sites to add to their list of high keyword properties, without any medical experience whatsoever.
Thanks you for another example. I will guess you have a content site, and you feel sites which are not context dedicated are not worthy of AdSense?
but isn't adSense supposedly "open to everyone"?
