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.
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.
.......
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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?
I don't know how realistic an example that is. But in this case it would be better to by-pass Google and make a deal directly with an advertiser, who probably would gladly pay $15/click.
As long as you mention that example, I think you'll find that in real life, advertisers are willing to pay $15/click and more for lung cancer attorney ads as long as the ads are appearing on Google, AOL, Ask Jeeves, etc. They are not willing to pay anywhere near that for AdSense sites. Check it out. None of the top 5 or 6 ads for these terms on search sites appear on AdSense sites. All of the advertisers have opted out, almost surely because they've been burned by fraud. (Sites that run these ads are not set up by experts giving talks at conferences as in your example. Your example is not representative of reality in this market.)
I do agree, however, that advertisers and classy content publishers (there are some) would both be better off if there were more segregation in the advertising market. Advertisers would be more willing to opt into content match, and the EPC that legit publishers could get would increase.
AdSense started by being open to all publishers, and years from now when someone writes the history of it, this will be seen as a mistake. Google keeps promising us advertisers that they are doing their best to control fraud, and I don't doubt that they try, but right now the AdSense program has such a bad reputation with advertisers in high CPC markets that it could take a long time to fix their reputation.
Europe: I typically appreciate your contributions to WebmasterWorld. However, I am surprised by your defensivenes here, apparently as a supporter of Google.
I'm not being "defensive," since I have nothing to defend; and I'm not "a supporter of Google": I simply think it's irresponsible to use words like "antitrust" and "collusion" when discussing Google's Smart Pricing.
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.
On the contrary: I've questioned a number of aspects of the program, both here and on the AdWords forum. And I'm all for critical thinking; I just don't think that using phrases like "'inner society' attitude," "antitrust," or "collusion" fits under that heading.
As for your example of a lung-cancer specialist publishing a page in connection with a speech at Madison Square Garden, I think that's a red herring--but in any case, if such an incident were to occur, it would be easy enough for the good doctor to e-mail Google Support--even if he or she weren't a member of the "inner society" that the rest of us have yet to discover.
Is it fraud if I send people I know cannot afford to buy a car?
It would depend on what sort of lead the salesman specified that he was willing to pay for.
If he's willing to pay for leads to talk to just anyone, send him anyone you can. If he specified that you had to refer people who could actually afford the merchandise if they liked it, you could not expect to be paid for referrals who didn't meet that standard.
If he didn't have the wit to specify a standard like that, it might not exactly be fraudulent to refer just anyone at random and expect to be paid for it, but it would certainly be stupid. His lead program would not be sustainable unless he made enough sales to cover the costs, and your own greed would kill the income source.
That brings us back to the original point of this thread, I'd say ...
This may be true, but my fictitious example was intended to be fictitious. So the $100 bid terms are off limits. What about the $30's? $20's? Okay, how about $10's? Greed and desire /opportunity will always lead to advertisers jumping in and out of the market. When is it time to put up a lung cancer site again? When there are no more out there.
AdSense program has such a bad reputation with advertisers in high CPC markets that it could take a long time to fix their reputation.
Reminds me of the stock market in 1999, when it had such a bad reputation among professional's in the business that they felt it could not continue... and then everybody else made fortunes while they watched from the sidelines. It was about short term.
someone mentioned that copycats would jump in, with no medical experience, and copy content...
Fact is, you don't need medical experience to convert lung cancer survivors on legal advertisements. You don't need medical experience to publish consumer materials on health issues. Sure, it helps to have that (of an MPH after a liberal arts or business degree, which is more appropriate IMHO), but it is enough to have "advisors" editors etc.. and of course legal accountability. In my example I controlled the traffic - I didn't have to worry about copycats. I also wasn't a Dr. or medical expert - my Madison Square Garden event was "Alternatives to Medicine for Cancer Survivors" or somesuch... again of course fictitious. Could also have been evangelical in nature.
I think If anything this is a launch period for independent publishers to establish themselves in the market and prove their ability to deliver. Get in while you can, and make your mark, and when they industry shakes out you will have a basis from which to do business in the next environment. I wish we had more options for independent website performance auditing...
EFV - have to point out some caveats with this idea - once the click has been made conversion is down to the advertiser, the process from website to payment, price + shipping policy etc, where the tracking code is placed etc.
Unscrupulous advertisers would create converion criteria that can't be fulfilled and thus get lower advertising costs. Though maybe a combination of CTR, Conversion Rate and PPC could be used to determine the adverts shown.
I've followed through low quality ads on mysite - via the google link - and have found cases where the advert links to 404 pages! I blocked those advertisers - it does no good to the reputation of my site when things like that happen.
Fraudulant clicks are bad for the business; for both advertisers and publishers, but I think the issue is hugely complex, no simple fixes, especially when we don't know what google already has in place to prevent fraud - and it makes sense to keep it that way.
If he didn't have the wit to specify a standard like that, it might not exactly be fraudulent to refer just anyone at random and expect to be paid for it, but it would certainly be stupid. His lead program would not be sustainable unless he made enough sales to cover the costs, and your own greed would kill the income source.That brings us back to the original point of this thread, I'd say ...
Which leads back to my original argument about the legal system not (yet) being able to define what is and what is not a "legal" clickthrough just as they cannot define what is and what is not a "legal" sales lead. [Note that I'm talking about the legality, not the acceptability of such actions according to the advertising systems' TOS.]
Webmaster clicks on own ads repeatedly and makes alot of money (like $5000 or more).
Webmaster brags about having done it, disclosing sufficient details to prove he did in fact do that, with sufficient traceable evidence back to him having said it, etc etc. Maybe he keeps doing it and they set up a sting or whatever.
I don't think it is a stretch at all that Google could have him prosecuted for fraud.
I don't think it is a stretch at all that Google could have him prosecuted for fraud.
Well, just like the legality of linking, I guess we'll have to wait for a court case to define the law.
