Saw something interesting

chatrooms

[skunker]

I was in an AOL chat room (yes, poor me) and noticed a guy telling everyone to go to his site and click on his Google Ads. I was surprised how many people were doing this. He event went on to say that he was making "hundreds" doing this.

Anyone know if Google can catch this? There's gotta be a way! This is unfair to us honest users.

[dmorison]

Should be _relatively_ easy to spot via algo; since this would have the effect of a temporary spike in CTR; and that has got to be suspicious.

Temporary spikes in traffic should be expected (I see a sudden peak and a very quick fall away following a radio shout for example) but CTR should remain within your site normals even during the burst.

I would imagine they're onto it.

[Blue_Fin]

Anyone know if Google can catch this? There's gotta be a way! This is unfair to us honest users.

Sure. You can report it.

[seeber01]

I would imagine that part of the algo would be the length of the visit on the merchant's site? If a lot of clicks result in only seconds on a merchant's site before a new click, I would imagine that would be picked up in the audit at the end of the month.

Debs

[Jenstar]

I wonder if the fact the vast majority of visitors were AOL users would also trigger some sort of flag.

[mack]

Not all together new, you see it a lot on various chat rooms.

Mack.

[esllou]

I have seen varying levels of abuse on about five sites and have reported them all.

Ranging from:

- incentivised clicks
- FOUR banners on a page! LB, sky and two 468s
- adsense pops

I would like to think that me being proactive in this way also shows Google that I am one serious dude when it comes to fraudulent clicks...don't even THINK of sending me THAT warning mail.

we can live and dream....

[Smiley]

A new take on an old trick it seems.

[devlin]

Debs said:

I would imagine that part of the algo would be the length of the visit on the merchant's site? If a lot of clicks result in only seconds on a merchant's site before a new click, I would imagine that would be picked up in the audit at the end of the month.

I would have thought that once the visitor is on the advertiser's site, that Google's tracking ends.

Or have they really got the ability to follow someone all round the web :-)

D.

[mack]

"Or have they really got the ability to follow someone all round the web"

Depends if they have the toolbar installed or not ;-)

Mack.

[jranes]

Perhaps G should start actually looking at the sites they accept rather than the green stripe on the toolbar only.

[Marcia]

Aren't there moderators in the AOL chat rooms?

[OneChance]

Although I don't think anyone should be telling others to click on their adsense ads just for the sake of clicking, I'm not sure how doing so would be unfair to us honest users. I mean, if someone clicks on an adsense ad on your site, how does that hurt me?

[seeber01]

Google tracks IP's ... so if that same ip clicks ... goes to merchant ... two seconds returns to site to click again ... etc ... that would be a flag.

How does it hurt you to have someone fraudulently click on someoneelse's site? How do you like seeing well-paying advertisers drop the Adsense program so all that is left is low-paying ads?

Debs

[jaxomlotus]

Why is there any question about reporting them? That kind of deliberate malicious behaviour doesn't just help him. It collaterally hurts everyone in the program, especially the advertiser.

I would expect Google not to pay for very suspicious CTR spikes whether they can prove it's legitimate or not. It wouldn't be fair to the advertiser and would render chat room click-bandits irrelevant.

[novice]

"I was in an AOL chat room (yes, poor me) and noticed a guy telling everyone to go to his site and click on his Google Ads. I was surprised how many people were doing this. He event went on to say that he was making "hundreds" doing this."

It is also possible that it might not even be his website and he was just trying to sabotage his competition. Hence another innocent publisher may get the dreaded "fraudulent click" email.

Google certainly must have some filters for this type of activity.

[hyperkik]

Google certainly must have some filters for this type of activity.

I think any significant, unexplained spike in clicks on a particular site would trigger a response. Google has lots of data, both about any particular site and sites in general, with which to identify statistically significant spikes in any given site's CTR. Given that any response to that type of plea is likely to occur over a short period of time, it seems likely that Google would detect any successful plea or series of pleas of that nature.

[401khelp]

I mean, if someone clicks on an adsense ad on your site, how does that hurt me?

It hurts us all because advertisers aren’t stupid and quickly pick up on such costly (to them) abuses. They will stop allowing their Adword ads on content site which means less revenue for all of us (that does hurt me). Just go and read some of the Adword forums to see how many are expressing this very concern.