This report presents:
• Background on third-party click fraud estimates and methodology problems
• Findings from an internal Google review of third-party click fraud auditing
reports
• Recommendations for addressing this issue
• Demonstrations of how fictitious clicks occur in third-party systems
• Detailed case studies for three major third-party auditing services
via the Official Google Blog
Very interesting: a kinda "put up or shut up" to the firms mentioned amongst other things.
May be much more effective than hiring lawyers to smack the firms effectively slandering Google on the basis of poor engineering/data. But the claims of these firms very definitely harms G's reputation and business, so G *could* sue, though the PR would be horrible...
No I do NOT work for Google!
Rgds
Damon
"My logs are better than your logs but I won't let you see them."
If the auditing firms data were that corrupt, G$$G wouldn't issue any rebuttals.
[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 6:06 pm (utc) on Aug. 8, 2006]
THEIR logs show something that differs from the auditing firm logs, its just a puff piece.
Yeah, to a certain extent. But when G shows only 1 click charged as opposed to 54 "fraudulent" clicks reported, well, that does say something.
Whatever. The war clubs are out. By naming names G expects them to get a lot of questions from advertisers. This will be interesting.
But when G shows only 1 click charged as opposed to 54 "fraudulent" clicks reported
They don't SHOW anything, they just say things.
[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 6:22 pm (utc) on Aug. 8, 2006]
Huh? Are you saying now that when G showed the advertiser that only one click was charged that it was, ahem, fabricating data?
um, someone is :)
Its "my word against yours", I don't see any compelling reason to believe google.
They don't SHOW anything, they just say things.
On the contrary: The Google report addressed a number of specific points in considerable detail.
By the way, be careful what you say here, or you may be accused of being a paid shill for the click-auditing firms. :-)
I'm sure the auditing firms will be replying with their own take on things. I think its good that the issue is out there, I'm sure G$$G is squirming otherwise they wouldn't be taking such a "shot", probably a pre-cursor to "click auditing firms are evil, not good for the end user". :)
I'm sure the auditing firms will be replying with their own take on things.
Let's hope so. And in the meantime, why don't we have a moratorium on debates over who's right or wrong, Google or the clickfraud-auditing companies? (Unless, of course, you want to give Google the advantage, since the auditing companies have yet to present their side of the case.)
And in the meantime, why don't we have a moratorium on debates over who's right or wrong
Are you the Deputy Director of Internet Debates?
Let's hope so. And in the meantime, why don't we have a moratorium on debates over who's right or wrong, Google or the clickfraud-auditing companies? (Unless, of course, you want to give Google the advantage, since the auditing companies have yet to present their side of the case.)
On the subject of "who's right or wrong," read the Wikipedia entry on Byzantine failure in computer systems, and consider its ramifications in terms of what is logged/recorded by an ad server, advertiser's web server, etc.
