overture keyword clicking program to kill off your competitors

[jehai1]

its pretty easy to sit there and click on your competitors keywords, in all of the search engined, just search, and click, pay a kid $5 a hour to do this all day. well on some computers you can make a macro so automate this and run it all day.
there are some programs out there also which automatically search for a word and click on all the links.
this really makes your competitors stop bidding on words which you want and bring costs down to 5 to 10 cents fast.
why doesnt everyone use this method? or are you all doing it already?

[jdMorgan]

Ummm...

Because it is fraud? And IP addresses can be backtracked if crime is involved?

Jim

[daroz]

It's clearly unethical, but it's legality is honestly a matter of conjecture at this point....

(Not that I would ever partake in such an method, but for purposes of discussion....)

What about clicking a link (admittedly repeatedly) is illegal?

You can't make a blanket statement that clicking a sponsored link is illegal - there would be no PPC advertising at all.

I think the notion of fraud isn't really applicable here. Fraud is defined as "A deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain" (Thank you Google). Is the link is accurately being followed, and 'clicked' then what is the deception? Charging for a click that never happened is fraud, but that's not what we're talking about here.

It's interesting to note that the Google AdWords agreement (I tried to find the Overture one but couldn't find it quickly) is nebulous as to what constitutes a chargeable action. Both the AdWords agreement and the Google search ToS both prohibit automated queries, but that would be a civil not criminal matter. (Not against the law)

Nowhere does it say that paying someone to sit down and click on ad links all day (and view the pages that follow, no matter how briefly) is against the policy. That (on an individual basis) would be no different then some random visitor clicking a link and staying only to read a bit of the text and moving on.

When clicks are what advertiser is buying, why does clicking on his link constitute fraud?

[jdMorgan]

If someone is intentioanlly clicking a PPC link not as a potential buyer, but to cost me money, it is e-theft. If I ran a campaign and found that a competitor was hitting my PPC URLs over and over again, you can be quite sure that I would document it and call an attorney.

Hopefully, all the PPC providers have filters in place to detect click-fraud. If not, and I detected such abuse, I'd definitely get out of the program and take Mr. Clicker to court.

But that's just me... :)

Jim

[daroz]

clicking a PPC link not as a potential buyer, but to cost me money,

But if someone is clicking that link, aren't you paying for clicks, not purchasers?

I'll be honest, I'll periodically check out my keywords on AdWords, and if I'm going to go to a competitors site from there to see if they've made any recent changes (we do all keep tabs on our competition...) I'll use the AdWords link.

Now keep in mind I'm talking about ~10-12 clicks a month in my above example -- hardly the hundreds+ an automated program or paid clicker would do.

[Mike_Mackin]

>I'm talking about ~10-12 clicks a month in my above example...

ya
end of discussion