Click Fraud: Pros and Cons

Apr 30, 2004 - 11:14 am 0 by

A member over at IHelpYou Forums started a thread named fraudulent clicks today where he discusses how his clicks on his AdSense reports skyrocketed in a single day. Someone was fraudulently clicking on those banner ads and he decided to report it to Google.

Pay Per Click advertisers take click-fraud into account when factoring ROI (return on investment) of the overall campaign. Besides for the obvious cons involved with click fraud, the thread discusses some of the, not so obvious, pros.

"Fortunately on AdWords, it can actually increase your position if it happens on a small scale." Google AdWords looks at two factors when deciding how to position ads. (1) The bid placed by the advertiser and (2) the CTR (click through rate) of that particular ad. So if a bid is lower then an other ad but the CTR of that lower priced ad is much higher, the lower priced ad can come up before the higher priced ad with the lower CTR. So that benefits the advertiser who is paying less for the ad.

Could it have been that the advertiser was the 'fraudster'?

fraudster.jpg

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: June 20, 2025

Jun 20, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Search Volatility, AI Mode in Search Console, Audio Overviews and ChatGPT Search Quality

Jun 20, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Larger & Longer Issues Can Take Longer To Reverse In Google Search

Jun 20, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Troubleshooting On Blocking Content From AI Mode & AI Overviews

Jun 20, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Video Search Tests Speaker Icon With Language Label

Jun 20, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google

Google Investigating Search Clicks Leading To Translated Results

Jun 20, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Yahoo! Search Uses Shorter Yahoo! Directory Description