Click Fraud Case Study – Auction Experts InternationalClick fraud has been a problem ever since pay per click advertising was first set up, and the search engines are normally the target. Early pay per click was essentially the Wild West – there were huge holes in the system that hadn't yet been closed. Click fraud didn't have to be complicated, and it was very hard to pick up on. The advertising networks had not had time to develop the algorithms they now use to pick up on illegal activity. A good example of this is Auction Experts International. Google sued Auction Experts International in 2004, for fraudulent clicks using the Adsense program. This was the first click fraud lawsuit – prior to this, if an advertising network discovered fraudulent clicks, it would simply give the money back to the advertisers and ban the fraudster from the system. Google decided that it wasn't enough to simply fix the problem. They needed to make an example out of one fraudster, and punish that person or company to the greatest extent possible under the law. This would act as a warning and deterrent to others thinking of committing click fraud. What Did Auction Experts International Do? As a company, they had not been particularly subtle or clever with their methods. They ran a website with Google Adsense on it, so they acted as an advertising publisher. They then clicked on links on their own site to profit, and paid up to fifty other individuals to do the same. Although the methods of spotting click fraud were not as advanced as they are today, this type of click fraud was still incredibly easy to spot, and Google felt that the scale of the crime meant that the company needed to be punished. Given the amount of evidence, you won't be surprised to hear that Google won the court case. How Have Things Moved On? Obviously, search engines and other advertising networks have developed much better techniques at finding click fraud and stopping it in its tracks. Unfortunately, the fraudsters have moved forward as well. These days, anyone doing anything as simple as Auction Experts International would be caught in a second, but there are many examples of click fraud at a much more complicated and subtle level. These examples are much harder to differentiate from normal users. What Can We Learn From This? As long as there is money to be made in the pay per click model, there will always be unscrupulous people prepared to commit a crime to profit. We can never be sure just how many people are engaging in click fraud, but you should take all the steps possible to protect yourself. PPC trackers and tracking software with good click fraud protection are the best defence that you can have against the fraudsters. They are dedicated solely to stamping out click fraud, and give you the tools you need to fight back against the scammers. If you're not making use of ad tracking, you are leaking money. Even worse, you are leaking money to unethical criminals. |
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| AdWatcher | 9.3 |
| HitsLink | 6.4 |
| HyperTracker | 6.4 |
| WhosClickingWho | 6.4 |
| DynaTracker | 6.2 |
| ConversionRuler | 6.3 |
| AdTrackz | 5.9 |
| AdMinder | 5.1 |
| ROIWiz | 5 |
| ClickAlyzer | 1.6 |
| ProAnalyzer | 0 |
