The threat of click fraud to the Internet economy

Google has begun to respond to the growing threat created by so-called click fraud. In cost-per-click advertising, marketers pay a search engine like Google when users click on links to the advertisers’ web sites. Click fraud occurs when people click on ad links in order to force the advertisers to pay for the clicks, for example, by setting up a scam site hosting the ad links. These are then clicked on by individuals or using software to “steal” revenue from the advertisers. Jessie Stricchiola estimated that 20% of all clicks on paid search ads could be bogus.
Google has had to pay increasing refunds to the advertisers and this represents a major threat to the Google economy since paid-search advertising generates about 98% of its revenue. Search engines have typically been self-policing and it is claimed that so far they have not been aggressive enough in combating this growing threat.

Read the full article at
http://money.cnn.com/2004/12/02/technology/google_fraud/?cnn=yes

30/12/2004

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