Google Assumes 10% click fraud rate
I was just reading an interesting article over on Marketing Pilgrim about Google and click fraud. The essence of the article is that Google automatically discounts about 10% of all AdSense clicks as fraudulent. These "false positive" clicks are just thrown out and the advertiser is not charged and the publisher is not paid.
Google makes it sound as if they are being the good guy and taking the hit in the wallet for this but they are not. Once you've paid your money into the AdWords program it is only a matter of time before it is all spent. It is the AdSense publisher who is getting the shaft on this deal.
Because Google is assuming 10% of the clicks are fraudulent a publisher may be sending real clicks to an advertiser and not being paid. I track all outgoing clicks on this site and I know how many people leave via an AdSense link and let me tell you right now, my data and Google's data NEVER match up.
I have had days where I see 100+ outgoing AdSense clicks yet Google will report half that number to me. Those can't all be fraudulent clicks so what is the deal?
The deal is that Google is trying to make themselves look good at the expense of their publishers. Even if 10% of clicks are fraudulent you can't just blindly discount 10% of all clicks! All this tells me is that Google has no real way of knowing if a click is legit or not so they are just randomly (blindly) discounting clicks in an effort to appease advertisers.
Guess what Google, piss off enough AdSense publishers and you will have a hard time moving your AdWords inventory.
- If Google can’t count how can I count on Google?
- Google Analytics
- Am I guilty of click-fraud?
- Why Ad-Block Users Are Good For Your Blog
- Saying Good Bye to AdSense
Yeah, that’s a bunch of BS from Google. I’ve always noticed our stat trackers are drastically different from Google. I think you nailed it with the idea that they don’t know the difference so they just slice 10% off.
I’m pretty sure Google has no problem tracking clicks.
I’m sure they have no problem as well. However their reporting needs a lot of work. If you are suspected of having bogus clicks on your ads Google will never divulge any information about it to you. All you get is the canned “banned from AdSense” email.
The only way to prove Google is doing wrong would be to create an AdWords account and an AdSense account (completely on their own) and create a site running AdSense on which your AdWords campaign will run. Once you see your AdWords ads poppoing up on the site you have to click-fraud them like mad and see if the AdSense account gets banned.
If the account gets banned for bad clicks then you have to look at your AdWords account and see if you get reimburssed for all the bogus clicks you caused.
Anyone who did that would probably get banned from both services but it would be a good way to test Google on this issue.
[...] Do you rely on Adsense for blog income? Learn why you’re losing 10% of your earnings. [...]
How do you track outgoing adsense clicks? Can you do it from blogger.com?
Re:I track all outgoing clicks on this site and I know how many people leave via an AdSense link
I do not know about blogger but if you sign up for the paid side of mybloglog they can track that information for you.
Wonder if that’s why I haven’t made any money, wonder if the 10% they’re dismissing on my site are the most lucrative links, my data never matches up to theirs either. I’ve been considering finding a new source of income, since this one is nonexistent.
Indeed, they cannot detect click fraud reliably. So they just take 10% off the top. Too bad they didn’t just do this in the first place when AdWords was launched. Why all the secrecy for something that was obvious to anyone who has an understanding of Internet architecture and protocols?
Actually, they are taking a financial hit, to the extent that they cannot bill for clicks that actually weren’t fraudulent (or otherwise “invalid”), and for all the extra processing they do to try to determine this.
The advertisers who settled for the 0.5% payout got screwed. Likewise, honest publishers who aren’t click fraud victims are screwed.
[...] wrote a few days ago about Google’s “10% of clicks are click fraud” in which Google admits that they just blindly discredit 10% of clicks because they assume [...]