WRITTEN ON September 15th, 2008 BY admin AND STORED IN Adsense, Fraud

Tags: Click, Click Fraud

If you’re using AdWords or AdSense you must have heard about an emerging practice in the underworld of computers called “click fraud”. But what exactly is click fraud and how it performs?

Well AdSense uses a payment mechanism that releases a certain amount of money to a publisher (someone in possession of an AdSense banner on their page) every time a person clicks on banner said. Then, click fraud is the attempt of people have simply clicking the ads so they can get a higher income.

There are people who create sites for the sole purpose of generating revenue through fraudulent Google AdSense program. These users achieve an incredible number of clicks through many methods, some complex and sophisticated and some rudimentary and simple.

One of the most complex is through the use of so-called “hitbots.” These are automated programs that emulate clicking on the links in AdSense banner (there are some who actually click on the banner as well).

Google AdSense protection scheme is not perfect and almost anyone can find the details of exceeding the protection mechanism, ironically just doing a search on Google.

Another, more rudimentary method is to take a lot of people in a poor country to click the link on your site. This means that these people actually sit all day and click on links so you can earn a fortune. They come from very poor countries like India, and they’re willing to do just € 0.50 per hour.

Of course, there is a problem with this mechanism. Once Google receives a large number of clicks from a single address, and the site that had the AdSense banners are prohibited, and unlawful behavior may also obtain the criminal trial.

To avoid this, many people use a large number of proxy servers for the purpose of clicks. These are basically Trojan horses, located on computers around the world (though mostly in the U.S.). What is even more worrying is that these clicks appear to come from a real computer so that scams are very difficult to identify.

And do not think this happens only in isolated cases. There is a lot of illegal activities in this area.

In fact there is so much that if search engine companies not to increase their security with such programs as AdSense, such criminal behavior could become more become even more damaging.

Google has a very strict policy regarding click fraud, and has sued those who use these techniques in the past. But while the search engine giant tries its best to minimize the risk of click fraud there is certainly room for a lot of improvement.

It is estimated that over 20% of clicks that follow a link to AdSense are just done in order to obtain money from the person paying for the ad. Some people believe that the number of click fraud to be twice as large.

There are many more schemes involving click fraud, such as groups of AdSense publishers click on any other link (which is called “clicking rings”, or spam so that people click these links.

Although Google has yet click fraud on a leash, the phenomenon is certainly raising concerns for AdWords advertisers, but despite this the Google AdSense advertising is even more profitable for the advertiser, as opposed to traditional systems of non-targeted advertising.

There are some means of protection against such schemes and all advertisers should be experienced enough to take them. Many advertisers choose to avoid the content network altogether for fear of click fraud.