Google AdSense Fraud - Deep Insight
Google AdSense Fraud - Deep Insight
By Aamir Aleem
It's worthwhile to examine Google's definition of Google AdSense and Click Fraud, before delving deeper into "AdSense Fraud".
Google AdSense fraud is one of the diseases that plague the Ad Words
advertisers. The AdSense program essentially allows website
publishers/owners to sign up with Google, enabling them to display
Google Ads on their sites. These publishers essentially act as "Google
Partners". The ads chosen by the Google bot for display are contextual
and the ads are related to the contents of the publisher's website,
more specifically that particular web page. The intent for Google is to
capitalize on the traffic to these (in practice) niche sites and
provide highly direct targeted traffic to the advertiser. A subset of
the users of the Google Partner website, click on those ads and Google
charges the advertiser per click. Google shares the booty with the
website publisher but the revenue sharing ratio falls under Google's
"undisclosed "criteria. While the exact amount can be reverse
engineered, the take home lesson is that the final amount is
proportional to Google's income from that click.
In theory it's a match made in heaven. The advertiser gets good ROI
through targeted traffic, the publisher gets to monetize the traffic on
their website and the web browser gets to buy that classic CD that he
couldn't live without. Not to mention that Google gets a wad of cash.
The gods of lucre smile beneficently on all.
Unfortunately, this happy faade hides blemishes. Severe ones. For all
Google AdSense Publishers are not created equal. While (we daresay)
many advertisers have a genuine website, providing a valuable or
interesting service to the world wide community, there is a significant
number of unscrupulous operators who are out there to prey on the
advertisers. These creatures of the night (and we will explain later
why we use that term), make websites for the express purpose of milking
AdSense revenue.
This category of fraudsters deserves a taxonomy of its own, which we
have developed. In the interest of not being gender biased, we have
alternated between genders. We hope that our lighthearted tone does not
mask the revulsion that we feel towards these cheats.
Regressive Fraudster ( aka ClickMonkey ):
This guy is at the bottom of the food chain. Inspired by the riches of
his neighbor Ms. Jones, who has been making more than ten grand a month
in AdSense revenue, he plans a course of action. He "invests" in a
clickbot software( a simple google search reveals many) and gets a list
of anonymous proxy addresses. He then goes to register a few domains
and hires someone off of elance to create a "network of sites"and "
click bot " . He hopes that the interlinked sites will provide each
some "link popularity" and increase his page rank. If only it were that
simple! He then proceeds to use the $30 clickbot to start clicking on
the sites. Or he could click on them himself manually using the
proxies. We don't call him click monkey for nothing. He clicks and
clicks all the way to see his account getting banned. No banana for
this monkey! His calls of despair to google fall on deaf ears. This
person is likely to quit, but sometimes retries to get up the food
chain, the Wanna -Be-Fraudster.
Wanna -Be Fraudster ( aka BOZO):
This girl searches for high paying keywords like "home loan equity"
(current ad words rate: $45), or "web hosting" (ad words costing $20).
She correctly guesses that the AdSense payout is proportional to what
Google earns and therefore homes in on such words. Her strategy is to
make a page with contents that are appropriate for the targeted high
payout keyword. She moves ahead by clicking on the link multiple times
and recruits friends and family to give them a click. Or ten!
Little does she know that Google has a 45 day inspection period before
she get her nubby little fingers on that cash. With little to no
knowledge of Click through Ratio , her greed couples with her
ignorance. Seeing her ill-gotten paper wealth multiplying in her
AdSense interface, she increases the clicks. Google however inspects
the CTR and throws a fit when they see a CTR exceeding 20%.
Furthermore, Google notices clicks mostly originating from a few IP
addresses and that essentially seals her fate (or rather docks her
earnings). That virtual cash is now just some deleted bytes on a hard
disk on Google's servers. She moans, nay she rail against the cruelty
of Google's policy. Some of these people wisely cease and desist such
activities, perhaps philosophizing about the NFL (no free lunch)
theorem. Others however see it as ground school for the next stage of
nefarious behavior. The Almost-There Fraudster.
Almost-There Fraudster ( aka SmartAlec ):
The archetypical ATF is supremely confident in his ability to fool
Google. Like the BOZO, he looks for high paying keywords and makes
appropriate website(s). Let's assume that he is in a third world
country, just to make the case more interesting. The case described
here is 1 year old news. He has read this article and taken the learnt
the subsequent lesson . He knows that that the clicks from the IP
Addresses of USA, UK & Canada are worth much more than the clicks
from the IP Addresses from the third world countries. He therefore
seeks to befriend people from such IP addresses by logging onto
messenger services.
This way, he gets the unique, unrelated IP clicks and (he hopes) that
Google is fooled. Remember "creature of the night". Well, these people
typically are more than a few time zone removed from the US or Canada
and therefore are up at odd hours whenever they feel that their targets
are most likely to be active. Plus they sometimes have to deal with
"inconveniences" like a day job.
AT fraud thinks that the clicks he obtained by trolling on these sites
is a job well done. He has got clicks from the IP address of his choice
.. An interesting factoid is that for AdSense, state also matters.
Clicks from Washington and New York State have the highest payout for
AdSense Fraud.
He has just one problem. His tragic flaw. While he worked so hard to
get the unique IP and high earnings, he is not able to maintain a good
CTR. He is likely to cross the limit of 30-40% of daily CTR and 10-20%
of overall CTR. He ends up in the same purgatory as the BOZO. The
account is banned, and he gets the abominated email. Yes, the "AdSense
account closure". Almost-There is never good enough in this nether
world of AdSense gaming. Although it is possible that he would have
made a few thousand dollars before the punishment catches up to his
crime. Crime doesn't quite pay, now does it? Well, gentle reader,
unfortunately crime _is_ paying to the next category. Fraudster Maestro
( aka Satan's Spawn).
Fraudster Maestro ( aka Satan's Spawn):
This category of fraudsters is the most sophisticated and rarely gets
caught by google . She has researched the high paying keywords as well
as the CTR issues well. She has the smoothest lines in the business of
soliciting clicks. She can flirt online, and ask to click the "link"
for her picture. Or she may claim that clicking the link causes the
hungry child to be fed in Ethiopia . Let's follow a typical "simple"
chat session:
AT Fraud: hi
US User : hello
AT Fraud: what are your coordinates, handsome?
US User : NY , NY
AT Fraud: Oh! Wish I could be there. Can you help out a damsel in distress?
US User : sure
AT Fraud: I have made a site and want to see if all the links on this
page are working or not. Can you please click on the links and see if
the other page loads?
US User: Sure. Link?
AT Fraud: www.fraudstersite.com/high-value-keyword-page.html
US User : wait! Yes I checked all the links and they are working fine.
AT Fraud: Thanks
US User : so can we talk about you now? ( Message Not Delivered as the
fraudster has blocked the User and is busy looking for a new victim)
And she has lots of tricks up her repertoire besides chatting up
strangers. She knows about opt in lists, usenet and blogs where she can
snare the victims. Technically savvy and able to empathize with her
victims she doesn't let arrogance get in her way to success. Since she
is very mindful of the CTR issues she has a secret weapon. She has
optimized her site for some low paying keywords which are really not
competitive. She organically gets lots of traffic (but for things
unrelated to those competitive high paying keywords). In her website,
she may be giving away free greeting cards Or free screensavers. End
result is a fabulous impression count. The second step for her is to
makes unrelated pages on the same site and these pages pertain to the
high paying keywords. These keywords are used to attract the victims of
chat sessions. The process of getting the clicks is different but the
results due to CTR are very lucrative.
So, how does all this geek talk affect the PPC advertiser? It's a $5
billion+ dollar market(for exact projections onto the future, please
check out our FAQ, and with a 20% + fraud rate, we are talking about a
1 BILLION dollars fraud per year. Even Dr. Evil may be impressed by
such a number. It's greater than the cumulative GNP of a few banana
republics. And a fair chunk is ending up in the coffers of these
fraudsters. We know from anecdotal evidence, how people are clearing up
to 20 grand a month. All, courtesy of the hapless PPC advertiser.
We want to emphasize that there are lots of authentic sites serving
genuine content. But unfortunately the existence of these people (as
discussed above) reduces the ROI of many advertisers to the extent that
they rethink their interest in PPC. In the word of one of our organic
SEO customers, with PPC "you always get a little less back than you put
in". It needn't be that way, if you watch carefully where your ad words
traffic is coming from and take some steps (such as traffic analysis or
at the very least a log file analysis) to protect arm yourself with
data for a refund claim for google. Another thing to keep in mind is to
stay nimble. Convincing search engines to refund money is a lot tougher
and a lot more work than proactively watching for problem visitors and
warning them of the repeated clicks and how they are being monitored.
Our experience shows that all but the hardened criminals are
deterred(reducing the adwords wasted burden). Remember, an ounce of
prevention...
Aamir Farrukh Works with an Experienced Search Engine Optimization
Company Sofizar that is working on a Artificial Intelligence enabled
Click Fraud Detection Service
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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