Google AdWords ClickFraud Rate Is Under 2%?

Andy Beal has a post over at Marketing_Pilgrim that's sure to shake up the paid search industry. In the post, Beal writes about a conversation that he had last week with Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's business product manager of trust and safety. According to the post, Ghosemajumder shared quite a bit of insight into how Google categorizes clicks and ended up revealing that just under 2% of fraudulent clicks ever end up getting charged to the advertise. That flies heavily in the face of reports and studies that claim click fraud rates of 15% or more.

From the post:

The entire post is well worth the read.

That said, it obviously leaves some questions. How do you explain that HUGE discrepancy between what Google is claiming and what click fraud tracking companies and advertisers are claiming? After all, isn't is possible that Google is just making numbers up in an attempt to woo disenchanted paid search advertisers back to the mix?

That's certainly possible, but there are a few other issues at play as well. For example, John Marshall at ClickTracks has long touted the idea that what many software programs and advertisers flag as "click fraud" are actually just badly run campaigns. There's merit to that charge and it's important to remember that just because someone instantly bails on your site doesn't mean it;s fraud...it may mean that your site needs work or that your ad isn't targeted.