December 11, 2006 Comments
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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:
Google utilizes four layers of click fraud detection. The first layer is purely automatic and is used to filter clicks from both "search" and AdSense partners (contextual ads). This filter is able to detect invalid clicks in real-time, with the goal of removing them before they ever show up in the AdWords console.
The second and third layers are aimed at filtering only AdSense clicks. The second layer is what Google calls its "flagging system" and is an automatic process to remove invalid clicks from the AdWords system. The third layer of filtering is a "manual review" process with more than two dozen Google employees manually reviewing and removing any suspicious clicks.
Google's goal is to have the first three layers of filtering identify 100% of all invalid and fraudulent clicks. Those clicks that manage to escape Google's filters are what causes many advertisers to raise concerns and has spawned the growth of many so-called click fraud detection companies. The fourth layer of click fraud detection falls to these advertisers and detection companies and is what Google calls "requested investigations".
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.
Jennifer Laycock is the Editor of Search Engine Guide, an educational web site aimed at translating the search marketing world into something that small business owners can understand. Jennifer specializes in common sense search engine marketing, viral marketing and customer outreach via social media and blogs. A former search marketing consultant and in-house trainer, Jennifer’s clients have included companies like Verizon, American Greetings and Highlights for Children. Her primary clients now are a little girl named Elnora and a little boy named Emmitt.
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