Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Sometime in the past I saw a reference to someone giving an estimate of the amount click fraud that went on in the "context" advertising side of Adsense. I don't remember what the actual number was but it didn't make any sense to me how the stated number could be as high as it was. I've participated in Adsense for some time now and out of the hundreds of thousands of clicks generated on my site, less than 5 were ever generated by me (yes, all were reported). I just didn't see how Google's evaluation of click behavior on a clean site couldn't be extrapolated to behavior on other sites, so to identify and kick out offenders. Sure there are professional cheaters out there but they can't make up the overwhelming majority of Adsense publishers.
Like I said, I guess I'm the last person to finally figure this out but it seems that the level of click fraud that goes on on the content side of Adsense has less to do with publishers clicking a mouse than it does with Adsense allowing MFA sites to participate in the program.
For the last hour or so I've been doing searches on Google and Yahoo and the number of MFA sites included in the listings are astounding. Even I almost clicked on some Adsense ads, just because I couldn't find anything else on some site's pages to click. Allowing a site (who provides zero content and whose sole purpose is to fool you into generating a click) to participate in Adsense is click fraud. At least if I was an advertiser I would feel so.
I had read an article about how Google with its Adsense program killed the internet. I just didn't realize to what extent until today. I know I'm biting the hand that feeds me, but it's shameful the way Google runs Adsense. Google's "Do no evil" motto just seems like a distant memory that faded as they walked through the front door of their bank to make a deposit.
I had read an article about how Google with its Adsense program killed the internet.
No, hyperbolic articles are killing the Internet. And that's a hyperbolic statement in itself. :-)
To have any reasonable meaning, "click fraud" can only refer to clicks wrongfully generated by such means as cheating, begging, or clicking one's own ads.
Sure there are professional cheaters out there but they can't make up the overwhelming majority of Adsense publishers.
Even if this is true, a significant number of publishers could rack up earnings by devising means of getting their sites clicked on.
There are other examples of no content pages such as Google's own search pages. Are all clicks on Google search invalid because of the lack of original content?
Clicks become invalid when the webmaster joins a click ring, uses automated means to generate clicks, or asks freinds family and website visitors to click on the ads.
If the site has no content, but the above means are not used to generate clicks then they are not invalid IMHO.
The other questions are do these clicks convert, and is that type of page against the adsense TOS.
Yes, they are against the tos, and risk account termination at Google's whim. If they convert - who knows, but I think most here would suspect not.
Has adsense killed the internet? I don't think so. It's certainly changed it though. I think the real question is "Is adsense going to kill Google? - the internet will survive whatever. Because ads by google no longer has any credibility as many ads just kead to more pages of ads that lead to even more pages of ads behavioral patterns may change to one of people being very wary of clicking. Already there are ad blockers out there that target adsense amongst others, and more than one utlitly that generates the windows host file puts adsense in by default.
Nor is it true to say that clicks from such a site do not convert - if I'm searching for widgets - click an Ad that says "click here for top10 free widgets" and find myself on a site of just Ads for widgets - I may well select one of those Ads and go to a legit widget selling site. If fact the MFA site may even be effective at funnelling people to a good selling site.
Nevertheless such sites are clearly in breach of the Google TOS that says sites should not be specifically for adverts (or something similar). They provide a poor experience for Surfers and Publishers don't like them because the lower the site image (and provide a low return on Ad space).
