One reason why many companies and indviduals avoid Google AdSense, or other pay per click forms of advertising, is the strong and valid fear of click fraud. Why pay for clicks that are automated and not by a human? Why pay for clicks not activated by someone actually interested in the ad?

Andy Beal, of Marketing Pilgrim had the good fortune to speak with Google’s business product manager for trust and safety, Shuman Ghosemajumder, and has an exclusive story on click fraud concerns at Google.

Exclusive: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% presents information gleaned from a discussion Andy had while at the SES Chicago conference where Ghosemajumder sat down and presented a Power Point presentation in which “…he confirmed was previously shown only to employees of the world’s largest search engine.”

Click fraud in Google terms:

“Google’s definition of invalid clicks includes non-fraudulent clicks (such as a visitor genuinely clicking an AdWords ad more than once) and “click fraud” (those clicks that are obviously not legitimate).”

Andy writes,

“So how does Google explain the 15-30% click fraud numbers that have surfaced over the past several months? Ghosemajumder described how they monitor hundreds and hundreds of different signals in its efforts to detect click fraud. These identifiers are a strictly guarded secret with only the “click quality” teams having access to the information. Many advertisers – and click fraud detection companies – are looking at the wrong signals and often class valid clicks as fraudulent, or request refunds for clicks that Google had already discounted.”

You’ll find the informative article here: Exclusive: Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%

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