Click Fraud FAQ

Advertisers who think they might be victims of click fraud can sign up for a free trial of our Click Fraud Auditing.

Q: What exactly IS "click fraud?"

A: According to Wikipedia, "click fraud occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud whether they like it or not."

Most click fraud comes from web sites designed for the purpose of making money from fraudulent clicks. These sites are sometimes referred to a "click farms" or "Made for Adsense" (MFA) since Google's AdSense™ program is by far the most popular content syndication network.

Q: Where does click fraud come from?

A: The majority of click fraud happens on content syndication networks such as Google's AdSense program, Yahoo! Search and MSN. Within these networks, web site owners are paid a percentage of the pay-per-click charges when a web user clicks an ad presented on their site. Owner of "click farms" and other web sites made for fraud, can recruit hundreds or even thousands of users around the world to click on their ads. Since there is very little oversight of this community, click fraud web sites can be developed quickly and easily. The financial incentive is so great that fraudsters even advertise on Google!

Q: Who is committing click fraud?

A: This is a complicated question. The main culprits are the people who build and market fraudulent web sites. They can make from just a few cents to thousands of dollars a day. Other guilty parties are the individuals who knowingly are recruiting into clicking "rings" where they are paid to click on the ads and generate money for the fraudulent site. Finally, search marketing networks that do not provide oversight into this network are also part of the problem. According to Wikipedia: "Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud whether they like it or not."

Q: What are low-value clicks?

A: "Low value" clicks are clicks that come from web sites that are not blatantly fraudulent or Made for AdSense (MFA), but from other sites where the users are not likely to be interested in your product. Examples are web parked domain pages and community-driven web sites. Part of the reason that click fraud is so rampant is that internet fraudsters can use web technology to create realistic looking web sites. Our FraudFinder web crawler can identify these sites as soon as they hit your account.

Q: How can I report a site that I think is committing click fraud?

A: Click True has enabled internet users to quickly report a web site that they believe should be on our blocklist. Simply go to www.clicktrue.net/report and you can add this hyperlink to your favorites. If you come across a suspicious web site, you can immediately add them to our pending blockist.

Q: How bad is the problem of click fraud? Google and others maintain that it is no big deal.

A: Estimates vary widely on the severity of click fraud. For example, Google publicly maintains that click fraud on their network is roughly 2%. However, we see clients with click fraud rates as high as 75%, depending on the keywords used in their campaigns. A recent study by marketing firm Outsell claims click fraud represents 15% of all clicks and costs advertisers $1.3 billion per year.

Unfortunately, the search engine marketing companies - Google, Yahoo! and MSN - have created a "black box" that is very difficult to see into. While these companies claim to be diligently fighting click fraud, it is not obvious that they are making much progress. Based on our own research, we have seen the number of fraudulent web sites grow over 1000% in just six months. Regardless of the current percentage, we see a near exponential growth in the sites that generate money from fraudulent and low-value clicks.

Q: What is the Advertiser Blocklist?

A: The advertiser blocklist is a growing list of over 5,000 web sites that generate fraudulent or low-value clicks. The master list is growing rapidly and is the most complete list available for blocking unwanted clicks. Advertisers can use sites from the blocklist to enter into their advertising campaigns on Google and other networks that support a blocklist. Advertisers can get access to our free Top 100 blocklist by registering for a free trial at Click True. Premium members can build one or more custom blocklists based on their own advertising keywords.

Q: How do I know if my business is a victim of click fraud?

A: Unfortunately, thousands of businesses are victimized every day without being aware of it. Since Google, Yahoo, and MSN provide no details as to the source and quality of clicks in their syndication networks, it is very difficult to detect click fraud. Most advertisers are only aware of it after a large they have paid for a large number of clicks with no apparent increase in leads or conversions. Click True provides one-time audit of your web server logs for the last 6 months to see if we can detect click fraud. Please contact us for more details.

Q: How can I detect click fraud?

A: Usually, click fraud detection requires careful and detailed studies of your company's web server logs. To make the process simple, Click True provides easy-to-use auditing that allows you to view the source and quality of the clicks coming to your site. We provide the detail that Google and other search networks do not. Clicks from known fraudulent sites are flagged for easy inclusion in your custom blocklist.

Q: Can I stop click fraud?

A: We do not believe that click fraud can be completely stopped. However, we believe it can be drastically reduced. Advertisers using Google's AdWords program are allowed to specify a blocklist of up to 500 sites for each campaign. Using our audit tools and custom blocklist, advertisers can drastically reduce the level of click fraud within the AdSense ™ network. Currently, neither Yahoo nor MSN provide custom blocklist features for their users.

Q: What if I know we have received fraudulent clicks? Can we get our money back?

A: We often hear that online advertisers who report click fraud have a difficult time getting refunds. (See the stories within our Click Fraud News) This is the primary reason we are focused on preventing fraudulent clicks, rather than providing audit data for analysis after the fact

Notice: AdWords ™ and AdSense ™ are both copyrights of Google, Inc. Click True is not affiliated with Google, MSN or Yahoo!.