False Clicks/Click Fraud

From: Cliff Kurtzman <moderator_at_o-a.com>
Date: Mon 14 Aug 2006 15:18:39 -0500

There has been a lot of buzz lately about click fraud and Google...
Basically some folks have claimed that false click rates can run as
high as 30% on Adwords. Google has indicated that it doesn't believe
false click rates are nearly that high.

These are my observations:

1. Deliberate click fraud (someone false clicking links to generate
revenue for their site or Google, or to create an unwarranted expense
for an advertiser) is probably pretty rare. But when it does happen,
it can sure be painful for the advertiser targeted.

2. False clicks from other sources, such as automated robots and
spiders, are extremely pervasive, at least on my sites. I don't know
whether robots and spiders have the same click frequency on things
like adwords search results. I do believe that as site traffic
increases, the percentage of traffic that comes from automated
sources probably decreases.

I did some analysis on the Online Advertising Discussion List web
site (see http://www.o-a.com/). On most of the main pages of the
site, we have a directory of "Industry Leaders" with links to their
sites on the right side bar. I picked one of the listed companies and
did an analysis of the data covering June 20 - July 21, 2006. The
companies that list in this directory pay a flat rate. There is no
financial incentive or cost to anyone for false clicks on these
listings.

The link from the listed company had 216 total clicks in log file
over the 22 day period.

172 clicks were easily filtered out by inspection of log file based
on browser data in log file entries, indicating an automated source.
The number of clicks reported from each robot were as follows:

87 Googlebot
38 msnbot
7 WebIndex
6 Yahoo! Slurp
6 ia_archiver
5 IRLbot
5 Ask Jeeves
3 psycheclone
3 sna-0.0.1
3 Nutch
2 SBIder
2 gsa-crawler
1 OmniExplorer_Bot
1 gonzo1
1 larbin
1 voyager
1 LinksManager.com_bot

44 clicks remained. I looked at each one manually to see the pattern
in the log file by the IP address around the click. I was able to
determine that of the 44 remaining clicks in the log file, 29 were
real clicks (all from different sources) and 15 were clearly made by
automated tools.

The net result was that (216 - 29)/216 = 86.6% of the total clicks
were not from humans.

After filtering out obvious robots, 15/44 = 34% of the total clicks
were not from humans. They all had patterns consistent with automated
tools.

I've included detailed data below my signature as to what I observed
with each of the 44 potentially human clicks.

Are others seeing similar patterns/percentages on their sites?

--Cliff

Clifford R. Kurtzman
CEO | Moderator
ADASTRO Incorporated | The Online Advertising Discussion List
http://www.adastro.com | http://www.o-a.com
(281) 480-6300


#1 real click. Also clicked 3 other ads, 1 of them twice, no referral
on site entry

#2 real click. Also clicked 2 other ads, entered site using a Google
search on "online+advertising"

#3 real click. Also clicked 1 other ad, entered site using a Google
search on "online+advertising"

#4 real click. Also clicked 3 other ads, entered site using a Google
search on "how+to+get+into+the+online+advertising+industry"

#5 real click. Also clicked on one other ad. Entered site from
http://www.folden.info/onlineadvertising.shtml

#6 real click. Also clicked on one other ad. Entered site using a
Google search on "online+advertisement"

#7 real click. Entered site using a Google search on "online+advertising"

#8 real click. Entered site using a Yahoo search on "online+advertising"

#9 real click. Also clicked on 3 other ads, one of them 3 times.
Entered site using a Google search on "online+advertising"

#10 False click. Accessed robots.txt file and didn't download any images.

#11 real click. Entered site using a Google search on "online+advertisement"

#12 real click. Also clicked on one other ad. Entered site from
http://www.adbility.com/helpsell.htm

#13 real click. Entered site using a Google search on "online+advertising"

#14 and #18. False clicks from same source. No images downloaded, no
referral data, multiple clicks on many ads over a short period of
time.

#15 real click. Also clicked 1 other ad, entered site using a Google
search on "online+advertising"

#16 real click. Also clicked 3 other ads (one of them 3 times),
entered site using a Google search on "online+advertising"

#17 real click. Also clicked on 2 other ads (one of them twice). No
referral data on site entry.

#18 False click... see #14

#19 real click. Also clicked on 3 other ads. Entered site using a
Google search on "online+ads"

#20 real click. Also clicked on 1 other ad. No referral data on site entry

#21 real click. Entered site using a Google image search

#22 real click. Entered site using a Google search on "online+ads"

#23 real click. Clicked on 2 other ads. Entered site using a Google
search on "Online+Advertising+List"

#24 real click. Clicked on 2 other ads. No referral on site entry.

#25 real click. Entered site using a Google search on "online+advertising"

#26 real click. Also clicked on 3 other ads (one of them 4 times).
Entered site using a Google search on "online++advertising"

#27 real click. Entered site using a Google search on "online+advertising"

#28 real click. Also clicked on 3 other ads (two of them twice).
Entered site on a Google search on "OA"

#29, #33, #34, #35, #37, #40, #42 false clicks from the same source.
Downloaded a robots.txt file, no images, no referral data, multiple
clicks on all ads

#30 real click. Also clicked on one other ad. Entered site using a
Google search on "online+advertising"

#31 false click. No images, no referral data, clicks on all ads in a
period of seconds.

#32 false click. No images, no referral data, clicks on all ads in a
period of seconds.

#33, #34, #35 false clicks... see #29

#36 real click. Entered site on a Google search for
"size+of+world+online+advertising+market+2005"

#37 false click... see #29

#38 real click. No referral data on site entry.

#39 real click. Clicked on 3 other ads. Entered site using a Google
search on "online+advertising"

#40 false click... see #29

#41 false click. No images, clicked on all ads in a period of seconds.

#42 false click... see #29

#43, #44 false clicks. Clicked on all ads within a period of seconds.
Known HTML testing site.




Received on Mon Aug 14 2006 - 15:18:39 CDT