Click fraud on the rise...
Click Forensics, Inc. , a self-described independent analysis company, today released industry pay-per-click (PPC) fraud figures for the first quarter 2007.
The results are not good.
The Click Fraud Index , as it is aptly named, found that the overall industry average click fraud rate was 14.8% for Q1 2007 versus 13.7% for the same period a year ago.
The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks was 21.9%, versus 19.2% last year.
The industry average click fraud rate for high-priced search terms (defined as those costing more than $2) was 22.2%, up from 20.9%.
“It appears that click fraud perpetrators are becoming more sophisticated even as search providers step up their efforts to fight click fraud,” said Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of Click Forensics, Inc. “Click fraud seems to be following a similar path as other online fraud schemes such as spam and phishing - the problem is growing as fraudsters fine tune their methods.”
(It's always a few bad apples who have to ruin things for the rest of us.)
If you've not already read the most recent issue of Travolution cover-to-cover (and I know most of you good boys and girls have), check out "The Dark Side of Search" article, penned by our newest contributor, Adam Woods, for an in-depth discussion on this increasingly worrying topic.
Tricia Holly Davis, chief writer, Travolution
Technorati tags: fraud hijacking
2 comments:
Whilst fraud PPC is a very important issue for travel companies, looking at it from another perspective.
I recently trialed out PPC on Google for my blog, and was disturbed to see I was paying for clicks on 'domain name for sale' type sites, rather than actual travel content sites and Google Search engine.
I paid around £50 [not much I know but Im only a poor blogger :P] and whilst it increased traffic, I am not sure much of it was that targeted.
Adsense matches ads to content on your blog. however it can often be rather random, picking up content from the depths, thus why you had domain name ad.
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