Click fraud starting to scare advertisersApril 13, 2005 [an error occurred while processing the directive]PPC (pay-per-click) is an important factor behind the growth of search engine marketing and online advertising, but now some marketers are asking search engines how many of those clicks are fraudulent or invalid. The growth of the Internet as a communications, commercial, information and entertainment medium has been phenomenal, but for all the excitement and optimism that has caused, occasionally a shadow falls and the sunshine cyberworld grows dark and ominous. The newest dark cloud on horizon is click fraud. 
Click fraud is not much of a concern to individual surfers, but it could become a big problem for marketers and advertisers. Some marketers are charging that search engines, the big benefactors of pay-for-click advertising, are not doing enough to protect them against the growing practice of click fraud. Lane's Gifts and Collectibles, a Texarkana, Arkansas, retailer, filed a lawsuit in February against Google, Yahoo, AOL and other search sites alleging that they knowingly overcharged Lane's and other companies. In a survey of marketers taken late last year, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) found 77% of marketers were concerned about click fraud to some degree. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported that some sources believe between 10% and 20% of paid clicks are "from people not necessarily interested in the product advertised, and therefore in the industry's view, fraudulent." Not everyone agrees that the numbers are that high. Google and Yahoo have responded that not only do they provide refunds when their anti-fraud systems uncover foul play, they continuously monitor click results, looking for trends that would indicate cheating or "click bot" activity.  "Our goal is to identify unqualified traffic and filter it out before the advertiser even gets charged," John Slade, senior director at Yahoo Search Marketing, told Advertising Age. But many marketers remain unsatisfied. In the same Ad Age article, Lori Weiman of Direct Response Technologies complained, "They don't tell you which keywords and which clicks were affected. If marketers knew this information they could change their keyword tactics." Slowly, the giant search engines are starting to respond to these criticisms. They must. They have too much at stake not to. Source: eMarketer.com [an error occurred while processing the directive] Read Serge Thibodeau's daily blogs on search engines at Serge Thibodeau Live. We strongly suggest you bookmark our web site by clicking here.  Tired of receiving unwanted spam in your in box? Get SpamArrest™ and put a stop to all that SPAM. Click here and get rid of SPAM forever! Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it. Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.
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