Google's click fraud costs us too much.

[ReviewGolf.com]

We've been using Google for one of our sites for nearly 4 years now and it seems that it has become a loosing proposition for us.

In the last 3 months or so we have noticed that as our advertising costs grew, our ROI decreased. This month the amount we spent on Google ads already equals to that of the last month’s, without bringing any actual results. We have decided to scale down our advertising efforts with Google and review the change in a month or so to determine whether we will be leaving Google all together.

At the moment we limited our advertising to Google.com and stopped all outsourcing of our ads to other sites in the network. This in one our main concerns. Until Google comes up with real solution to growing click fraud problem, we are not going to keep throwing cash at them.

(This comment is not about ReviewGolf.com site)

[bhartzer]

How do you know that it's a click fraud problem?

There could be a lot of other issues going on, especially if you're participating in 'contextual advertising', which allows website publishers to display Google Adwords ads on their websites. I increasingly hear from advertisers that their ROI has been going down lately.

You're definitely doing the right thing by reviewing your participation in the Google Adwords program, and hope you can get back to the ROI you were seeing previously.

[ReviewGolf.com]

We have been participating in 'contextual advertising', which unfortunately is a good idea gone bad. The reason I mentioned fraud in relation to 'contextual advertising' because this was not a problem right away after Google introduced Adsense. Now, after Google made it so easy for just about anyone to put Adsense ads on just about any site, some of the site owners see it as an opportunity to milk Google a bit.

There have been plenty of messages around various boards, including this one, about this growing problem. I even say a software package that guaranteed stealth click generation.

Google started Adsense with CLICKS in mind and ended up with monetary fraud in their hands, the problem that can easily jeopardize their IPO deal if they won't come up with a solid resolution of the problem.

[cloud999]

I have installed the google tracking software, and using their own tracking software and if all clicks where real then I would have 100% convertion, since the link goes to that page. BUT, I am getting less than 100% and sometimes even 0%!

I smell a rat here!

I suggest you use their tracking software to count hits so you can see the true amount of lead coming in, and the amount of fake ones!

[bhopkins]

I find this an interesting post, but from th eother side of the equation. I've notice a fairly drastic decrease in the performance of adsense over the last couple of months. My traffic has decrease a little but not at the same rate my adsense earnings have. I recently re-did the look of the site and I was thinking that may have something to do with it and it may still, but I have noticed even when I get the same percentage of click throughs it seems as if Google just is not paying as much as before. Perhaps this ia also one of the reasons for the decrease. If advertisers not recieving as much of a ROI then it makes sense that they will reduce the amount they pay for those clicks. This may be related to my problem more than just the redesign.

Just an observaton

Bruce

[rocos]

I find this an interesting post, but from th eother side of the equation. I've notice a fairly drastic decrease in the performance of adsense over the last couple of months. My traffic has decrease a little but not at the same rate my adsense earnings have. I recently re-did the look of the site and I was thinking that may have something to do with it and it may still, but I have noticed even when I get the same percentage of click throughs it seems as if Google just is not paying as much as before. Perhaps this ia also one of the reasons for the decrease. If advertisers not recieving as much of a ROI then it makes sense that they will reduce the amount they pay for those clicks. This may be related to my problem more than just the redesign.

Just an observaton

Bruce


You are right,I have found this phenomena, too.

[ReviewGolf.com]

I have noticed the decrease too.

Also we decided to track referring URLs and sometimes if we follow a URL where the click came from we get a page with Adsense and nothing else on it. I admit there's a possibility this part was once a part of a page though a frame set or some other include, but it appears to be way to often to raise a few red flags for us.