The eight principles the Click Quality Council would like to see search engines adhere to in improving PPC quality; Google’s cool with all of them.
Shuman: Google’s Down With CQC
The wide-ranging discussion of click fraud and search engines may be trending toward a less contentious arena. Not long after SES New York wrapped up with a civil session on click fraud a few weeks ago, the Click Quality Council published its Cornerstone Principles on pay per click quality.
They aren’t going to get a fight out of Google over these. Shuman Ghosemajumder posted about those principles and where Google stands on each. The dominant search advertising company has no problem with any of them.
There is room for improvement, of course. Shuman noted on the first principle how the term ‘same session’ is undefined in the CQC list. “‘Same session’ is not defined here, and it would be bad for advertisers to define it in a way that would exclude comparison shopping,” he said.
Greater control over where advertising can be displayed should be an even more granular process at Google. Along with geotargeting, the choice to opt in or out of the content network, and the ability to opt out of specific URLs, Shuman said Google will have another option for advertisers in the next month:
We currently have URL/domain exclusion features and will be launching IP exclusion in the next month. We have and will continue to work hard to ensure features like these are easy to use.
At the same time, it is important to provide advertisers with more accurate information about domains and IPs so they can make informed decisions and are not misled into thinking that Google expects them to maintain such lists in order to protect against click fraud.
Google is also working on ways to make the ad placement process a little more transparent, beyond just what webmasters see in the referral logs.
On the topic of third-party auditing, Shuman said he expects Google to agree to one performed by the Media Ratings Council, who also do audits for Nielsen and Arbitron. But the animosity between Google and third-party click fraud analysis companies hasn’t completely abated, it seems:
Third-party click fraud auditing firms should also be audited through the MRC to ensure they do not repeat the types of errors that have happened in the past, when fictitious clicks were included in advertiser reports. Those reports misled advertisers and advised them to make decisions which could significantly damage their businesses.
A simple example of continuing serious accounting issues with third parties: several firms have admitted to overcounting errors in the past due to fictitious clicks and have adopted Google’s auto-tagging support in their systems to begin to correct the problem for analysis they do for Google advertisers.
Auto-tagging helps advertisers track keywords from click to conversion and back to cost. We think it’s likely to be among the topics discussed at Google’s first advertiser forum regarding invalid click activity, taking place this week.