I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to spot the flaw:
How much does anyone know about what they don’t know?
Google claim 2% click fraud. Is that right? How do they know how much they are missing? How would anyone know? Who is watching the watchers, who, in this case, are also the providers?
“Revealing information”? Heh. More spin than a Disneyland ride….
I think that they are using maths and quite a few assumptions to get the 2% number.
Here are some assumptions to start with:
– Any clicks that result in sales are not click fraud
– The conversion rates for any website is likely to be some what similar to other related websites
– Comparing how similar conversion rates are between AdSense on a website and AdSense on Google Search
ETC
Agreed, thign2b.
We don’t even know, for sure, what those assumptions are.
So we’re left with a figure…
2%
Could mean anything…
[...] Google corrects some misinformation, which I, and many others in the SEM community, were pretty skeptical about yesterday: “I never said that our click fraud rate is less than 2%. Instead, what I said is that the quantity of invalid clicks which we detect as a result of reactive investigations is a “negligible proportion†of the total number of invalid clicks…. So what is our overall “click fraud rateâ€? As noted in the diagram in the story, it is virtually impossible to know the intent of every click. However, we can do a very effective job using statistical techniques to detect potentially malicious behavior, and the total number of invalid clicks we detect – whether for suspected malicious or non-malicious intent – is in the single digit percentages. So third-party estimates which say that click fraud is 15% or higher appear to clearly be substantial exaggerations.“ [...]
[...] Google PPC: “Not 2% Fraud†Google corrects some misinformation, which I, and many others in the SEM community, were pretty skeptical about yesterday: “I never said that our click fraud rate is less than 2%. Instead, what I said is that the quantity of invalid clicks which we detect as a result of reactive investigations is a “negligible proportion†of the total number of invalid clicks…. So what is our overall “click fraud rate� As noted in the diagram in the story, it is virtually impossible to know the intent of every click. However, we can do a very effective job using statistical techniques to detect potentially malicious behavior, and the total number of invalid clicks we detect – whether for suspected malicious or non-malicious intent – is in the single digit percentages. So third-party estimates which say that click fraud is 15% or higher appear to clearly be substantial exaggerations.“ [...]
Another question is what’s the percentage of click fraud with search engine traffic compared to ads displayed on sites?
Ken
King Cobra Poker