Google fights click fraud
Published March 31st, 2006
Google fights “click fraud,” which bilks Web advertisers out of millions and strikes at the heart of the search engine.
Click-click. Click-click. On a side street in New Delhi, India, past the pushcarts and down the stairs, the familiar sound of a computer mouse signals trouble for Google Inc.
Here, under bare fluorescent lights in a basement cubicle, Rajiv Kumar sells the names of websites that pay people to click on Internet ads. His price: 300 rupees ($6.74).
“There’s nothing wrong with any of this,” Kumar tells a prospective customer. Clicking is easy, he says.
The practice, known in the industry as “click fraud,” exploits weaknesses in the pay-per-click system that has made Mountain View, Calif.-based Google a wonder of the Web. Google, Yahoo Inc. and other providers of online search ads charge advertisers every time someone clicks on their links. By jacking up the hits, people artificially inflate those bills and bilk advertisers.
Google, which says it’s trying to fight such scams, nonetheless stands to profit from the traffic, too. Unless the company or its customers spot the bogus clicks, Google gets paid for them.
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