Follow up to Click Fraud or inadvertent clicks

Follow up: posted Oct 22

I talked with a Google rep who said many sites had less data to work with on the "performance report", evidently Google made a lot of older data inaccessible. The other interesting development is Google finally assigned an account manager to the client, so now they at least have someone to go to.

The other day there was a story about Google's Orkut property. Basically, ads were showing up, served by Google onto Orkut, next to photos and images that were not in good taste. Some advertisers were very offended. Google has a long way to go on making sure ads are appropriately targeted!

Aug 9 original posting follows

On behalf of a client, I recently investigated what appeared to be a case of click fraud on ads from Google's Content Network. I am interested in feedback about the approach I took, and any suggestions people have of next steps. I think I'm at a dead end: the Performance Report I used is no longer available for the time period of when the ads were running. My full writeup is here.

There are some significant implications for Google, for advertisers and for sites. I have sent the report to a contact at Google in the hope that the details will help them create a better service. Advertisers should be cautious with running ads on Content Network. Sites that are running Google Ads should also be aware of what's going on. There are many competitors for ad dollars. Many of them are junk. The challenge for legitimate sites will be to stay in Google's good graces and not be perceived as a bad site. This will be a real challenge, because in the case of this particular client, 70 to 90% of the ads ran on sites that were of very low quality. The full PDF is linked to from here, or read the first few pages of the report online below. Not included: suggestions for Google or detailed data tables comparing specific URLs. See the extended entry.

Search Engine Strategies Travel - talks of July 26 / 27

I will be speaking at Search Engine Strategies Travel in Seattle on July 26 and 27. My two talks will be about getting started with pay per click, and analytics / conversion issues.

Vincent Cerf talk at Google Kirkland July 23 2007

I got the hear Vincent Cerf speak at Google Kirkland on July 23. He was also the subject of a story in the Seattle PI.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/324803_googlecerf24.html

Some highlights from his talk:

1. think about an entire system, not just the network, for security. Ways to improve security, anti-phishing, etc, need to be at the end points, and accomplished through smarter operating systems and browsers and ipsec (when IPV6 is implemented), not just through changes to the network itself that make the network more secure.

2. There are more mobile devices connected to the internet than PCs, and most of these are in Asia.

3. Devices could be single purpose machines, or computers placed in very non traditional settings like a refrigerator or a picture frame (which we see in stores now).

There are big implications of 2 and 3 for search engine optimization and for using the web as a marketing tool. They include:

A. considering what content is available for mobile search.
B. optimizing for mobile search engines
C. evaluating how one's site looks in very small browsers

Mr Cerf also discussed the way Arpanet was originally set up and tested, and the way that people who are involved in space exploration at the Jet Propulsion Lab are working on using the same "store and forward" techniques of the internet to relay and send information from/ to planetary probes from / to ground stations or from / to orbiting units, for eventual transmission back to earth.

All in all it was a very interesting talk.