E-commerce Insights: All You Should Know About Click Fraud

“It’s unclear how exaggerated click fraud estimates are developed, but they very likely reflect self-interest to hype the problem,” Google spokesperson Barry Schnitt tells me. “The reports often include clicks we’ve already filtered and aren’t charged to advertisers.”

Conversely, search engines have motivation to underestimate the problem. Google CFO George Reyes recently labeled click fraud “the biggest threat” faced by the Internet economy. What’s more, Google’s 2006 annual report warns, “If we fail to detect click fraud or other invalid clicks, we could lose the confidence of our advertisers, thereby causing our business to suffer.”