Addressing Click Fraud

Yahoo! Search Marketing’s John Slade takes on the issue

On Wednesday we asked to you to give us feedback about your upgrade, “Panama” and all that. Among the comments was a question about click fraud and what we’re doing about it. Coincidentally, John Slade, our Senior Director of Product Marketing, addressed this very issue yesterday. John was responding to search influencer Jeffrey K. Rohrs amusingly titled critique, “The Sausage Manifesto.” Says John:

We proactively identify suspicious clicks and remove them from our billing system 24 hours a day, 7 days a week—as a result, we’ve given away billions of clicks for free. We’ve invested significant technological, financial and human resources in clickthrough protection since we started this industry in 1998 and are redoubling our efforts by dedicating even more resources to this issue…

Read more about this issue and about Yahoo’s response to it on “The Sausage Manifesto” weblog.

—The Team

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[ Categories: Yahoo! News ]

13 Comments Add your own

1. Alex Vega | January 6th, 2007 at 7:25 pm

You should check the suspicious clicks at your subsidiaries also. While my US account works well, I get hundreds of clicks through Yahoo! Mexico and very few, if any, results. I’m about to cancell that account. Perhaps I should have done so already.
2. John C | January 8th, 2007 at 10:25 am

The quote …

“given away billions of clicks for free”

could be interpreted that click fraud is indeed a big problem and as it’s difficult to determine valid/fraudulent clicks Yahoo! don’t charge for them just in case.

I presume that’s not how Yahoo! see it?
3. Nathan Neibauer | January 9th, 2007 at 4:37 am

Yahoo never get it right. There is no way in Panama to Email Yahoo. Since the upgrade I cannot get into my account. Click fraud is there in all search engines with partners. No policing.
4. Gregg Borne | January 10th, 2007 at 6:48 am

I think you might want to read the free white paper on click fraud avilable for download here: http://www.thinkpartnership.com/white-papers-request.aspx
5. JLK | January 10th, 2007 at 8:42 am

Yahoo!
Why don’t you do the smart, honorable and
measurable thing and just let us pay for
BUSINESS generated instead of “Clicks” that
you admit are meaningless and ripe for fraud?
I’m not saying you are committing the fraud
but just look at the temptation and the lack
of measure!!!! I’m not paying for nothing
anymore. Out of the click game and out of
the banner game. Neither work.
6. Linda | January 10th, 2007 at 8:53 am

There are two things that Yahoo can do that would work to minimize click fraud. First, make it an option to opt out of their Affiliate Programs – let us CHOOSE what websites we want to have our ads show up when searches are initiated. Second, make a designated “time” someone needs to be on the site before charging us for it. I don’t mind paying for legitimate clicks from real customers. Ultimately, it is a little bit like letting a fox watch the chickens. I KNOW that the above can be accomplished if Yahoo is serious about protecting their advertisers – if they only knew how much opportunity there is for them to DO IT RIGHT and dominate this industry by DOING IT RIGHT. My hope is they will read the above ideas and respond with implementing the above ideas then I would LOVE YAHOO SEARCH MARKETING!
7. Phil | January 10th, 2007 at 7:48 pm

I agree with Linda. If people had to stay on your site for say at least one or two minutes before the click counted, I think it would go a long way to minimizing the chilling effect of click fraud on advertisers and on the advertising industry.
8. Jim | February 26th, 2007 at 9:52 am

My company has devised a way to better qualify ‘real’ customers. We have created an advertising system that rewards consumers for becoming actively educated about the advertiser website and its products/services. In our model, advertisers are only charged for consumers that spend quality time on a web site. We deliver a more informed consumer to the advertiser and increase the brand exposure many times over conventional marketing methods. Check out our concept at http://www.winquiry.com
9. PPC Hero : Click Fraud, I&hellip | July 25th, 2007 at 10:10 am

[...] Yahoo! doesn’t get as technical in their descriptions of click fraud protection, they have voiced [...]
10. PPC Hero : Why You Should&hellip | July 25th, 2007 at 11:04 am

[...] Yahoo! doesn’t get as technical in their descriptions of click fraud protection, they have voiced [...]
11. freepornclips | September 17th, 2007 at 11:13 pm

Hi!
12. Karen | March 16th, 2008 at 8:46 pm

We must be aware of this.. I have a fraud experience.. I received a fraud email..

Sort of Email Phishing
13. Dannie | June 24th, 2008 at 10:59 pm

you really have to be sure in every step you made, especially in giving your personal informations to others. this may led to identity fraud, where, they will take your identity and pretend that they are you. we must be aware.

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