Fake clicks
Self-clicking
The publisher, or friends and staff acting for the publisher, click the ads on their own pages to raise their earnings.
How it works
This is the simplest form of click fraud. The person who earns from the click is the person making it. It can be one curious click "to see where the ad goes" or an organised effort with colleagues, relatives or hired helpers.
Search engines treat any click by the publisher on their own ads as invalid, whatever the reason. Their systems know which accounts, devices and networks belong to a publisher, so own-clicks are among the easiest patterns to detect. Google's own definition of invalid traffic lists publishers clicking their own ads first.
Who pays for it
The advertiser pays if the click is not filtered. The publisher pays far more when it is: earnings are withheld and the account can be closed, which for a feed publisher means losing the business.
Who does it, and why
New or small publishers under pressure to show revenue, and occasionally employees gaming an internal target. The incentive is short-term income; the usual result is a terminated account.
Warning signs
- Ad clicks from the same networks and devices used to log in to the publisher or tracker accounts.
- Clicks that begin minutes after a page or campaign is launched, before any paid traffic is live.
- Unusually high click rates on brand-new, low-traffic pages.
Defences
- Make it a written rule that nobody in the company clicks live ads; test with the feed's test mode instead.
- Exclude office and staff devices from campaigns and from feed pages where possible.
- Brief agencies, freelancers and partners on the same rule; their clicks count against the account too.
An example
Real case: in November 2004 Google sued Auctions Expert International, a Texas AdSense publisher, alleging it had hired dozens of people to click the ads on its own site, at a cost to advertisers of at least $50,000. Google won a $75,000 judgment in 2005.
Documented cases
- Google v. Auctions Expert International (2004): Publisher click fraud: a site owner paying people to click the ads on its own pages