Ran into this link today about Google Click Fraud:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060309/bs_nm/google_clickfraud_dc

I wonder how much of a problem this really is. I advertise on Google and I often wonder what percentage of the traffic that comes in from Google is valid or simply generated by a few people or even competitors that want to 'stick it to you'. Or from a site owner who's a little trigger happy to get a few extra bucks every month.

Google does a pretty good job of preventing repeat clicking, but if you are running a site that is hosting Google ads, it's still pretty tempting to click on ads on your own site to grab a few extra dollars here or there.

Some links are damn expensive to advertisers with clicks that can garner multiple dollars per click. I'm always blown away when I look at my own AdAense logs and see a single click that generated $1.50 for me – I hate to think what the owner paid <g>…

Obviously the system must work reasonably well otherwise people wouldn't advertise on Google. In my experience Google tends to work a heck of a lot better than print advertising and even at high per click rates it tends to cost a lot less than an ad in a big magazine. But Google advertising really addresses a totally different market too.  

But certainly Google is not the right to create any sort of brand recognition.

Actually anybody have any idea how Google prevents duplicate clicks? Cookie tracking most likely, but if you create an Http client that randomly changes the browser string, doesn't accept cookies, how could Google possibly trap that for example?

So $90 million is a slap on the wrist for Google. Curious about feedback what others are doing to track Google clicks and whether you've run into any patterns that might indicate fraudulent clicks. While it's fairly easy to track clicks and whether they lead to sales or return visits at least, tracking those one time clicks and where they came from is a heck of a lot harder.

On a related note, I've subdued my Google Advertising mainly because unfortunately Google's Ad Targeting seems to be very fluky at best. Apparently the problem on my site is its dual face with lots of .NET and Visual FoxPro content and Google seems to randomly alternate between targeting one or the other usually in the wrong places. So my Message Board which mostly deals with Fox content shows .NET ads and the WebLog which mostly shows .NET content shows many Fox ads. Go figure.

I've been back and forth with Google's Adsense specialists and they don't seem to be able to set up any sort of targeting hints that work. This even with Google specific content containers around the content (especially in this blog). In the end I'm back to letting Google pick its own best guess – and you might see this here with some mismatched content.