Google’s share price today is US$481.78, with a market cap of 147.5 billion. What makes it so valuable? Its main income source is derived from Google Adwords, where advertisers place their ads in the search results of Google as “sponsored links” on a pay-per-click basis. However, recent class actions against Google and Yahoo revealed that more than 10% of the clicks are bogus.

According to Economist,

“Estimates of the extent of click fraud vary, but it is generally thought to account for around 10% of clicks on advertisements, though some estimates range as high as 50%. Disgruntled advertisers have launched class-action lawsuits against Google and Yahoo!, and big companies are threatening to hold back spending on internet advertising unless the industry generally becomes more transparent and accountable.”

Google is definitely monitoring the clicks fraud situation with its cutting edge technology but this still cannot eliminate this problem completely. One of the reasons for the clicks fraud is due to Google AdSense program, where webmasters / website owners placed Google AdWords on their sites in return for a share of clicks revenue. So this provides an incentive for some fraudsters to use various means to click at the ads on their sites in order to get paid by Google.

It’s made clear in the Google’s agreement that a publisher of AdWords cannot click at the ads or induce any 3rd party to click at the ads, or otherwise their accounts will be cancelled and any earnings will be forfeited. Recently, I found out from Google’s forum that a publisher’s earnings of more than US$30,000 was forfeited by Google, without any explanation other than that they viewed the clicks to be invalid. The publisher denied any wrongdoing and was crying for help but to no avail.

Let’s look at it this way, even up to 20% of the clicks are fraudulent, that still leaves 80% of the clicks to be valid which produce qualified prospects and leads for the advertisers. For mass advertising like newspaper or TV, it would be a miracle if 20% of the readers or audience have read or viewed your ads. That’s why PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising is still so popular and ever growing because many advertisers are deriving positive results from the Google AdWords.

Do you have any experience relating to placing or publishing Google AdWords?

Related Posts

• eOneNet Internet Marketing Millionaires featured in The Star newspaper
• Who Has Lost the 3rd Global Search Engine Spot to Baidu?
• Online Advertising Grows 35% in 2006
• Free Internet Marketing Seminar Ticket & Computer Headset Microphone for Platinum Card Holders !
• Great Singapore Sale – shop till you drop
• What are the most popular search engines online?
• Hong Kong Internet marketing seminars in September, 2006
• Donate RM100 To Attend Conference with 8 Success Gurus, Including Fione Tan

If you like our Internet Marketing Blog, join to receive our blog updates for free here

This entry was posted by on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Google Adsense, Google Adwords, Internet Marketing Asia, Pay per Click Search Engines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.