Click Fraud Lower on Major Search Engines Shows CF Index
CNET reporter Elinor Mills posts about a new Click Fraud Index, which reflects relatively low rates of CF on the major engines (“Tier 2″ is a different matter):
The Click Fraud Index shows that the overall, industry-wide average click fraud rate is 13.7 percent. The click fraud rate at top-tier search engines such as Google and Yahoo is even less, at 12.1 percent, the data show. The rate rises to 21.3 percent at so-called Tier 2 search providers and 29.8 percent at Tier 3 search companies, according to the Index.
On one level this is a smart marketing strategy by CF detection firm Click Forensics for its own products. But the establishment of such a third-party index is a good thing for the industry because it will make the CF issue more “transparent” and should instill greater confidence in search-engine marketing overall.
However, the exposure of this data and the contrast between so-called Tier 1 and Tier 2/3 will have an uncertain impact on marketers. Logic might suggest an exodus from Tier 2/3; but while Tier 1 delivers more quality and less CF but it costs more too.
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Greg Sterling is the founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, a consulting and research firm focused on online consumer and advertiser behavior and the relationship between the Internet and traditional media, with an emphasis on the local marketplace.
I think the numbers are too low. It looks like the types of click
fraud that were identified in this report are the obvious ones such as
repeated instances of clicks from an IP or IP block. There’s click
fraud occurring that’s perpetrated by click rings or compromised
machines over a distribution of IP addresses that crosses many IP
block boundaries. More to the point, it can be made to look like
ordinary surfing.