Click Fraud Reaches New High, Says Click Forensics

Jan 30, 2007 at 11:59am ET by Chris Sherman

Click Forensics has updated its Click Fraud Index with data from the fourth quarter of 2006, reporting an overall industry average click fraud rate of 14.2 percent versus 13.8 percent for Q3, 14.1 percent for Q2 and 13.7 percent for Q1. The Click Fraud Network collects data from more than 3,000 online advertisers and their agencies running campaigns for both large and small companies.

Other findings include:

The average click fraud rate of Pay Per Click advertisements appearing on search engine content networks was 19.2 percent for Q4.
The industry average click fraud rate for high-priced search terms remained at 20.9 percent as it did in Q3 versus 20.2 percent in Q2. High-priced terms are defined as terms that cost over $2.00. These high-priced terms often make up the majority of an advertiser’s total spend.
The average PPC term cost for the top key terms across the five biggest search advertising industries – Retail, Financial Services, Health & Fitness, Technology, and Entertainment – for Q4 was $3.50. This compares to $3.92 in Q3, $4.51 in Q2 and $4.75 in Q1.

More stats from this release.

Chris Sherman is Executive Editor of SearchEngineLand.com and President of Searchwise LLC, a Boulder Colorado based Web consulting firm. He also programs and co-chairs the Search Marketing Expo - SMX conference series.

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ONE COMMENT ON Click Fraud Reaches New High, Says Click Forensics

ckatir, March 20th, 2007 at 5:53 am ET:

The Stigma of Click Fraud and Why You Should Eradicate It
The stigma of Click Fraud has become damaging to Internet Marketing. The truth is that advertisers are willing that the Internet Visitors click on their ads for any purpose. These clicks have powerful eBranding effects and other advantages even if visitors do not need the products being advertised at that particular time of visit. However, the scare of click fraud in the mind of the Internet visitor and not knowing what click fraud really is has had deep damaging effects. In stigmatic ways, now visitors believe if they click and don’t buy, they have committed fraud. This is the most damaging to the Internet Marketing and eMarketing strategies on the Internet as any past short-sightedness thinking. Remember the early times when people were afraid of Electric Poles in their neighborhood? What happened? Who really benefited? Not the electric companies, but the people.

I strongly agree with Google that Click Fraud, in terms of the huge magnitude it is projected now, does not exist. Google and Yahoo have developed powerful detection methods that either do not count the extra clicks as click fraud or they totally discount the clicks. Those who are trying to make a big deal out of this issue are either just plain stupid or jealous to Google and Yahoo success. If you ask me, these are the people who have committed click fraud in the past and now are angry that Google and Yahoo have terminated their accounts.

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