Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Click Fraud

One of the most effective ways of advertising is to buy advertising on Google, Yahoo, or other search engines. We feel that Google is the most efficient as it has the most reach.

How this works is, say, you purchased a Harley on eBay. You sent the seller the money via Western Union, but you never received your motorcycle. Then, after going to eBay and not getting the results you want, you seek professional help. So, you Google "ebay fraud" and a little block ad comes up for Sherlock Investigations. You click on it and come to our web site. Perhaps, this is how you got to read this.

Every time someone clicks on our ad we pay Google a fee. The fee can range from ten cents to $6, depending upon a number of factors.

Click fraud is when a competitor keeps clicking on an ad, hoping to rack up a huge bill for it's competition, thus discouraging him from advertising. This is both unethical, and unwise.

While Google has safeguards in place to watch out for click fraud, sometimes abusers slip by. We also watch for click fraud while monitoring our web statistics daily. We can tell how someone found our site, what they looked at, and how long they stayed. We can also read everyone's IP address so that we know almost who they are. I say "almost," because individual identities or computers are not revealed. But it's close.

I said all that to say this. Yesterday, an individual using an AOL account, clicked on our ad 27 times. Google will reimburse us for the misuse of this system, and is launching an investigation as to who this particular person, or company, is.

I believe in karma. You reap what you sow. What goes around comes around. Sometimes it takes longer than you wish, but it eventually works.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I recently came across a web site posting after typing my name into ask jeeves
annuity
I'd like to cash out dore hovey insured eileen hovey beneficiary 18:07:02 6/9 2004

there were several more postings regarding " cash out " I tried following up on this but ended up going in circles I am dore hovey eileen hovey is my mother I did not post this inquirey I am aware of thi policy which my brother james lee hovey took possession of when he became conservator of my mother eileen (hovey) rogers estate I being the insured am the owner of this policy no one but myself can cash out any face value on this policy and no one can collect death benefits since I am very much alive by the way the date on this "cash out" posting 06/09/2004 is my brothers birthday I guess he felt like celebrating with a fraudulent attempt at acquiring money he had no right to