One of the topics that frequently arises on both our search engine marketing workshops as well as web analytics training is click fraud. Click fraud is a form of abuse by third parties which could be an individual but is more likely to be some form of automated software repeatedly clicking on advertising links; at the cost of the advertiser, of course. It has been mooted that if you’re an online retailer this is something that you just have to accept much in the way that an offline retailer accepts that they have to account for shoplifting within their costs. Further, if you are conducting effective web analytics and monitoring your paid campaigns you will know which keywords/bids are delivering a return on your investment so that, in the grander scheme of things, click fraud is not worth getting over obsessed about it. Or is it?

Some experts have speculated that as much as 30% of Google’s advertising income could be emanating from fraudulent clicks and, given that Google’s advertising revenue amounted to some $6.1 billion last year, that’s rather a lot of money to have allegedly earned improperly. It seems that the ongoing debate has prompted Google to offer to pay up to $90 million (£52 million), before legal fees, to any US advertiser proving it has suffered from click fraud since 2002.

$90 billion! 52 million quid? In cash? Well, not quite. Rather, Google is willing to provide free advertising to any company that believes it has suffered at the hands of click fraud. However, the bad news is that it’s not clear whether these credits are being offered to UK advertisers as Google ascertains that it has not been sued by anybody outside the UK with respect to click fraud. So why is that? Well, we might be able to throw some light on this: our partners, SafeBuy, the online retail watchdog (who we congratulate on achieving the Office of Fair Trading approval of their Web Code of Practice, by the way) recently discovered that as many as 66% of their members were using Google AdWords and other online pay per click campaigns with an average spend of some £4000 plus per month. However, only 60% were monitoring the results!

Conclusion? No wonder UK advertisers aren’t suing Google – it seems that the majority of UK businesses are willing to hand a blank cheque book to Google and haven’t a clue what is working/not working as long as the visitors appear to be hitting their websites. Hmmm! It’s not exactly the way most businesses monitor their offline spending and budgets, is it?

Consequently, SafeBuy - http://www.safebuy.org.uk - has been promoting our search engine marketing and web analytics programmes to their members for some months. Now, in response to demand, we are putting together new training events on pay per click advertising and web analytics using the free Google web analytics tool.

Shouldn’t you, or your clients, be attending?

Watch this space! http://www.searchengineworkshops.co.uk/registration.htm