Google Inc. has unveiled a Web site “resource center” focused on the thorny issue of click fraud, which many consider a potential threat to the company’s main source of revenue: pay-per-click advertising.
Google developed the new Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center to give its advertisers a single place to find Google’s information about click fraud, said Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust and safety at Google, last week.
In the pay-per-click format, advertisers pay every time someone clicks on their ads, which are linked to a Web page. Click fraud happens when companies click on competitors’ ads to drive up their ad spending. Another common click-fraud practice is for Web publishers to click on their sites’ ads to increase their commissions.
With some organizations estimating click-fraud incidents at more than 30 per cent, Google has gone on the offensive in researching the issue and stating publicly what it is doing and the extent of the problem in its own ad network.