Google Click Tricks Fix: Fraud Is Only 0.02 Percent

Google has posted an in-depth look at their click fraud detection scheme on their Inside AdWords blog, which says undetected click fraud constitutes only 0.02 percent of overall fraud in the AdSense network.

Danny Sullivan wonders why Google waited until now to release the extra data. Could it be because Yahoo's Panama is suctioning off 3 to 5 percent of advertisers' budgets from Google? Avenue A clients, too, say Yahoo's new ad system is working just dandy.

Don Dodge provides a good recap of Google's cat-and-mouse game with click fraudsters.

At any rate, Google's basic message here is "trust us, we have it under control." It's doubtless that click fraud concerns have come up not only with publishers but also in meetings with concerned parties in new markets. Even though click fraud can't exist in the same manner in TV and radio markets, Google still has to prove the company is worthy of trust.

I would imagine that, as Google expands, these types of "trust us" posts will appear more often.

Google Partners with LabPixies to Show Gadget Ads

Google started to test a new kind of ads, that are basically Google gadgets. In this example, Google included 4 YouTube videos that promote Gmail and 5 tips, that combine text with images. So the ad is more flexible than other Google ads and gives the user more options and even power tips.

The ad was created by LabPixies, a company that uses gadgets to create ads centered on content. "Our novel approach for marketing ensures that rather than just forcing your content on uninterested users, you can reach an ever-growing users community who are actively searching for content. (...) LabPixies builds campaigns based on your content and tools, which provide the user with a real taste of your product and brand."

It will be interesting to see if Google's collaboration with LabPixies will go beyond this Gmail ad and if Google will start to use gadget-ads to monetize the personalized homepage.

Note that the gadget above is detached from its AdSense context, so I'm not getting paid if you click on the links or play the videos. If you like it so much, you can even add it to your personalized homepage.

Google China Grows Very Fast

In the last month, Google China launched many services. They added a simple version of Google Maps, Google Suggest was enabled by default for web search, a Chinese version of Google Zeitgeist called ReBang ("hot ranking") was launched, but it's not accessible outside of China.

Google Translate added the traditional Chinese (spoken in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau) and also an option to suggest a better translation if you see phrases that look weird (like in the screenshot below). You can make suggestions only for Arabic, Chinese and Russian, the languages for which Google uses machine translation.


Google Books has just been launched in Chinese, with a very limited amount of books (a search for "China" returns 2325 results).

"China Network Communications Corporation (CNC), the country's second largest fixed-line operator, will use search engine giant Google to provide Internet search services for its 16 million broadband users," reports People Daily Online.

Google made a lot of sacrifices to try to become an important presence in China, where Baidu dominates in search and advertising. Google launched last year Google.cn, that delivers censored results to comply with local regulations and to offer a more reliable service to its users: "Google users in China today struggle with a service that, to be blunt, isn't very good. Google.com appears to be down around 10% of the time. Even when users can reach it, the website is slow, and sometimes produces results that when clicked on, stall out the user's browser. (...) Filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission. Failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world's population, however, does so far more severely."

Philipp Lenssen quotes some interesting counter-arguments, like this one from Danny Sullivan: "Ultimately, I want Google to pull out and fight back. I can see the argument for being engaged in a country, for trying to help promote change over time. But I feel like Google should be big enough and principled enough to be engaged by not being engaged. That might do far more good now than years down the line."

But maybe Google is not powerful enough to make a difference in China's internal regulations or maybe they try to build something solid there, so they can have more authority. It will be interesting to watch the months to come, when Google will try to add more services to Google China, to build custom ones only for the Chinese audience, and hopefully even to be brave.

Google Toolbars Voting Buttons

In December 2001, when there was no Digg or StumbleUpon, Google Toolbar launched a beta version:

A new version of the Google toolbar now in beta testing sports a new look -- happy and sad faces that let toolbar users rate web pages. (...)

Google says that excessive clicks are watched for. Google also assures that it has mechanisms in place to ensure good sites don't get penalized by competitors voting against them.

Here's how Google describes the feature: "Use these buttons to vote for or against a page or search result. Click the happy or unhappy face to tell Google that you like or dislike a particular page. You can also use these buttons to report especially good or bad results after you do a search with Google."

Matt Cutts explained at that time: "Right now it's just an experiment. Worst case, it's an easy way for people to report spam that we can handle automatically. We might see if we can improve our search with this data."

In 2003, when Google Toolbar 2 was launched, Google was still undecided: "This feature is currently in test mode, so you will not notice any immediate effects based on your action, other than experiencing a warm sense of satisfaction from having shared your feelings with people who really do care."

The tests must have been positive since the feature was included in the next version too. It's interesting to note that the mysterious feature continous to be available in the Internet Explorer version of Google Toolbar (Settings > Options > More > Voting), but it hasn't been included in the Firefox extension.


This small feature may have been responsible for detecting spam sites or for changing page rankings, but Google could resurrect it and make it a part of Google Personalized Search. They already show interesting pages related to your interests, these voting buttons could refine Google's data and improve the personalized search results.

Find Facts Using Advanced Search Queries

If you're trying to obtain simple facts from Google, but you don't get direct answers (like for Japan population), use another strategy. Try to think how would you formulate a statement that contains the answer to your question.

Instead of asking "When did Yahoo buy Flickr?", think that a page that contains a statement that starts with "Yahoo bought Flickr in" should answer your question.

Step 1 - use quotes
Search for "Yahoo bought Flickr in" and you'll actually get the answer in the snippets. Not all the statements will give the same answer, so try to find the most popular opinion or the most reputable source.

That's great, but what if you want to find more complex information, like Yahoo's acquisitions from 2005 and their dates? The template for statements should be "Yahoo bought [company name] in [month] 2005". Replace the words in brackets with an wildcard.

Step 2 - use wildcards
Search for "Yahoo bought * in * 2005". A wildcard replaces one or more keywords, but you'll get pretty accurate data, like "Yahoo bought Konfabulator in July 2005" or "Yahoo bought the social bookmarking site Delicious in December 2005").

But how do you know that your template is good enough? To improve the performance, let Google match the synonyms of important keywords. Use OR between the synonyms of a word.

Step 3 - use OR
Search for "Yahoo bought OR acquired * in * 2005". You'll get the results for these two queries combined: "Yahoo bought * in * 2005" and "Yahoo acquired * in * 2005".

If you want to find some Yahoo acquisitions over the years, try the special syntax for intervals. To match all the integers between 1997 and 2007, add this to a query 1997..2007. This also works with currencies and measurement units.

Step 4 - use intervals
Search for "Yahoo bought OR acquired * in * 1997..2007". Although Yahoo was launched in 1994, they started to acquire other companies in 1997, after the IPO.

Of course, you'll say that a Wikipedia article about Yahoo contains all these acquisitions, but this was just an example. It works with almost any kinds of facts, as long as you use good templates and it has the major advantage that you'll see the answers in the snippets and you don't have to visit each search result. I found this extremely useful on a mobile phone, where it's difficult to read web pages and to find something inside them.

Microsoft says Googles success a wake-up call

Microsoft cheif technical executive Ray Ozzie.

Watching Google rake in advertising revenue "was a wake-up call within Microsoft," the company's

Watching Google rake in advertising revenue "was a wake-up call within Microsoft," the company's top technical executive, Ray Ozzie, said.

But he said Microsoft plans to do more than simply mimic Google by rolling out web-based versions of desktop programs or following its particular search and advertising model.

Ozzie, who has only made a handful of appearances since his promotion last June to replace Bill Gates as chief software architect, told analysts and investors on Tuesday at a Goldman Sachs conference in Las Vegas that he has been laying the groundwork for programmers across the company to build Internet-based software.

"There is a sea change going on in the industry," Ozzie said. In a question-and-answer session broadcast over the Internet, he likened the current shift to the way the PC era that took off in the 1980s marked a move away from centralised mainframe computing.

But Microsoft has yet to offer a cohesive package of programs that run over the internet instead of from a PC.

Ozzie gave little indication of what might be coming, or when. Meanwhile, Google has expanded beyond searches to offer free, web-based programs similar to Microsoft's mainstays, Word and Excel.

Ozzie said Word, Excel and other parts of Microsoft's "Office" suite have weathered threats from both desktop and web-based programs in part because competitors always compromised functionality.

For example, he said, users always have to be connected to the internet to use a web-based word processor.

Instead of jumping belatedly into the fray with web-only programs, he said Microsoft will pursue a mix of software loaded on PCs and internet services that also work with the growing array of mobile devices, a strategy he called "software-plus-service."

He said he sees free, web-based, ad-supported software as a way to extend Microsoft Office's reach, but gave no specifics. He noted that this solution was not likely to appeal to the company's big business customers.

Sid Parakh, an analyst with McAdams Wright Ragen in Seattle, said that "what he's trying to say is that even though we are behind, we are not going to necessarily copy a model that's out there."

In the U.S. search market, Microsoft is stuck firmly in third place behind Google and Yahoo, according to January data from research group Comscore Networks Inc.

Right now, Ozzie said, people rely on general web search engines for all types of queries.

Under his leadership, Microsoft is betting that internet users will want search capabilities built into all the different places they spend time, from video game community sites to the Outlook email and calendar program.

He pointed to the software maker's acquisition on Monday of Medstory, a health search engine, as an example of Microsoft's plan to offer targeted groups of web surfers to advertisers.

Parakh said the Medstory acquisition was solid. "Advertisers do want a targeted audience," he said. If Microsoft can deliver it, "I don't see a reason why advertisers won't move."

Google to Offer Click Fraud Protection

Google Inc. has announced that it will provide more tools and data to help its advertisers assess and combat click fraud. Click fraud is a controversial practice that is the biggest enemy of the highly popular and profitable online advertising method known as pay-per-click.

Google disclosed data showing that while its pay per click advertising is under regular attack from fraudsters, almost all fraud tricks are automatically detected. This rebuffs critics of Google's pay-per-click advertising who say it's a magnet for fraud.

Click fraud is when web site publishers try to trick Google's ad system into counting ads that are never seen by actual users, or when competitors use automated programs to create false clicks, which drives up charges per click and their rivals' ad rates.

Some click fraud-fighting companies think that the practice of click fraud is rampant and forces advertisers to pay an extra $16 billion per year. They also believe that up to half of all ad clicks are fraudulent.

According to Google, however, an average of 10 percent of all ad clicks are invalid and claim that is a worst case scenario. Google claims the amount is usually in the single digits.

Google also claims that the amount of click fraud that Google does not catch represents less than 0.02 percent of the times an ad is clicked.

Google also announced that it is introducing a number of new click fraud-fighting measures in the upcoming weeks and months. This will include allowing advertisers to notify Google about specific internet addresses from where they suspect click fraud attacks originate.

Other tools include providing advertisers with a resource center to address questions and Google will make available a standard way for advertisers to report click fraud.

"We're trying to provide advertisers as much transparency, understanding and control around this issue as we can," said Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's business product manager for trust and safety.

So starting in March, Google plans to allow its advertisers to blacklist certain IP addresses for reasons such as suspicion of click fraud or even because their clicks don't lead to sales.

"IP filtering is going to allow advertisers to say: 'If I believe a given IP address isn't producing productive traffic for me, then I don't want to ever show my ads to that IP address,'" Ghosemajumder said.

Google reached a settlement of a click fraud class action lawsuit last year which has been described as a big victory for the company. A loss may have likely cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars. Google managed to settle the case for $90 million.