What is Click Fraud?

There's a prevalent practice used in the underworld of internet marking that deals with AdWords and AdSense called "click fraud." While Google specifies this as illegal, if you are new to internet marketing you may not know what this term means, and how serious it is.

When you sign up for the AdSense program, banners or blocks of text ads are added to your website. When someone clicks on these text ads, you get paid. Simple enough. However, there is an easy way to commit click fraud, even if you don't mean to. Clicking on these ads, even once, to get more income (or even if you are interested in an ad viewed on your website) is considered click fraud.

This technique has become so prevalent that some blackhat marketers have found out how to bypass click fraud, and have made websites for the sole purpose of committing this offense and making huge amounts of fraudulent money.

"Hitbots" is the most complex version of click fraud, which makes a bot to click ads and look natural. Other methods of committing click fraud is hiring people to surf your website, as if they are real traffic, to click on your ad every few clicks.

While any unscrupulous marketer can get away with this for a little while, maybe a month at most, Google starts flagging a website once it gets too many clicks. If the website continues to get an abnormal amount of clicks, Google bans the account and the marketer makes no more money from AdSense ever.

If the marketer makes a lot of money from this, Google may even sue for damages, making the entire process a waste of time for the marketer and for Google.

Google has implemented very strict rules and laws, and has even sued its own employees who thought they could get around click fraud. However, despite all the rules and laws, it has been estimated that about 20% of all clicks are fraudulent.

One thought that must be in the back of your mind is, "why is click fraud illegal?" AdSense is a game, and making money is winning that game. Well, the reason it is illegal is because of AdWords.

Advertisers pay for each click, which is how you make money. While some might find justice in ripping off inflated and huge companies, AdWords is also used by small businesses who use the remainder of their profits or checks from "real jobs" to pay for advertisements.

So while click fraud has the ability to make anyone a millionaire in a short amount of time, it's a terrible practice that makes Google look bad, wastes advertisers' money and gets the marketer sued.