November 21, 2007
The Next Google-bomb (Political Click Fraud)
Politics (particularly political technology) has always been a few years behind commerce… slow to adopt TV, Direct Mail, the web. Thankfully, at least online, tactics and strategies are jumping the divide faster than usual. Honestly, I thought it wouldn’t have taken this long for people to start clicking on rival candidate’s cost-per-click ads to drive up their costs… Unfortunately, it finally did.
Mashable points to a reddit story suggesting that folks start clicking on Rudy’s google AdSense ads.
As anyone who has done CPC ads knows, fraud is pretty much part of the territory. Also, the ad providersdo offer solutions to fraud. So, if you see a huge surge in ad-clicks with a concurrent plummeting of conversions, you are very likely a victim (which should be fairly obvious). You can see google’s FAQ on click fraud here. If you feel that your AdSense ads are being abused, you can contact their click-quality team.
Don’t let this discourage you from trying paid search - it can be extremely cost-effective for building your email lists. Let us know if you want to get a program going.