Google AdWords click fraud under 2%?

December 13th, 2006

MarketingPilgrim.com have an interesting article on click fraud, where Andy Beal managed to get an unprecedented look into the internal workings of the Google click fraud team and statistics never before seen outside of Google HQ.

Shuman Ghosemajumder - Google’s business product manager for trust and safety, revealed that the invalid clicks that Google report account for less than 2% of all traffic through it’s network, which means that unnoticed, genuine click fraud most likely makes up a fraction of a percent. That’s good news for businesses worried about wasting money on scammers and unscrupulous competitors, and means that for the average business, third party click tracking solutions are not as essential as the main players make out by publishing figures of 20%+ click fraud. Financial sectors, which make up around 70% of the click fraud that does make it through Google’s systems, should still ensure they are doing what they can to track clicks themselves - 0.5% of a £100k budget is still a lot of money for any business!