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Quote:What is click fraud? I often hear the term “invalid clicks,” too. What’s the difference -- or are they the same?
The term "fraud" implies deliberate deception. Our aim in fighting invalid clicks is broader and includes clicks that we suspect may have been deceptive or malicious, as well as clicks that we deem invalid for other reasons, such as accidental double clicking on an ad. The usage of the word "fraud" in this context has caused a great deal of confusion, as it's practically impossible to "prove" that an impression or click was caused by deliberate deception. Our servers can accurately count clicks on ads, but we cannot know what the intent of a clicking user was when they made that click. When we identify a click as invalid, it simply means a click we won't charge for, in order to deliver the best ROI to advertisers...

Does Google have an incentive to allow some amount of fraud because it means more revenue?
Actually, it is the opposite of that. We have much more of an incentive to do a better job of handling invalid clicks than our competitors -- and we believe we do. Fighting invalid clicks aggressively is in Google's best interest and essential for us to maintain a viable business. In addition, we offer free tools to advertisers so they can monitor their return on investment -- which is a helpful way to determine whether too many clicks coming through are not resulting in sales. Those free tools help advertisers manage to a bottom line value of their ads...

full article: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/03/abou...licks.html

related topics:
New Developments in the Google AdSense Click Fraud Lawsuit http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...658.0.html
How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...979.0.html

A related article discusses a possible move by Google to cost-per-action advertising:

Quote:Google's $6 billion-a-year advertising business is at risk because it can't be sure that anyone is looking at its ads. The problem is called click fraud...

Click fraud has become a classic security arms race. Google improves its fraud-detection tools, so the fraudsters get increasingly clever ... and the cycle continues. Meanwhile, Google is facing multiple lawsuits from those who claim the company isn't doing enough...

Google is testing a new advertising model to deal with click fraud: cost-per-action ads. Advertisers don't pay unless the customer performs a certain action: buys a product, fills out a survey, whatever. It's a hard model to make work -- Google would become more of a partner in the final sale instead of an indifferent displayer of advertising -- but it's the right security response to click fraud: Change the rules of the game so that click fraud doesn't matter.

That's how to solve a security problem.

full article: http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,7137...technology