Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

| This News Blog is dedicated to bringing news, information and innovations targeting the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

Record click fraud hits online advertisers

A record level of pay-per-click advertising spend is being siphoned off by internet fraudsters, according to the latest audit by online traffic quality specialists Click Forensics.
 
The report revealed that the overall level of click fraud hit an all-time high of 17.1% in the last quarter of 2008, representing an increase of half of a per cent on the same period last year.
 
Click fraud is a way for cybercriminals to bump up revenue on hosted ads or drive up advertising expenses for competitors by using hacked computers to impersonate customers clicking on online ads.
 
The figures make better reading for search engines, as fraudulent clicks on ads served up by their networks are down 10% from the last quarter of 2007 to 28.2% of all bogus clicks by the end of 2008.
 
Search engines rely heavily on pay-per-click ads for their revenue and these latest stats suggest that the technology they use to detect click fraud is making a difference.

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