Click fraud occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating an improper charge per click. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiaryof the fraud whether they like it or not.

Use of a computer to commit this type of internet fraud is a felony in many jurisdictions, for example as covered by Penal Code 502 in California and the Computer Misuse Act in 1990 in the United Kingdom. There have beem arrests relating to click fraud with regard to malicious clicking in order to deplete a competitor's advertising budget.

In 2004, a California man created a software program that he claimeed could let spammers defraaud Google out of millions of dollars in fraudulent clicks. Authorities said he was arrested while trying to blackmail Google for $150,000 to hand over the program.

Types of click fraud

• Basic clicker cheat

This is a noob. This guy knows almost nothing about web technology or network architechture. He clicks on his ads every time he has chance. It can be a few clicks to hundred of clicks daily. Most likely he doesn't even read the Adsense Program Policies and Terms and Conditions

• Proxy clicker cheat

She knows a thing or two about cookies and IP adress. Or she doesn't know, but soomehow guessed that if she use the things called anonymizer, Google will not be able to trace her, because her identity is hidden.

• Multiple computer clicker cheat

He knows that somehow Google will detect if the clicks are originated from his own computer. So he will try to even out origin of the clicks. He will recruit his friends, family members, relatives, neighbours, his cats, and his dogs on single mission to click on ads. He will also click on the adsense ads when he is using the library computers, or his office workstation.

• Software clicker cheat

Graduate to the next step is buyers of clickbots / click-bots. These are specialized robot software to click on Adsense ads. It will browse around your websites, clicking on the ads ecery few minutes. The more advanced ones will cloak the IP adress too, so the webste seems to be very popular world wide. To cover the track, this clickbots will browse around the advertisers sites too while computing its "click request".

• Paid-clickers cheat

If you don't like automated things there is alwaysother option for you. Justpay $50 dollars a month to the professional Adsense clickers. These are groups of highly specialized Internet surfers with office in the dark rooms in street corners of India, Pakistan and China, helping Adsense account owner to earn good amounts of money - before the Adsense account is disabled. That is, they will browse around your websites, click on the ads every few minutes. because they use human eyes, they know which ads worth more. And to be more convincing they can a link or two, or sign up free offers / newsletters on the advertiser sites.

• Click-rings cheat

Network is power. So says many business gurus. Instead of taking things into their hands, these people realize that they can join hands with those with similar goals and distribute Adsense clicks among themselves, the so called Adsense click-rings. Joining this click-ring network means that your website adress will be made known to members, who will regularly browse the website and click on your Adsense ads. In exchange, you will browse other members sites and click on their Adsense ads. The medium used varies. Some clic-ring groups use mail-list for communications. Some are using bulletin boards/forum Yahoo groups, or Usenet. IRC is another popular way. Slightly more complicated is specialized Adsense exchange software for collecting members website adresses and displaying others websites for clicking.

• Other medium cheat

I have tens of thousands email address on my newsletter subscriber list. If I include Adsense ads on my newsletters, with 5% CTR, I can get a thousand clicks per one mail. Not bad. Or I can pay someone to write some useful/nice/fynny/cute toolbars or firefox extensions or screensavers that people can download and use for free, and display my Adsense ads there.

• Visitor cheat

Simply putting "Visit our sponsors" or "Check out the ads above" on your website is cheating. This might not be very clea-cut cheat to some. But Google Adsense program policies has stated clearly, the only text allowed are "Advertisements" or "Sponsored List"

• Spam cheat

This is the highest level all click-frauds, the Maestro of Fraudsters. She spams millions of emails regularly, offering to "satisfy your inner needs if you can help me check on the links on my website". Of course, email is not the only way. What IRC and instant messaging (IM) are for, after all. She will look for unsuspecting victims, offering something too-good-to-be-true "if only they will visit the website and click on the links".

• Click-through-rate cheat

Whenever method(s) above used, there is one limiting condition: the CTR (click-through-rate). Any CTR that exceeds certain percentage (probably around 10%) will raise red flag in Google Adsense back room. To lower the CTR, the professional cheaters will createsome pages on the domain that attracts very high traffic. Some interesting freebies will sure do the tricks. Adsense code is pasted there, thus creating a very high page impressions. Whether or not the ads are clicked does not matter any anyway, because they are targetting low paying keyword that does not have much competetion. The fake clicks are, of course, on where the big money is, the low traffic pages stuffed with high-paying keywords.