Google Committs Click Fraud Themselves on National TV????
On a segment of 60 minutes, Lesley Stahl is talking to Google executive Marissa Mayer about how Google makes money.
"People always ask us how Google makes money," Mayer says, as she does a Google search for flowers. The left side of the screen displays the top 10 Web sites Google found related to flowers. Appearing on the right side are what Google calls sponsored links. This, she explains, is where the money comes from. When someone clicks on a sponsored link, say in this case it's an ad for FTD flowers, the company pays Google.
It shows Marissa clicking on the FTD ad and other ads as she explains that "this is the way Google makes money".
Now true, FTD probably paid Google a whopping 50 cents for that click, and they got some national publicity out of the deal, but still... You know those two weren't really looking for flowers.
It's hard to believe that they sued someone for click fraud a while ago. I never expected Google to do click fraud, and never thought it earned it's money that way. How much % of their money do you think is earned from click fraud? I'm guessing only a measly 5% or less because I doubt they would spend all their time working on click fraud and they do earn alot of money from Adwords.
That was just a demo, and Google executive Marissa Mayer has better things to do than click to make money for Google. Google is so successful because of innovation; and their PPC model is widely-trusted precisely because they take great pains to ensure that there is zero (or minimal) click fraud happening.
I'm glad they actually prosecute the ones caught committing click fraud; as an adwords advertiser, I'd happily keep paying google because of this.
Mostly just joking, it's more the appearance of what was done than whether or not there was any unjust pecuniary gain by the goog.
Anyhow, I'm up to having spent $1,200 on adwords since December 1 (Took a week + off for X-mas, etc., so I'm combining December/January), so believe me I'm all about them going after some click fraud.
What's particularly bad, is I'll have 50 clicks on ad X in one day, but the next day's reports only show 30-40 uniques from that ad, yet I have never received an "adjustment" as a result of their having caught click fraud.
However, the day they can effectively catch it all will be a help for everyone.
I suppose the only big negative that can come of this is that all of the Google shareholders (It's public) now realize they can make themselves money as easy as clicking on links...
Does that make sense?
True, McDonalds shareholders know they can make money by buying burgers, but there is something sad about a pay per click system that was at least pure on the search side of things now having the potential to receive more negative clicks as a result of folks looking out for their bank at the expense of others (Me).
Something Witty This Way Comes... 
