Who pays? PPC Click Fraud

Recently I was fortunate enough to be a sponsor of the “Search Engine Watch Forums Live” held at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim Orange County. Danny Sullivan was in attendance because he was on vacation with his family at Disneyland. During the search engine marketing event a woman shared her experience with click fraud. She was in tears by the time she finished telling her story and no one had much of an answer for her on what to do.

While I have been aware of click fraud for some time, it comes up at conferences that I speak at; it seems to be very newsworthy these days. At my last Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Conference for Marketing Professionals Irvine, CA November 17, 2005 I included it as a topic and had attendees from three different click fraud companies. Search-Optimization.com has since formed a strategic alliance with one of them to furnish click fraud analysis and investigation.

Well it is such a hot topic Wired magazine has run an article on it, “How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet.” The question is who is the victim of the theft? Would advertisers pay more per click if they received higher ROI? What would Google be worth per share if 15% to 25% of their revenue went to them instead of to fraud? Will the SEC get involved? Stay tuned!