Will Click Fraud Force Google To Shut Out Low Traffic Sites?

Click fraud is a subject that refuses to go away. In spite of repeated assurances from leading search engines that it is well under control, continued research seems to suggest that it is much worse than it was earlier thought to be.

A recent study by research and advisory firm Outsell estimates that close to 14.6 percent of the clicks on advertisements are fraudulent. It is estimated that this is costing online advertisers almost $800 million a year.

These facts combined with mounting pressure on leading PPC (pay-per-click) organizations like Google has led to anxiety amongst some observers and analysts that the future may not augur well for low traffic sites as a result of rising concern over click fraud. This is because it has often been suggested that one way of dramatically decreasing click fraud is by raising the stakes and shutting out small sites with less than 1,000 unique visitors a day. The idea here is that sites with larger traffic who enjoy a high number of clicks and high revenue daily will usually have no temptation to cheat on one or two clicks. With low traffic sites, a single click matters a lot and this means that the temptation to get friends and associates based elsewhere to click on their ads is huge.

Still, other analysts think that this is highly unlikely because Google's great success with PPC has mainly been centered on the numerous small low traffic sites that participate in the program. Abandoning these small sites seems highly unlikely.

To add credence to this school of thought, other observers quickly point to the fact that there is waste in all forms of advertising, copies of newspapers and magazines that don't get sold and TV ads that are not viewed. They insist that the most important figure is the ROI (return on investment) and that as long as that figure is healthy click fraud will continue to be simply a cost of doing business.