It's an inherent flaw in the system that there will be some people who don't have anything better to do than to click on Google Ads or whatever. Google e.g. makes it very clear that website owners are not to click on their own ads -- that's fraudulent. Webmasters are also prohibited from encouraging/requiring their visitors to click on Google Ads -- basically Google does everything it can to make sure that it delivers targeted customers to its advertisers, and weed out the riff-raff.

It's also possible that it's fraudulent for companies to click on competing companies' ads repeatedly to hit their bottom line.

I don't see what the beef is. I never send out a paid advertisement with the expectation that everyone who visits my site will want to buy something.

Some people are, and always will be, tire-kickers to the core. Advertisers should factor this in when they purchase PPC advertising. I'm sure that Google and other PPC providers will work very hard to weed out click fraud because they'll lose their customer base if they don't.

At least it's better than paying for each and every click through (like it used to be with banners).

http://www.mightybargainhunter.com

The problem isn't so much the tire kickers. There are two issues.

The first one is competitors who regularly click on your ads. If you've got a $50 daily limit and are paying $2 per click, 25 clicks later you're budget is gone for the day and you're ad isn't showing anymore - which leaves their ad showing but not yours.

The second issue are people who set up websites displaying google ads fraudulently. People click on these ads, the website owner is paid a little bit by Google. Now imagine someone setting up a system to click on their ads all day long. They're making money, Google's making money, and the advertisers are being defrauded. There's no tire kickers there.

Google's sytem is closed. There's no way to really tell who and where people are clicking on your ad and Google provides no way to monitor this type of activity. They claim they monitor it, but the problem is that Google makes money on click fraud. Some folks thus wonder how committed they are to cleaning up click fraud.

I manage probably $30K-$50K per month in adwords campaigns. I have seen <$100 come back from Google in clickthrough fraud refund. I really doubt that's anywhere close to the real number. Some folks estimate it's as high as 25%.

There's little anyone can do. As long as it's profitable, we've got to advertise, and let Google and the fraudsters (not suggesting they're related :) ). make their money.

Good points.

True, Google does make money from the fraudsters. If they don't address the issues that you've pointed out, though, they'll lose their customers in the long run. It would seem to me that there's too much money at stake for them to ignore the problem.

A couple of things could be done on Google's end:

1) If a webmaster (AdSense provider) also has an AdWords account, and that AdSense provider has marked certain competitors' sites as excluded from their displayed ads, click-throughs by the competitors should be flagged for possible "competitor account draining."

2) AdWords customers should have access to click-through statistics, including IP addresses and domain names, if available. If the AdWords customer is an Avon rep, for example, they should be able to cry foul if half of their click-throughs were from a competing Avon rep. Or Google should be smart enough to catch this. (Which it may be already!)