Eweek has an nice article in which they detail that search advertisers like Google and Yahoo are becoming more concerned about abuse of their advertising systems, both by companies competing for keywords and also by adsense type participants trying to earn more revenue by arranging fake click throughs for ads on their site. I can see the danger in this for these companies that make the majority of their revenue from search advertising and the like.
I’ve inadvertently clicked on a couple of the ads on our site in the past myself, I was trying to get the URL for that site so I could add it to the site filter to stop competitors advertising their products on our site (like other counter service retailers). I’m now mildly concerned that I’m going to get into hot water with Google for following Google’s advice about how to block ads you don’t want to display on your site (you have to paste the URL to the competing site into the adsense “URL filter” to block them, sometimes the only way to get the URL is to follow the ad, other times you can try and copy and paste the URL from the ad, but the last time I tried to do that, I accidentally triggered the link because I have the “Super drag and go” Firefox extension installed which allows you to follow links in a new tab by just dragging the link a couple of millimetres). This is going to become a big issue in the courts at some stage, and I’m worried both that the guilty will get away with it, and that the innocent can get dragged into court over it. Considering the small amount of revenue these ads generate most of the time, I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth the risk and I for one would like some reassurance and guidance from Google on the issue. This Eweek article goes into much more detail on the issue.
