I’m a bit surprised by Mitch Ratcliffe’s suggestion on how to get Google to fix the BlogSpot Splogs problem. He recommends click fraud:
‘The solution to the problem it to click gratuitously and never make purchases on the links at blogspot sites and to keep doing so to drive down conversion rates. This likely will be interpreted as click fraud by the system and, if it isn’t, the advertisers are going to be so angry about the costs of these clicks that turn into nothing that they’ll drop the program or exclude BlogSpot from their placements.’
While I understand his reasoning (create a pain and Google will have to make changes when it starts to hit their hip pocket – and those of their advertisers) I definitely don’t agree with the method.
For starters if you do this and you’re an Adsense publisher (as Mitch is) it’s likely to get you banned through Google tracking your IP address. Keep in mind that Google has sued people caught for click fraud over the past year.
I also have an ethical problem with clicking on ads for non genuine reasons. Perhaps I’m going to get accused of being a goodie two shoes again – but click fraud is theft. Not only that – it takes money from innocent advertisers, puts it in the hands of spammers themselves (I can’t think of any way to encourage them to start more splogs faster) and can only harm the prospects of other genuine publishers as advertisers leave the system and/or decrease the amount that they are willing to spend on advertising.
I do acknowledge splogs are a problem – but I’m not convinced that click fraud is the answer.
found via seo book
