Google Search blog

Starting next week, Google will provide its AdWords customers with information on how many times it believes their ads have been fradulently clicked. With the company fighting some of its advertisers– namely, Lane’s Gifts– in court over this issue, the new feature could help it in its defense.

Google says that it decided to offer the service to give advertisers a real-time report of how many clicks the company has filtered out as frauduluent. According to some advocacy groups, as much as 15% of all clicks may be invalid. Details of this new feature were reported by MarketWatch and also covered on BetaNews and Adotas.

The new section deplays both the number and percentage of invalid clicks. Of course, Google doesn’t charge advertisers for clicks it deems invalid. According to Outsell, click fraud cost the industry more than $800 million last year. With fraud stats, Google will be more transparent about how they handle the problem. Now advertisers can see Google’s stats, instead of looking to a third-party researcher. The click fraud data displayed by AdWords goes back to the beginning of 2006.

Although there is more transparency, Google is still limiting the amount of click fraud info shown to the public in order to prevent click frauders from reverse-engineering the detection algorithms. I think this is a step forward for the company, and if they’re being honest, why not publish the stats? They’ve nothing to hide– as long as they think very carefully to make sure the data can’t be exploited.

Omakase, Amazon.com’s new contextual advertising service, is a new link type now being offered to Amazon Associates. You can select from a variety of banner sizes, like AdSense or the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN).

However, it works just like Amazon Associates always has. You don’t get paid when someone just clicks the link to see a product. They have to purchase a product– and then you get a commission, the same as any Amazon Associate links you would place on your website.

This will be particularly effective for sites that lend themselves to shopping, whether it’s electronics, games, music, or books.

Today, Google announced Google Maps for mobile, which is basically Google Maps for your Java-enabled cell phone. You also get real-time traffic information, and estimate delays in 30 major US metropolitan areas. I hope it supports the Los Angeles area. I won’t get to try it yet, though, since I don’t have a data plan. This might be a compelling reason to get it, though.

To download, visit www.google.com/gmm
on your mobile phone’s web browser.

Google’s net revenue is up again, 77% higher year over year to $1.67 billion, beating estimates of $1.65 billion.

Gross revenue $2.46 billion. Net income $721 million– more than double.

Adjusted EPS $2.49, beating estimates of $2.22. Total costs rose 86%. Capital expenditure was $699 million– $319 million of which went to real estate.

Search market share 48%– compare with 31% for Yahoo and 14% for Microsoft, according to Majestic Research.

Also covered at USATODAY.

Garett Rogers has found a link on Google Finance that apparently links to a version 2. The link, located in the upper-right hand corner, points to 0.frontend-live.sfe.scrooge.hs.borg.google.com/finance and is accessible internally at Google only. I’d anticipate an update to Google Finance in the near future — probably in response to Yahoo!’s recent update of Yahoo! Finance.

Reports indicate that Google has launched its free WiFi program for select individuals in Mountain View, California. Google has supplied a map of acccess points and coverage holes, support page, and FAQ. It is still unknown who is included in this “trusted testers” program — let us know if you’re aware of who has access.

The chief operating officer of Microsoft, Kevin Turner, said at a company conference: “Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off our plate, because that is what they are intending to do.”

The “people” that Turner was referring to was Google, and the “food” was corporate search customers. Google has been wading into the world of enterprise search with its Google Search Appliance, which sells for around $2,500 pop. The software allows company employees to search through platforms like intranets, content management systems and file servers.

There’s no question that Google is competing in Microsoft’s space now. But isn’t Microsoft’s space so huge that there’s not much other choice?

Google is smart. Today Shuman Ghosemajumder posted “Let click fraud happen”? Uh, no., a post that clarifies Eric Schmidt’s comments on click fraud. It doesn’t go far enough, though. It’s an economic “solution”, yes, but it’s not perfect. In fact, the more I think about this, the more I realize that it would not work at all. Here’s a quote from the Google Blog.

The “let it happen” excerpt followed, in which he discusses the economic forces that can retard click fraud: “Eventually the price that the advertiser is willing to pay for the conversion will decline because the advertiser will realize that these are bad clicks. In other words, the value of the ad declines. So, over some amount of time, the system is, in fact, self-correcting. In fact, there is a perfect economic solution, which is to let it happen.”

It’s OK from the advertiser’s perspective, yes. The problem is that the fraudulent publishers will earn money (no matter how little, no matter how depressed the click prices get), while the legitimate publishers will lose out. The reasoning that Google posts does not explain this, and it seems like they are assuming that every publisher and every advertising outlet (whether websites or search engines) have equal amounts of click fraud.

This is not true.

Some websites produce more click fraud than others. Some websites have virtually no click fraud, and every single one of their clicks are legitimate. In the economic solution described, these publishers lose out. The system favors publishers who have a proportionally higher amount of fraudulent clicks. I think Google realizes this, but they did not say it in their post. I think they should have.
The bottom line? Thinking in terms of an economic solution is dangerous. It favors the publishers who provide fraudulent clicks, while gradually and silently taking money away from legitimate publishers who send a proportionally higher amount of good clicks.

In a news conference in lansing, Google, based in Mountain View, California, said it would bring 1,000 jobs to Ann Arbor by creating a headquarters facility for Google AdWords. The jobs, which will pay an average of about $50,000 a year — more than Michigan’s average household income of $44,667 — will be a good reason for students who like the Ann Arbor area to stay there after graduation.

Of course, not everyone is convinced this is all good. Vivek Shende worries that Google’s presence “will turn this town into a place that students can’t afford.” John Laird is concerned about a shortage of workers, and says that “what we need is more students to go into the computer sciences.” Detroit Free Press.

I think Gmail just added a new feature. When I click to select “All” messages in my Spam box, a link appears that says:

All 50 conversations on this page are selected. Select all 11486 conversations in Spam

Cool stuff. Slick implementation. Nice and simple. Great job, Gmail team!

Here’s a screenshot:

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