Eric Schmidt Clicks Google Ads
Donna Bogatin writes that at the recent SES conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted that he clicks Google’s ads all the time, in order to make sure they are working.
Asked at the Search Engine Strategies Conference earlier this month “When was the last time you clicked on an ad, and why, at Google?” Schmidt acknowledged, “I do it all the time, probably because I want to make sure that everything was working”.
In the search ad industry, we call that click fraud. If I clicked my ads to “make sure they were working”, my account would be suspended. Plenty of AdSense publishers have fallen victim to exactly that sort of mistake, or tried to use that as an excuse when they cheat Google. Read more at ZDNet.
(via Digg)
When Googlers click on Google’s ads, those clicks aren’t counted. Advertisers are not charged.
Comment by Matt Cutts | September 5, 2006
Most responsible (and audited) adserving systems automatically remove clicks from “internals”. I’d be astounded if Google didn’t do that.
Comment by JH | September 5, 2006
For proof, check out the The Lane’s Gifts v. Google Report ( http://googleblog.blogspot.com/pdf/Tuzhilin_Report.pdf ). Section 9, paragraph about ‘prefiltering’.
“Pre-Filtering. Certain clicks are removed immediately from the logs before they are even “seen” by the online filters. This is done in order for these clicks not to be a part of the various statistics pertaining to the performance of the filters (and thus do not distort the filter performance results). Two main categories of such pre-filtered clicks are “test” clicks (when a click comes from the Google IP, i.e., is generated by one of the Google employees for testing purposes). The second category constitutes “meaningless” clicks, clicks that were improperly recorded in the log files and whose records, therefore, have some technical problems rendering these clicks either “unreadable” or meaningless.
Needless to say, advertisers are never charged for such clicks, since they are removed even before the filtering process starts.”
Comment by SirNuke | September 5, 2006
[…] [via Nathan Weinberg] Posted in Uncategorized. September 5, 2006 […]
Pingback by Gizbuzz » Google CEO committing Click Fraud? | September 5, 2006
Matt, if I worked at Google, I wouldn’t click the ads, regardless of any such system. It just wouldn’t feel right. Publishers are deathly afraid of clicking Google ads, even on other people’s sites, and Googlers should try to understand that as well.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | September 5, 2006
Nathan, I find this kind of posting both by you and Donna Bogatin irresponsible. It’s done in a way to get people fuming without digging into real facts. Can’t you even stop to ask yourself - why would the CEO of a company openly and freely admit to duping his own customers? Then after Matt points out that google clicks are filtered your say this: “Matt, if I worked at Google, I wouldn’t click the ads, regardless of any such system.”
What a non-sensical statement - How then will Google test it’s own system? Doesn’t it make sense to discount all clicks from Google’s IP’s for testing? And don’t say testing should be done internally, since alot of things go wrong when stuff goes live on the web.
I think you should consider updating the post with a more rounded input of all the facts. Or better just make the point that Eric Schmidt made a stupid statement that can be misunderstood. There is plenty to be concerned about with clickfraud, so you don’t need to get people upset over non-sense like this.
Comment by or | September 5, 2006
Or, since when does the billionaire of the CEO need to do quality testing? Or that most Google employees should be just randomly clicking on ads to see if they work? I’m sure Google’s systems let them know of a problem; they don’t need the guy working on Google Talk to click an ad once in a while to see if it works.
And no, I am not accusing Google of stealing money from advertisers, just that the CEO made a stupid comment that ignores a major issue for many of their customers. Google knows that, if it doesn’t handle click fraud well, it could lose millions or billions in lawsuits. If the CEO of Ford said, “Oh, I never drive, I don’t feel safe behind the wheel”, it’d be just as newsworthy.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | September 5, 2006
“–And no, I am not accusing Google of stealing money from advertisers–”
And as a regular reader of your blog, this is why I find the post a bit irresponsible. I know *you* are not accusing google of stealing, but that’s what many of *your readers* are going to go away believing. Thus, you could have added a little more facts and or a little more lightness/fun/satire to the post
Comment by or | September 5, 2006
No one can guarantee every click on ads bring sales for advertiser, so some testing clicks should be OK.
Comment by adam | September 5, 2006