A Reminder For Fellow Google Advertisers

Earlier this year, Google settled a lawsuit brought against them due to click fraud.

Anyway, the settlement web page is now accepting submissions for a part of the US$90 million available in the class action (money will be credited to your Adwords account).

Of course, we remain skeptical that we will see much compensation, if any, and taking part precludes you from any further action against Google.

Over the last year, many diamond merchants have advertised on Google, and whilst Google have taken enormous steps to reduce click fraud, we have spoken to fellow merchants who say they are still victims of click fraud.

Some well known steps to reduce click fraud are:

• Don't advertise on the content network. This is where 90% of the fraud occurs. If you want your ads on the content network, limit them to certain sites.


• Track your clicks and establish fraud deterrents. Who's Clicking Who seems to be popular, but the same effect can be achieved with a few lines of code, and no monthly fee - but it's only $30 a month anyway.


• Know your ROI and what keywords are producing the best ROI.


• Google recently introduced time based ads, whereby you can start and stop your ads at various times of the day. Whilst we don't believe this will reduce click fraud, for some it may increase ROI.