A google ad above my inbox in gmail:

Odyssey said:

I visited a new self-publishing website yesterday and PA's Google ad was there, too. It gave me a thought. Aren't those ads pay-per-click? What if thousands of us clicked on the ad several times a day? In a short amount of time, that could put PA out of business. Just a thought ...

Click to expand...

That's called click fraud and google picks up on that pretty fast.

edgyllama said:

That's called click fraud and google picks up on that pretty fast.

Click to expand...

What is google going to do to you for clicking on it several times per day?

Nothing but if a number of people start doing, then they'll stop charging PA. Really, this is a counter-productive way of getting back at PA.

The kind of click fraud that's watched out for is generally the kind committed by a computer program. I simply don't believe they'd do anything to anyone who clicks on a banner twice a day because there are too many valid reasons to do so. A user might consider it convenient for reaching that site without bookmarking it.

badducky said:

Above my inbox, an ad caught my eye:

PublishAmerica! Avoid the stigma of paying for publication! We want your book, not your money!

Can we contact Google about some truth in advertisements? Is there somewhere we can go to stamp that shite out?

Click to expand...

Can you get a screen dump?

In an effort to see the ad myself, I sent the following email to my gmail account:
Subject: found a book publisher yet?
I'm looking for a book publisher too, even though all I have is a
collection of nouns followed by verbs, with a few adverbs tossed in for
spice.

I really want to publish a book, don't you?

and I see some self&vanity-looking "publishers", but not PA. I won't mention any of the names I see, as I don't want to give them free advertising, but anyone can see these or similar ads by sending a gmail account the above italicized text and reading it online in gmail. Could gmail have already pulled PA's ad?

edgyllama said:

Nothing but if a number of people start doing, then they'll stop charging PA. Really, this is a counter-productive way of getting back at PA.

Click to expand...

Hold on now - wouldn't that then be an incentive for an advertiser to get lots of people to click on their ad, whether they follow through or not, so the advertiser doesn't have to pay for the ad? There's either something I don't get here, or there's something wrong with that explanation.

If 50 people clicked on the ad every day, just once, it would add up.

It is definitely click fraud. Here is the best way to explain it. If an ad gets a certain amount of clicks from the same IP address within a certain amount of time, Google will stop charging for those clicks.

I work with Google PPC counts on a daily basis and they are very good at catching this...very good. Eventually if they notice a pattern from the same IP address, they will start charging ANYtime you click on that ad, not just within a time frame, so this is not the best strategy for revenge.

As for how often and within what time frame, Google won't tell you exactly, so you "possibly" could get a few exta clicks in, but in reality, the Cost per Click (CPC) for publishing keywords is not that expensive, so it's not like you'd be running up a big bill for PA.

There's even more to this then I am explaining here, but basically, it's not going to hurt PA all that much. Not more than they've hurt others anyway.

K-Mark said:

It is definitely click fraud. Here is the best way to explain it. If an ad gets a certain amount of clicks from the same IP address within a certain amount of time, Google will stop charging for those clicks.

I work with Google PPC counts on a daily basis and they are very good at catching this...very good. Eventually if they notice a pattern from the same IP address, they will start [you surely mean stop] charging ANYtime you click on that ad, not just within a time frame, so this is not the best strategy for revenge.

Click to expand...

Okay, NOW I see, and it makes a lot more sense. The advertiser doesn't have to pay for clicks FROM A PARTICULAR IP ADDRESS once Google detects fraudulent clicks from that address. The advertiser still pays for 'regular' clicks which might be from REAL suckers customers. This makes a lot more sense.

I guess that means I'm back to chucking rocks through their windows.

(Their IT guys hate me.)

(Hehe, I made a pun ^-^)

Sorry, my bad. Bad, Typo! Bad!

I did mean stop, not start. Thanks for the assist, Ben

Just one more quick correction (while I'm on a roll, and until I slip on the butter), what you did was definitely not a typo (as you correctly typed and spelled the wrong word). It might have been a brain fart!

Bad, Brain Fart! Bad!