Botnets, Industry Click Fraud Rate Climbs to Highest Level Reaching 17.1% in Q4 2008

Click Forensics, Inc. today released industry pay-per-click (PPC) fraud figures for the fourth quarter 2008 from the search advertising industry’s leading independent click fraud reporting service – the Click Fraud Index.

A few highlights (or lowlights)

• The overall industry average click fraud rate grew to 17.1% for Q4 2008. That’s up from 16.0% in Q3 2008 and from the 16.6% rate reported for Q4 2007.


• The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.2%. That’s up from the 27.1% rate reported for Q3 2008 and down slightly from the 28.3% rate reported for Q4 2007.


• Traffic from botnets was responsible for 31.4% of all click fraud traffic in Q4 2008. That’s up from the 27.6% rate reported for Q3 2008 and the 22.0% rate reported for Q4 2007.


• In Q4 2008, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside the U.S. came from Canada (7.4 percent), Germany (3.0 percent) and China (2.3 percent)

The research also found a resurgence of “click farms,” (groups of people are hired to click on ads to help others make money), which had, reportely, all but disappeared.

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