A recent report on Click Fraud suggests that the maximum number of invalid clicks on Pay Per Click ads originate from India. And this is not the first time – its widely believed there there exists a large “work from home” crowd in India who want to generate “quick cash” by clicking Google AdSense ads.
During a recent trip to Google Hyderabad for BarCamp, I met someone who explained me the whole modus operandi of these secret ad clickers.
Pick any issue of Deccan Chronicle newspaper (the English Daily of Hyderabad) and open the Classifieds section – you will see dozens of ads that promise you regular Google AdSense income while working from home. (see this newspaper clipping on the right).
You basically create a website and then write a few articles to get accepted into the official Google AdSense program. Once you become an AdSense publisher, you join any of these “bogus” AdSense network and are introduced to other members who are in the same boat as you.
Now Google would quickly ban your AdSense account if you click Ads on your own website so what these networks do is ask members to click on Ads appearing on websites of other members. So it like a reciprocal behavior – you click my ads and I will click yours.
Do members of such local AdSense networks make money? I have doubts. They may make a few dollars before Google discovers the click fraud activity, bans the account and returns the accumulated earnings to advertisers.
But in any case, the fraudulent clicks have been generated and added to the global “Click Fraud Index”. No wonder, India tops the chart.