Originally Posted by Expertpeon

First off, it's almost certainly not illegal (However google charging people for fraudulent clicks almost certainly IS illegal).
Secondly, I'm not within the USA anyway (and it's definitely legal here).

You're suggesting that it's illegal to simply click on ads... perhaps a violation of the ToS for Google, but that doesn't make it illegal... at all.

I also simply stated that its going to be an inevitable result of Google's actions. Google will be the one committing crimes due to this, not the people doing it.



Fighting the RIAA, MPAA, etc through torrenting has been incredibly damaging and, for the most part, perfectly safe.
I fail to see your point.

Considering that the USA doesn't run the internet, though they like to think so, I highly doubt that Google can do jack shit about it besides trying to fix organic search and decreasing the total number of ads.

Let's be serious though, there's already a ton of click fraud, and a lot of it is manually being done by people who don't even know what click fraud is.

Cookie stuffing wasn't/isn't illegal either. History tends to have a habit of repeating its self. I'll say no more on the matter.

There needs to be some sort of viral "Use Bing, not Google" movement. Get people to post catchy images on Facebook about it. Everyone loves that. Then they will start using Bing because people told them to.

Originally Posted by turdface

There needs to be some sort of viral "Use Bing, not Google" movement. Get people to post catchy images on Facebook about it. Everyone loves that. Then they will start using Bing because people told them to.

This is a great and productive start. But I still don't know why so many resist joining forces to pursue such actions. Are we all that isolated that we can't work for a common cause? Instead of hoping something goes viral, we can utilize our collective resources and make it viral in a heartbeat.

I'm completely done with google long live BING!

Originally Posted by MaxTucker

I am willing to bet $5,000 US dollars that NOBODY will successfully cause a major disruption to Google via click bombing. I bet that we will not see a mass exodus of Google adwords users due to a click bombing campaign.

It is never going to happen so stop fighting about it and go do something useful.

Aggregate results =/= one person click bombing.

If you'd pay me a few hundred thousand, i could certainly cause some serious damage to google via clickbombing, or at least damage to their adwords users. $5000 isn't even worth the attempt

At any rate, a campaign isn't the point, but sustained increases in search wide click fraud will result in exodus and potential lawsuits.

Still I've made it quite clear that I'm still ranked well in Google across a lot of sites and making lots of money from it... so.

Originally Posted by MaxTucker

I am willing to bet $5,000 US dollars that NOBODY will successfully cause a major disruption to Google via click bombing. I bet that we will not see a mass exodus of Google adwords users due to a click bombing campaign.

It is never going to happen so stop fighting about it and go do something useful.

For Google perhaps... for advertiser? got small shitty clicks (ex. 100 clicks) per day for nothing?.... Try it for 1 month...

My local marketing company did a research project about 3 years ago and discovered that 18% of clicks were fraudulent. I am sure it has increased.

What we have to do is get the fraud up over 50%, more if possible. If advertisers are not getting a return they will not spend the money. I would assume it would be easy to create a bot that would target only Google, this way, those that rely on PPC ads for a living would still survive using bing/yahoo.

I'd give my left tit if I knew who was behind the godday attack and they would be willing to deploy a botnet specifically to click google ads!

If any of you know how to do this, you don't need to brag about it in the forum. Just get busy and get the bots going. If you have lost rank and income because of Google you have every reason to strike back. Pick a niche from the list above and have at it.

If you have a friend that you can trust then get him involved. Get him set up to deploy a few bots.

And for Gods sake, if any of you know any of the big players in the hack circles, plead with them to get their efforts involved.

I'd love to see this become the next big news story. We need something to celebrate for a change.

I usually used Google for work related searches while on the job. Google has screwed up their searches so bad that Bing is actually better when I search.

Originally Posted by caitlin

My local marketing company did a research project about 3 years ago and discovered that 18% of clicks were fraudulent. I am sure it has increased.

What we have to do is get the fraud up over 50%, more if possible. If advertisers are not getting a return they will not spend the money. I would assume it would be easy to create a bot that would target only Google, this way, those that rely on PPC ads for a living would still survive using bing/yahoo.

I'd give my left tit if I knew who was behind the godday attack and they would be willing to deploy a botnet specifically to click google ads!

If any of you know how to do this, you don't need to brag about it in the forum. Just get busy and get the bots going. If you have lost rank and income because of Google you have every reason to strike back. Pick a niche from the list above and have at it.

If you have a friend that you can trust then get him involved. Get him set up to deploy a few bots.

And for Gods sake, if any of you know any of the big players in the hack circles, plead with them to get their efforts involved.

I'd love to see this become the next big news story. We need something to celebrate for a change.

With such skills, it would be far better to build a bot to scrape domains of Adwords users to E-mail them and educate them about how Google's recent updates are likely causing an increase in fraudulent clicks. It's far better than click bombing them, because as Expertpeon noted it IS and WILL continue happening at an increased rate.

You can still greatly reduce confidence in Google's paid advertising platform(s) without resorting to click bombing.

Has anyones sites dropped in the past 2 days after thinking they survived? Because mine is still ranking first.

Originally Posted by Snivy

Has anyones sites dropped in the past 2 days after thinking they survived? Because mine is still ranking first.

Someone noted that their domains dropped this morning in this post. Another claimed a recovery earlier in this thread too. I see no changes from my side to indicate any movement is still occurring.

no changes at all for me

Originally Posted by turdface

There needs to be some sort of viral "Use Bing, not Google" movement. Get people to post catchy images on Facebook about it. Everyone loves that. Then they will start using Bing because people told them to.

That is easier said than done.

Google has become a household name for search. People Google things without thinking. It's a habit that will be next to impossible for the average user to break. Yes, us SEO and IM can make the switch, but the average user, our visitors, won't. Webmasters aren't the ones that need convincing, it's everyone else.

I personally think one of things that is holding Bing back besides what I said, they need to release publicly ADcenter for publishers, like Adsense. If Bing got off their ass and released it publicly, it could be a game changer for them.

Originally Posted by xstu74

2x Emd sites that disappeared are bouncing back for certain keywords..... there maybe hope yet!!

ANDDDDDDDD GONE AGAIN!

Originally Posted by ryannull

That is easier said than done.

Google has become a household name for search. People Google things without thinking. It's a habit that will be next to impossible for the average user to break. Yes, us SEO and IM can make the switch, but the average user, our visitors, won't. Webmasters aren't the ones that need convincing, it's everyone else.

I personally think one of things that is holding Bing back besides what I said, they need to release publicly ADcenter for publishers, like Adsense. If Bing got off their ass and released it publicly, it could be a game changer for them.

This is true. When someone says they're going to "google" something, everyone knows what they mean.

On some TV shows they say they are going to "Bing" things and it sounds funny. Ridiculousness with Rob Dyrdek did that at the end of every episode of it's first season. Some other show on prime time would occasionally say they were going to "bing" things and it always stood out. Like what? lol. Bing must've paid them to say that.

Google has become like Kleenex. Kleenex is a brand, not a product. But everyone calls tissue paper "Kleenex." Same thing with Xerox. "Hey, can you Xerox this for me?" Xerox is a brand. The verb is photo copy.

You blow your nose in tissue, not Kleenex.

You photocopy stuff, you don't Xerox it.

You search for stuff, you don't Google it.

But since Google has attained this widespread use of its name, people will go to Google just so they can "Google" something.

Originally Posted by turdface

What is this? I googled it and saw a bunch of WSO stuff.

Those damned warriors!

Lots of BS about, but the guy who invented it is Bruce Clay of bruceclay.com

Themezoom.com have some very expensive tools to help out - can be up to $1,000 a month - but at least they have free video tutorials

Amazon.com is a LSI siloed megasite

Hey isn't Apple supposed to be coming out with a search engine? You know all the hipsters would use it right away.

Originally Posted by WebDev

Those damned warriors!

Lots of BS about, but the guy who invented it is Bruce Clay of bruceclay.com

Themezoom.com have some very expensive tools to help out - can be up to $1,000 a month - but at least they have free video tutorials

Amazon.com is a LSI siloed megasite

Can you just tell me what it does? Give me a 30 second elevator speech lol.

Sorry AssPhuck.. If you make a living off adwords then increase your budget on Bing. You will be fine.

People don't care about words in an email.. Start taking money from their wallet and they will do something. If they are paying $1000 a month and are not getting squat.. You bet they will stop spending the money.

An automated bot that does nothing but increase click fraud is the easiest and cheapest way to disrupt Google. If you get enough of them pounding away the advertisers are going to get pissed and direct their frustration at Google. If the media is reporting why these bots are being used the situation becomes a viral one and Google will have no choice but concede and stop this BS.

Didnt David use a sling shot and a stone to kill Goliath? Maybe asking all Goliath's friends not to play with him would have worked better? HA HA doubt it.

One programmer with his act together can write a bot script that can replicate itself and go viral and do nothing but click ads. There are plenty of proxies out there and I am sure a few people outside the US would host a script or two for random clicks...

How much would it cost Google if they had to credit their advertisers one month of the revenue from ads?

Billions!!

And that would have to hurt....

Originally Posted by turdface

Hey isn't Apple supposed to be coming out with a search engine? You know all the hipsters would use it right away.

I pray Apple does come out with its on search engine... that would be interesting. For all the people jumping on the Bing bandwagon, Bing is not the answer either.

Originally Posted by livingnowhere

For me now, when I see these ads in my search results in my spare time but daily, I will click them to know more about their service... Since I've amnesia... I may need repeat it... I'm so easy to forget anything right now. Sorry if your ads related to these niches... I really need to know these info.. Thanks google for show it. I hope you get refund for bad conversion...

You actually have Alzheimer's - that's why you couldn't remember the name of your affliction, and thought it was Amnesia!

Originally Posted by turdface

There needs to be some sort of viral "Use Bing, not Google" movement. Get people to post catchy images on Facebook about it. Everyone loves that. Then they will start using Bing because people told them to.

make an infographic that's cool and then post it on reddit.

I lost one exact match domian, BUT i just started backlinking to it and I think it went into a dance before the update.....I hope it comes back

I think one of my tech blog (non emd) got hit with this update. Seeing no traffic at all since last 3 days.

Originally Posted by Maja92

I pray Apple does come out with its on search engine... that would be interesting. For all the people jumping on the Bing bandwagon, Bing is not the answer either.

Until something else comes around, Bing is the answer. Don't knock Bing. I have made good money off Microsoft's search engines for the last 12 years. Bing may not be king, but I am satisfied with the results.

Originally Posted by turdface

Can you just tell me what it does? Give me a 30 second elevator speech lol.

That's hard to do - I used to have a business manager to pitch the sites to potential clients - and after a year he still didn't really know much

LSI is related search phrases - good example is the google search drop down auto-suggest feature

Silo site construction is site design without theme bleed across topics - e.g. a pet site - you are looking at birds articles, but cannot see anything about dogs in site navigation - but somebody reading dogs articles can see lots of dogs articles links, but no birds article navigation links

Silo sites need typically 90% less backlinks than normal sites, due to the unique site construction

The problem with bing is in d f**kin name.. oh let me just "bing" that, it sounds like some corporate douche came up with it

Originally Posted by caitlin

Sorry AssPhuck.. If you make a living off adwords then increase your budget on Bing. You will be fine.

It's all good. I think we share the same displeasure in what has transpired with organic search but differ on strategies to deal with it. Regardless of what method is used, the whole point is to dramatically erode advertisers confidence in Google Adwords just as confidence in organic search has been diminished. As confidence in this platform is reduced, advertisers will leave or more closely scrutinize their daily clicks and demand solutions from Google. And I'm sure Google, being the data mining experts that they are, already have solutions in place to limit click bombing to some degree. For example, historical trends could limit how many clicks Google will deduct from a users budget or simply not count questionable clicks that lack an originating referring URL/logical and valid keyword query.

Originally Posted by caitlin

My local marketing company did a research project about 3 years ago and discovered that 18% of clicks were fraudulent. I am sure it has increased.

Forbes did a study on this late last year but I cannot seem to locate the article again.
Apparently, they said that ~30% of clicks were "suspect" (which included fraudulent behavior) and 24% were "fraudulent" using Adwords. At least this is what I remember about the article.

simply not count questionable clicks that lack an originating referring URL/logical and valid keyword query

See that's the beauty of it... this is incredibly easy to emulate. The tool I built goes to google.com, types in a phrase, and clicks on the advertiser that's running a campaign.

Google is going to have to error on the side of "safety" with ANY suspect clicks once advertisers start demanding that. Hilariously, I added a part that actually clicks on various pages of the site it lands on too... it'd be terribly hard to find this out (especially with browsers that don't accept 3rd party cookies)...

Damaging the revenue of smart SEOers is just a bad idea in general for google's long term interests. If they cannot make money, they will do something else to cost people money.

Seems like basically the fastest way to remove a third of google's revenue.

Originally Posted by Rua999

The problem with bing is in d f**kin name.. oh let me just "bing" that, it sounds like some corporate douche came up with it

I wonder who came up with duckduckgo - their results are good but the name really sucks

Originally Posted by WebDev

You actually have Alzheimer's - that's why you couldn't remember the name of your affliction, and thought it was Amnesia!

You're right. Sometimes I call it dementia... But after all.... i loss everything and need to repeat it... damned this disease... I hope my robot programmed based on "aclk?sa...." could help me.

Originally Posted by WebDev

I wonder who came up with duckduckgo - their results are good but the name really sucks

Their results are basically identical to bing

What is a "silo site"?

Originally Posted by assphuck

This is a great and productive start. But I still don't know why so many resist joining forces to pursue such actions. Are we all that isolated that we can't work for a common cause? Instead of hoping something goes viral, we can utilize our collective resources and make it viral in a heartbeat.

cause those goody goodies are kiss ass wanabe's who lost nothing, had no real websites up that were actually making money and are Cutts followers. You can bet your ass that one of those goody googdies has already tweeted the Russian Red army captains and Cutts has already viewed this thread.

Originally Posted by Expertpeon

Forbes did a study on this late last year but I cannot seem to locate the article again.
Apparently, they said that ~30% of clicks were "suspect" (which included fraudulent behavior) and 24% were "fraudulent" using Adwords. At least this is what I remember about the article.

See that's the beauty of it... this is incredibly easy to emulate. The tool I built goes to google.com, types in a phrase, and clicks on the advertiser that's running a campaign.

Google is going to have to error on the side of "safety" with ANY suspect clicks once advertisers start demanding that. Hilariously, I added a part that actually clicks on various pages of the site it lands on too... it'd be terribly hard to find this out (especially with browsers that don't accept 3rd party cookies)...

Damaging the revenue of smart SEOers is just a bad idea in general for google's long term interests. If they cannot make money, they will do something else to cost people money.

Seems like basically the fastest way to remove a third of google's revenue.

Most lack such a well designed click bot, and I truly believe that the bulk of the click bots out there are easily identified by Google. Surely Google would have to throw away more clicks with your bot to minimize the impact on advertisers. It would definitely have an impact on their bottom line. But this is a temporary solution because a sustained effort would have to be taken for months. If Google lost a billion dollars in the short term to click bombing, their long term strategy still promises to make them much, much more when the click bombs stop. Because of this, and the unintentional consequences of hurting advertisers directly, I would rather focus on lobbying government to correct the wrongs. Google simply wields too much control, and owns too many businesses, in the one trillion dollar a year eCommerce industry. Click bots can't bring that down. It has to be done through a court.

Originally Posted by assphuck

Most lack such a well designed click bot, and I truly believe that the bulk of the click bots out there are easily identified by Google. Surely Google would have to throw away more clicks with your bot to minimize the impact on advertisers. It would definitely have an impact on their bottom line. But this is a temporary solution because a sustained effort would have to be taken for months. If Google lost a billion dollars in the short term to click bombing, their long term strategy still promises to make them much, much more when the click bombs stop. Because of this, and the unintentional consequences of hurting advertisers directly, I would rather focus on lobbying government to correct the wrongs. Google simply wields too much control, and owns too many businesses, in the one trillion dollar a year eCommerce industry. Click bots can't bring that down. It has to be done through a court.

Except if you deal with Google at all, you know that Google WONT stop the fraud from occurring or refund it if it does.
In fact, the damage will be done before Google even thinks to do anything like reverse payments to people... Google is a stubborn monolithic organization with zero customer service and a staunch unwillingness to correct errors on their part

Originally Posted by turdface

What is a "silo site"?

Has a home page

Home page links to theme header pages (primary pages)

Article pages are placed below appropriate header pages e.g. dog articles under dogs header page, cats articles under cat header page, etc.

All dog article pages usually link to each other, all cat article pages usually link to each other - but you can also have a linear/daisy chain format instead with a next article, previous article structure (better for SERPs but not user friendly). If you do a google search for silo site images you'll probably find both types

Whole point of silo sites is to re-enforce theme of silo contents by preventing theme bleed through site navigation links - exact opposite of normal site navigation where search spider zig-zags all over the place following navigation links


Found some images:
daisy chain: thesearchenginepros.com/building-a-web-site-around-keyword-themes.html
user friendly: warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/492756-silo-arcitecture-linking-question.html

Originally Posted by turdface

There needs to be some sort of viral "Use Bing, not Google" movement. Get people to post catchy images on Facebook about it. Everyone loves that. Then they will start using Bing because people told them to.

Yep, educate the masses and drag them away from google! It's for their own good after all..

As I said in the other thread related to this, the EMD penalty that went through only seems to have boosted my sites (by a ton, too) but I really have no idea why. Some had little to no content, some with tons of content but only over a month period etc. No rhyme or reason it seems...

i really like click bomb idea, hit them to their engine!

however, only changing IP will not work

google tracks down computers as well (cookies, cashe, flash version, os version, resolution, browser version etc)

this is same as creating new adsese account on same PC : getting new ip is not enough, you MUST change your computer parameters and only then google recognizes you as unique new user (they will count your click on ads, obviously)

Originally Posted by R0meo

google tracks down computers as well (cookies, cashe, flash version, os version, resolution, browser version etc)

this is same as creating new adsese account on same PC : getting new ip is not enough, you MUST change your computer parameters and only then google recognizes you as unique new user (they will count your click on ads, obviously)

Cookies/cache, OS, resolution and browsers are ALL easy to change... in fact, you can build such a tool in ZP in about 10 min.

Just because google is more stringent allowing adwords accounts to be opened, doesn't mean they're that stringent allowing clicks. In fact, I guarantee they aren't...
My guess is, baring express, clear and evident fraud they will refuse to refund any money at all. If even so much as the IP is different I'm betting they count it... many people have reported clear cases of fraud to google only to have it overturned and their money taken anyway.

Hell, just thinking about it from your own selfish perspective, a click bot is a great idea (even if you never do any long term damage to Google, you definitely win out in your niche!)

Click fraud isn't effective.

Forget the moral issues of click fraud, Google has been able to determine fraudulent clicks for years. They can detect whether or not you're accessing Google using a proxy and easily discount those clicks. Can the discussion move past that idea now?

Google is a stubborn monolithic organization with zero customer service and a staunch unwillingness to correct errors on their part

That is exactly right and why a clickbombing effort would be so effective. You piss off the people spending money with you and drive them to Bing, it will take a lot of effort to get them back if they become happy with the ROI they get from Bing.

If Google lost a billion dollars in the short term to click bombing, their long term strategy still promises to make them much, much more when the click bombs stop.

Who said they needed to stop? They could keep going until Google changed it's tune or business model.

A significant effort would have to be employed by Google to counter the clickbomb attack. What is key is getting the attention of the media. That will put fear in the hearts of the advertisers. Don't spend money on adwords because most of it will be vaporized by a bot.... Stock price plummets from lost revenues... Microsoft reports profit with Bing... FTC files antitrust suit against Google....

If only the top 25 searches were hit hard and those advertisers pulled out, that would be enough to get their attention and start a chain reaction. Hell we could even target the top retailers who spend big with Google... Seek out and click their URL's. Burn up their ad budget with zero ROI....

No matter how you look at it, a good bot would be a very effective way of making a statement.

Originally Posted by Expertpeon

Cookies/cache, OS, resolution and browsers are ALL easy to change... in fact, you can build such a tool in ZP in about 10 min.

yea, sure, not saying that this is hard to achieve, it is just something to keep in mind while building up THE tool

my gutts tell me that even 100 angry dedicated webmasters could do significant damage to adwords in no time

just imagine what 100x100 angry google victims would do

now,some native english speaker should write an article how g is fucking with the small guys to please investors and the 1% and we can start spamming 4 chan and reddit,also make some memes,that will end up on other sites and facebook in a week
btw im uneffected now but lets fucking do something