April 6, 2005
Traffic Jam In 'Click Fraud,' Web Outfits Have A Costly Problem
By Keven J. Delaney, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Marketers Worry About Bills Inflated by People Gaming The Search-Ad System Mr. McKelvey Turns Detective. Nathan McKelvey began to worry about foul play when Yahoo Inc. refunded him $69.28 early last year. He grew more suspicious when a $16.91 refund arrived from Google Inc.

The refunds were for "unusual clicks" and "invalid click activity" and they suggested someone was sabotaging Mr. McKelvey's advertising strategy. He pitches his charter-jet brokerage the way companies increasingly do: contracting with Yahoo and Google to serve up small text ads to anyone searching the Web using certain words, such as "private jet" or "air charter." He pays the search companies a fee every time someone clicks on his ads.

February 08, 2006
SearchTHIS: Click Fraud Back in the News
By Kevin M. Ryan
iMedia's search editor offers a helping hand to the SEC. Click fraud has been a problem for search advertisers, and a hot topic of debate, since the dawn of the pay-per-click purchase model. Recently, the subject of click fraud has begun to make news outside the small circle of search engine marketers and the broader online advertising community.

For example, the January issue of Wired Magazine contained an interesting, if not campy, depiction of one advertiser's experience with click fraud. And last week, CNBC reported that click fraud has caught the eye of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The group is now reportedly deciding what to do next.

How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet
By Charles C. Mann, Wired Magazine
Pay-per-click advertising is big, big, big business. So are bogus hits on Internet ads. It's search giants against scam artists in an arms race that could crash the entire online economy.

Stuart Cauff launched a charter-jet service in Miami Beach back in 2002. Being a 21st-century business, JetNetwork advertised on the Internet, especially on search engines. Anyone who Googled, say, "air charter Miami" would be greeted with the familiar list of search results and, in a separate place, a plain box of text with a blue hyperlink to JetNetwork's Web site.