Don’t Use Clickbots

Remember click fraud from a few paragraphs ago? Clickbots are another way to commit click fraud. A clickbot is a script or program that’s designed to click the ads on your page, and they’re readily available on the Web, usually inexpensively. Just because clickbots are there doesn’t mean you should use them, though. Clickbots do the same thing that you’d do if you were clicking your own ads, except on a much larger scale. They inflate the revenue that’s generated without increasing the interest in the product or service that’s being advertised. Now, a common misconception is that people only use clickbots to click their own ads — not true. Some people have been caught using clickbots to click other people’s ads, too. These people are usually AdWords advertisers who are trying to push their competition out of the way. See, each time someone clicks an ad, it costs the advertiser a set amount of money. A clickbot can click an ad dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of times, driving up the cost of the ad. This can affect how many times an ad is shown in a given period of time, and it can also cost an advertiser a large amount of money. After the budget limit is reached, that advertiser is out of the way until the next billing cycle, allowing the next highest bidders to have their ads shown more often. Clickbots form a vicious cycle that can be very costly for the person or company that falls victim to this type of click fraud. If you’re the one committing it, both AdSense and AdWords will ban you from their programs