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I was just reading the Toronto Star online and was pleased to see that Google’s ad network faces $500M U.S. probe. The probe is digging into whether Google unfairly ranks web pages higher in the results pages. Well, it's about time.

Maybe the American Justice Department can do something about the millions of Adsense fraudsters popping up all over the globe literally stealing our search engine marketing dollars; warehouses full of "Internet visitors" clicking through our search engine ads. It's ridiculous that such a scam can perpetuate unchecked for so long.

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Quick clarification: this thread mixes two related but different problems — alleged preferential treatment in search/ad placement and fraudulent clicks on publisher/advertiser accounts. is describing click-farm style invalid clicks; is pointing toward advertiser complaints about ad placement or ranking; asked for sources and noted press coverage. Treat those as separate issues when evaluating impact and remedies.

Practical mitigation steps that help whether the issue is fraud or poor ad performance:

  • Turn on conversion tracking and compare clicks vs conversions; flag pages or keywords with high CTR but near-zero conversions.
  • Add analytics alerts for sudden CTR, geographic, or time-of-day spikes.
  • Pull server logs (timestamps, IPs, user agent, landing URL) as Google’s UI may not expose everything. Export click/placement reports from the ad account for correlation.
  • Apply IP exclusions and pause suspect placements or keywords quickly; use firewall/hosting rules to block persistent ranges.
  • Set automated rules to pause campaigns or reduce bids when CTR or cost-per-acquisition moves outside normal bounds.
  • Report the incident to Google with organized evidence (CSV of timestamps/IPs/landing pages) and request an invalid-click review; keep copies of every export.
  • For repeat attacks, consider a third-party click-fraud monitoring service and document financial loss before escalating to payment dispute or legal channels.

Note on the investigation angle: antitrust or regulatory probes look at business practices, placement policies and internal documents; click-fraud complaints are enforcement/terms-of-service matters and are handled differently. In practice, preserving logs, proving damage, and applying immediate account-level controls is the most useful step for publishers and advertisers regardless of what broader investigations may produce.

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Member Avatar for Dani

Do you have a link to the article?

Member Avatar for indiarajasthan

This is the investigation about adword . Some one has claimed that google is giving more importance to his products that other advertisers

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