What is Click Fraud?

When a website sells affiliate marketing, the owner enters an agreement with the affiliate. Click fraud is when the website pays someone to make fraudulent clicks to the affiliate’s site; the affiliate thinks the clicks are valid, but the customers are fake. This can be done manually or through black hat software.

Click fraud is one of several black hat practices in the world of affiliate marketing. When an affiliate enters an agreement with an advertiser or affiliate network, they are promising to create content that promotes a product, service, or click-through. Affiliates agree to do this by ethical means.

However, some unscrupulous affiliates may try to rig the system by creating fake conversions. If the payable action is to simply click a link, affiliates can easily find someone to click the link several times. Or, they can use advanced automatic software.

Regardless of the method used, this act is not permitted. It’s essentially creating fake traffic to increase income. The advertiser will think that all of those clicks are valid. In reality, the commission earned through this action is fraudulent. Depending on the severity of the click fraud, affiliates may be faced with a lawsuit. Click fraud directly violates most agreement contractors. At the very least, the affiliate is usually banned from the affiliate program.