Click Fraud for Paid Search On the Rise with Bahama

Posted by Marty Dickinson on Sep 30, 2009

It’s been rather quiet on the click fraud front for the past few months. Either less people are worried about saving money and factoring it into their conversion rates, or they’re just so worried about the economy that they just figured less people are buying per click. ClickForensics thinks otherwise as they have discovered a sophisticated botnet they’re calling “Bahama.”

Essentially this is an automated bug that latches on to the web server and sends automated clicks to paid search like Google AdWords. The problem with this beyond just an automated click fraud device is that this one carries quality score with it. So, that further masks Google’s ability to see that it’s not a human making the search and the click.

Watch your pay-per-click campaigns closely folks. If you see a sudden surge in clickthrough’s, it could be you’ve fallen prey to the great “Bahama”