I've Been Click Fraud-ed!

I'm not sure you can make fraud a verb, but I have someone has committed the act of fraud against me. That is to say, I've been the victim of hit-and-run Click Fraud.

For those of you living normal lives outside the magical world of internet marketing, Click Fraud is when someone clicks on your paid search ads simply to cost you money, with no interest in your product or service. Google CFO George Reyes called it the "biggest threat" to the internet community and Google recently filed a lawsuit againt some egregious Click Fraudsters (that term works, though).

Back on topic: It happened to me. I was going over my logs today (BTW: Where is everyone? Am I the only one who had to work today?) and I noticed multiple searches for the same term, Marckini, as in Frederick Marckini, who owns iProspect, which was recently bought by AEGIS for $50 million, which I blogged about. All the searches originated from the same IP (208.12.118.194) and that person stayed on the page for only a moment and then left. There were 4 searches alltogether with exactly the same behavior.

So who was it? Well, I investigated. Looking up the IP, I got the following info: The IP is from Wenham, MA and is under the ISP of Mullen Advertising. iProspect is in Watertown, MA, about 30 minutes away. Is there any connection between the two?

I'm not saying anything yet, but I'll get to the bottom of this. Someone out there owes me $0.20!