Blogosphere which writing about Christopher Bowman today…

Christopher Bowman

Former US men’s figure skating champion Christopher Bowman, known as “Bowman the Showman” for his flamboyant personality on the ice and his oft-troubled life off it, died Thursday of a possible drug overdose in North Hills, Calif. …

http://video-tk.t2i.info/

christopher bowman

Christopher Bowman figure skating s rebel without a pause was found dead at 40 in a Los Angeles area motel Thursday According to the Detroit Free Press which first reported the story Bowman died of a possible drug overdose He had …

http://www.allnewsandvideos.com

Christopher Bowman Dies Of Drug Overdose (Picture & Video)

Christopher Bowman was born March 1967 in Hollywood, California. He was a two-time US national champion and two-time World medalist at the World Figure Skating Championships. He appeared in the TV series “Little House on the Prairie” …

http://tv.rightcelebrity.com

Good idea to start a blog that mention for Blogging with Pictures. I found many site take a similar topic such as…

New Links: Blogging multiple pictures in a single post
Blogging multiple pictures in a single post.

When we first started using Picasa’s free unlimited jpg image hosting we only …
newlinks.blogspot.com/2004/09/blogging-multiple-pictures-in-single.html

Welcome to Fotothing – Photo Blogging – Photo Sharing
www.fotothing.com/

BBC Scotland – Island Blogging – isles pictures
pictures of the isles, from lewis to south uist, plus the odd comment.
www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/islandblogging/blogs/005179/

Novak’s Blog – web design | making money | blogging tips …
The best interesting pictures you’ll see on the net are gathered here on Novak’s blog. This is 7th part of the Moments frozen in time series and they’ll …
www.novaksblog.com/category/interesting-pictures/

Blogging — Blogs, Pictures, and more on WordPress
Settle back and have a cuppa as it is my blog anniversary today. I have now been blogging 4 years. I want to thank everyone who swings by regularly and …
wordpress.com/tag/blogging/

Geo Blog — Blogs, Pictures, and more on WordPress
cerno wrote 3 months ago : Half-Doctor has done a fantastic bit of blogging about Padaviya – a rarely seen (or heard) part of Sri Lanka … more » …
wordpress.com/tag/geo-blog/

Blog World Pictures | Blogging the Movie
have a lot of great photos from Blog World Expo. A lot of famous bloggers gathered and there are pictures of them […]
bloggingthemovie.com/blog-world-pictures/

LLM Pictures. Posted at 14:22 | Permalink | View blog reactions · High definition (right click on the above link and “save as” – it will take time to load, …
loiclemeur.com/english/2004/01/llm_pictures.html

Corvette Blog: Corvette Pictures
Check our Blog another time (or subscribe to Corvette Blog today) and you will soon see photos of a selection of great Callaway Corvettes that I recently …
www.corvetteblog.com/archives/cat-corvette-pictures.html

Blogging and pictures…. – Paul the Programmer
Blogging and pictures…. So now I am a blogger. No problem. I think it will be fun giving you (our customers) a glimpse at what it takes to deliver your …
community.millerslab.com/blogs/paultheprogrammer/archive/2007/07/30/blogging-and-pictures.aspx
http://pictures-today.blogspot.com/

What is click fraud?

The issue has been bandied about for years by online advertisers, yet click fraud remains misunderstood. Even with a spate of media attention devoted to the subject in the latter part of this year, a recent panel at Search Engine Strategies in Chicago revealed a lack of industry-wide consensus on what constitutes an act of click fraud.

So ClickZ News asked experts at Google and Overture how the two leading search engines define click fraud, and what proprietary mechanisms they have in place to protect advertisers against it. This is the second article in a series on click fraud.

Click Fraud Defined

Overture defines click fraud as, “clicks arising for reasons other than the good-faith intention of an Internet user to visit a Web site to purchase goods or services or to obtain information,” according to spokesperson Dina Freeman.

Google is a bit more specific, defining click fraud, “or invalid clicks, as any method used to artificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or page impressions,” according to Salar Kamangar, director of product management.

Examples of invalid clicks, according to Kamangar, include: manual clicks on an ad to purposefully increase the ad spend; deliberate clicks on an ad to increase profits by site owners hosting the ads; and automated clicking tools, ‘bots, or other deceptive software.

Both Overture and Google have proprietary anti-click fraud technology, which they refine on an ongoing basis. Both keep the system details secret for security reasons.

Overture’s “click protection system combines proprietary systems, filtering technologies, and human intervention,” according to Freeman. The company says it’s been continually refined since 1998.

“Our system operates 24 hours a day, monitoring each click and filtering out those that are questionable, or clearly unqualified,” Freeman said. “We track search and click patterns across more than 50 data points, including IP address, users’ session information, browser information, and pattern recognition.”

For its part, Google uses its own proprietary technology to analyze clicks to determine whether they fit a pattern of activity intended to artificially drive up an advertiser’s costs.

“Our system automatically distinguishes between clicks generated through normal use by users, and clicks generated by unethical users and automated robots, enabling us to filter out invalid clicks,” Kamangar said.

Google provided three examples of techniques it uses to detect invalid click activity. First, it employs standard click monitoring techniques; examining every click into its system based on signals such as IP address, duplicate clicks, and other basic click patterns for invalid click activity.

Second, Google uses advanced monitoring techniques developed by a team holding PhDs in computer science, statistics, and mathematics to detect and handle invalid click activity. “This group has developed innovative and effective proprietary security mechanisms which we continually augment and improve to adapt to changes in invalid click behavior,” Kamangar said. “We invest in research and development to continually upgrade our detection mechanisms to proactively combat invalid click activity.”

Finally, Google employs a team of technical specialists whose job is to manually investigate individual cases where click fraud is suspected. “The team uses specialized tools and a wide variety of techniques based on extensive experience tracking and monitoring invalid click activity,” Kamangar said. “When signs of invalid click activity are detected, this team has advanced resources for identifying the perpetrators of this activity.”

If a Google review reveals invalid click activity, advertisers are credited and publishers may have their payments adjusted. Additionally, Google reserves the right to take legal action, as it did against Texas-based Auction Experts International in a lawsuit it filed in November.

“Any advertiser or publisher participating in invalid click activity or other related offense is subject to being banned from our system and subject to prosecution,” Kamangar warns.

Source: clickz.com

Judge approves $90 million settlement in Google click fraud case

From: USA Today – The Associated Press

An Arkansas judge Thursday approved a $90 million settlement between Google and advertisers who claimed the Internet search engine company improperly billed them for “clicks” that didn’t lead to genuine customers seeking their products.

Miller County Circuit Judge Joe Griffin called the settlement “fair, reasonable and adequate” and downplayed claims it hurt small advertisers. More than 70 objections were filed, with smaller companies saying they didn’t have the resources to prove “click fraud” losses.

By settling claims made in the plaintiffs’ class-action lawsuit, Google will give advertising credits that are the equivalent of a $4.50 refund on every $1,000 spent in its advertising network during the past 4¼ years.

No one will receive cash except the lawyers, who will split $30 million.

Some of the plaintiffs went before Griffin on Monday to argue that Google hadn’t taken reasonable care to prevent click fraud and overstated the steps it has taken against would-be swindlers. Click fraud drives up advertisers’ costs by falsely indicating the number of Web users who have “clicked” on an Internet ad.

A Texarkana company — Lane’s Gifts and Collectibles — filed the lawsuit, which Griffin certified as a class action. Google did not admit liability in the case, which also involves other Internet companies whose cases continue.

Google lawyer Nicole Wong said the company was pleased by Griffin’s decision.

“We look forward to continuing to manage invalid clicks effectively and provide our advertisers with an outstanding return on their investment,” she said in a statement.

Google lawyer Daralyn Durie had told Griffin this week that 19 of the company’s 20 largest advertisers had agreed to the settlement and urged its approval.

In his ruling, Griffin said based his decision on the strength of Lane’s case, Google’s ability to pay, the potential expense of further litigation and the limited amount of opposition.

Those who opposed the settlement said the agreement switched the burden of proof to them, and they argued they didn’t have the resources to easily pursue their claims. Griffin said, however, their task wouldn’t be impossible.

“The settlement class is not required … to submit records or documents that they simply do not possess,” Griffin wrote. “The settlement class is not burdened or discouraged from filing claims because they are required only to provide information to the best of their knowledge in submitting a claim form.”

Daralyn Durie, an attorney representing Google, said the majority of class members have agreed to the settlement, including 19 of the company’s 20 largest advertisers.

In Internet advertising, clicking on ads or windows — typically displayed at the top and sides of Web pages — triggers sales commissions even if the activity doesn’t lead to a sale. Click fraud cropped up several years ago as a way to drain advertising budgets or funnel illicit revenue to websites.

An independent report filed in court last week said while Google appears to be doing reasonably well protecting advertisers from scam artists preying upon Internet advertisers, it remains unclear how much the system is being bilked by click fraud.

Since 2001, the ads have generated $15.7 billion in revenue for Google and its partners, turning the Mountain View, Calif.-based company into one of the world’s most prized businesses.

Under the settlement, if advertisers do not claim the full amount available, a portion would be made available to charitable organizations. Griffin also said 556 advertisers notified him they did not want to participate in the class-action lawsuit.

Google AdSense… A Big Bluff

AdSense is horrible

Contributor: Manish Arora

Think about a pipeline on Internet which is carrying millions of dollars and you just need to request for a free connection from that pipeline and start making money. Sounds exciting to you… me too!!!

You might be thinking that what the heck this person is talking about, well but it’s true. Within 7 days you can be able to exploit world’s biggest online Ad provider’s advertisement model. Yes you are right… it’s Google AdSense (To know more about AdSense and PPC model read my blog post at http://mgoos.com/blogs/ppc-cracked.htm).

Exploitation of Google’s AdSense is three step process, yes it is true!

1). Open an account with Google AdSense, whether you have a website or not (Its true!).

2). After Confirmation of account opening get an ad unit from wizard.

3). In Ad Unit you will find a pub-id (publisher ID), place that to my click simulation JavaScript code.

And here you are… you will start getting money at the speed of Indian taxi meter!!!

Now let’s go step by step with screenshot of whatever I said.

Google’s Security Breech

Google’s Security Flaw

Contributor: Manish Arora

I own a website and have a Google AdSense account. In the early days when I was getting information about earning money via my website, I came to know about Google AdSense. Being an engineer I am always curious about what is happening behind the scenes, so I went through the AdSense ad generator code which can be easily download from Google’s server, which they used to generate Ads.

 

To know more about PPC model of advertisement I had gone through number of articles/reports on Pay Per Click mechanism including the report of Dr. Tuzhilin (Professor of Information Systems at the Stern School of Business at New York University), who evaluated Google’s invalid click detection efforts (Attached PDF Report [Source: http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2006/07/25/revealed-how-google-manages-click-fraud/]).

 

After going through all those articles and analyzing Google’s code I found a way to simulate human behavior in click generation and page impressions in proper (acceptable) ratio from different geographic location (IP address) and was able to credit thousands of dollars in my AdSense account (By not a single human being generated click). See my account’s screen shot http://www.mgoos.com/screenshot.jpg

This all could be possible with a simple trick… execute Google’s Ad Generator code on server and retrieve all ad links at web server only (with the help of html parser). Then send those Ad links to client and navigate them from client side. Interested to know more… visit http://mgoos.com/blogs/adsense-cracked.htm or write a comment to this post. Read complete post to know things in detail…

By Tim Finin on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 1:00 pm.In February 2005, Google, Yahoo, and Time Warner. were sued by Lane’s Gifts & Collectibles in a class-action lawsuit over click fraud. The company alleged that Google and the other companies had been improperly billing for pay-per-click ads that were not viewed by legitimate potential customers. The case was settled earlier this year and as part of the settlement Google agreed to have an independent expert examine their click fraud detection methods, policies, and procedures and make a determination of whether or not they were reasonable measures to protect advertisers. The expert was Alexander Tuzhilin, a Professor of Information Systems at NYU. A summary of his report has been posted in Google’s official blog:

“The bottom-line conclusion of the report is that Google’s efforts against click fraud are in fact reasonable. At several points in his report, he calls out the quality of our inspection systems and notes their constant improvement. It is an independent report, so not surprisingly there are other aspects of it with which we don’t fully agree. But overall it is a validation of what we have said for some time about our work against invalid clicks.”

The full report contains lots of interesting information on Google’s approach to dealing with click fraud. Here’s the high-level description of the approach

“Google has built the following four ‘lines of defense’ for detecting invalid clicks: pre-filtering, online filtering, automated offline detection and manual offline detection, in that order. Google deploys different detection methods in each of these stages: the rule-based and anomaly-based approaches in the pre-filtering and the filtering stages, the combination of all the three approaches in the automated offline detection stage, and the anomaly-based approach in the offline manual inspection stage. This deployment of different methods in different stages gives Google an opportunity to detect invalid clicks using alternative techniques and thus increases their chances of detecting more invalid clicks in one of these stages, preferably proactively in the early stages.”

The report also has a good overview of the pay-per-click model and Google’s AdSense program. Professor Tuzhilin concluded that the basic approach is sound and the thresholds set entirely by the engineering team with no input from financial officers. Here’s his bottom line:

“In summary, I have been asked to evaluate Google’s invalid click detection efforts and to conclude whether these efforts are reasonable or not. Based on my evaluation, I conclude that Google’s efforts to combat click fraud are reasonable.”

If you don’t have time to read the full 47 page report, the Search Engine Watch blog has summarized some of the most interesting findings.

While this report is very interesting to the technical community, not all of the plaintiffs are happy with the $90M settlement and some are fighting it. In a related development, CNET reports that Google has announced it will show advertisers the number of invalid clicks on their ads starting Tuesday.

Full disclosure department: the UMBC ebiquity site carries AdSense ads and uses the resulting income to support Mr. Capresso.

I’m curious to know, was there anyone ever sued by Google because of formed a group to clicking ads for each other? if, what is the amount involved?

Google’s AdSense program is a large source of revenue for the company, but is also a huge target for click fraud. While they have developed methods to help reign in click fraud, it is still enough of a threat to ad revenue that Google acknowledged such in a pre-IPO filing with the SEC. Now Google is a publicly traded company, they will have to do everything they can to help protect advertisers while minimizing money paid out to click fraudsters. That strategy now includes a civil lawsuit against the company Auctions Expert International to help recover money accumulated through fraudulent ad clicks.

The case, filed Nov. 15 in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County in California, is among the first civil lawsuits to relate to click fraud. The lawsuit charges that Texas-based Auctions Expert International signed up to display Google’s targeted text advertising on its Web site, and then fraudulently clicked on the ads to profit from its pay-per-click system.

With search advertising expecting to top US$3.2 billion this year, experts estimate that 5 to 20 percent of that revenue is lost to fraud. Much of that money may not have passed through Google in the absence of click fraud, but if Google does not act aggressively, advertisers may have second thoughts about buying ads if a good portion of their money was being lost to fraud. Some of the smaller fraudsters may fall through the cracks, but the more suits against the larger ones could be in the offing.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google did not say how much money was lost, but the company is seeking compensatory and punitive damages to be determined at trial.

How successful the company will be in suing Google is up to question. — mainly because the copyrighted images and passwords are not being hosted by Google. Any images hosted by Google are thumbnails, and a federal appeals court ruled that the usage of thumbnails does not constitute a copyright violation. A second part of the suit concerns website search results that point to sites that hosts password lists to the company’s website. However, the company may run into resistance because they are going after Google and not the websites that are actually hosting the copyright infringing materials. Of course, Perfect 10 may not be expecting to win. The entire motive for the suit may be the leveraging of publicity gained from the lawsuit to drive traffic to their website.

MediaPost reports that the amount of money Google won from the Auctions Expert International lawsuit is $75,000. Interestingly, this is significantly higher than the estimated $50,000 Auctions Expert International actually defrauded Google out of by hiring people to click their ads.

GOOGLE QUIETLY WON A $75,000 judgment in May in a click fraud case against former AdSense participant Auctions Expert International and its two founders.Google’s lawsuit, filed late last year in Santa Clara County Superior Court in California, charged that the Houston-based Auctions Expert “artificially and/or fraudulently” generated clicks on the ads Google served to the company’s Web site. Auctions Expert, like other AdSense publishers, received a share of pay-per-click revenue when Web visitors clicked on certain ads on the Auctions Expert page.
Google alleged in legal papers that Auctions Expert hired dozens of people to click on the site’s ads, to the tune of at least $50,000.

Technically, Auctions Expert is out the $50,000 they earned through fraudulent clicks, the extra $25,000 added to the judgment, as well as site related costs, including what they paid to the actual ad clickers. It was an expensive lesson learned by Sergio Morfin and Alexei Leonov of Auctions Expert.Whether Google will see the money or not is another issue. They won the default judgment because Auctions Expert International did not respond to the lawsuit.

Is this the last lawsuit against click frauding publishers that we will see? Likely not. And click fraud artists have more to worry about than just having their account suspended and losing their 30-60 days of AdSense earnings. They should also be worried about a potential lawsuit.

If you want to be a success domainers, here are basic tools to help you.

1. www.tdnam.com : Effective domain search and market

2. Domain Name Cleaner

3. Domain Whois Desktop Software

4. A place to market your domain

• http://forums.digitalpoint.com
• http://www.dnforum.com (paid membership)
• http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace (costs to list)

and sell your domains for $xxx, remember the older the domain and more rememberable it is then the more you can ask for it usually anything from $150-450 is a nice starting point, however, you can sell them for more which I have known other domainers to sell a couple for $x,xxx.

I’m glad to be part of WordPress.com. This is my first post. I can edit or delete it and start blogging!

This is a place to collect advertising articles, advertising science, technology and also including video clip that contain a funny, crazy and creative ads. All source can be from internet itself as reference, TV, video, magazine, interview, and etc.

Happy writing Be Happy.