The next big IT crash will be as a direct result of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) fraud.
The Internet bounced back in record breaking time, much faster than any other industry ever has after a major crash.
The IT industry returned to form so quickly because the big search engines launched PPC advertising and thus gave a quantifiable value back to advertising on the Internet.
PPC is an incredibly powerful avenue of advertising; it's relatively inexpensive for the return that companies get. Companies also receive better quality leads and the cost per head is reduced massively.
There is one big problem though; Search engines offering PPC are exposing themselves to fraud all the time. When Google launch their Adsense programme, scammers licked their lips and rubbed their hands, as they knew what they were about to get. Professional fraudsters have made thousands upon thousands of dollars off the back of Google.
It is estimated that today 50% of clicks are fraudulent, imagine you have a small business and put about $5000 towards a Google PPC advertising campaign.
Half of your money would be completely wasted and go into scammers pockets.
This is creating a serious lack of confidence when it comes to advertising with the search engines; people are starting to wonder how much money they are actually wasting and how effective advertising actually is.
Once this vote of no-confidence starts it will only be a couple of days before a huge IT crash happens. Much bigger than the last IT crash we had in the late 90's.
We did a PPC test with Google before writing this article, I built a website from scratch. I then watched the Stats so I could see the amount of visitors I was receiving per day.
It was only one or two visits per day.
I then put $2000 aside for Google PPC, and watched the stats. As expected the visitors rose dramatically, to hundreds per day. However, their were minimal enquiries, I had specifically targeted my Ad's to only be shown in the UK. However, about 55% of the visitors were coming from the USA?
This goes to show more than half of the advertising revenue is going to Google's partners in the USA and will have absolutely no effect on my business.
What's the point.
I predict that within two years Google, Yahoo and MSN will have lost at least 50% of their advertising revenue due to people getting tired of wasting money on PPC systems.
The ironic thing is that the Search Engines are actually profiting from the fraud that is going on. If they don't detect fraud they keep the money and pay their "Partner" a share of the clicked income.
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When I was seventeen, my mom opened up some accounts using my social. 4 years later, I am just discovering that one of these, a phone bill, was never paid and was sent to a collections agency. I was told that to get it removed from my credit, I needed to file a police report, but I don't know what to do now. I am sending a copy to the collections agency, but it doesn't seem right that they are in charge of removing it from my credit ( as it is not in their interest to do so). So, what steps should I take to get this resolved? Thanks.
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