What is "click fraud"

n. (context Internet English) A type of fraud in which a computer program is used to simulate mouse clicks on advertisements, driving revenue to the advertiser, who is paid per click.

Click fraud is a type of fraud that occurs on the Internet in pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising. In this type of advertising, the owners of websites that post the ads are paid an amount of money determined by how many visitors to the sites click on the ads. Fraud occurs when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser, clicking on such an ad without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud.

In the book, The Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture, media entrepreneur and journalist John Battelle described click fraud as the "decidedly black-hat" practice of publishers illegitimately gaming paid search advertising by employing robots or low-wage workers to repeatedly click on each AdSense ad on their sites, thereby generating money to be paid by the advertiser to the publisher and to Google.