I have previously blogged re my suspicions about fake traffic on this blog ... see: Strange! If I were receiving ad revenue from this blog (which I am not), I would have garnered substantial ill-gotten gains. Certainly Google, who operates Blogspot, the web site hoster for this and many other blogs, does benefit enormously from all the fake traffic which I think I have noticed. In fact, were I to guess, I think that this fake traffic on my blog might have, at times, increased the hits here by a factor of three ... all benefiting Google.
Now Google has sheepishly admitted that "some" of its sites have experienced fake traffic that has run up its ad revenues ... and it will be issuing refunds to advertisers who paid up based upon these inflated hit numbers ... see: CNBC Story. Far be it from me to gauge the actual size of this scandal ... but IMHO it is a scandal which will take quite a bit of "esplaining" (and maybe even some Congresional investigations) to rectify things (if possible) ... for I strongly suspect such sleezy practices may be industry-wide.
Shades of VW's (and others') auto-emissions scandal?
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