Google’s
premiere advertising unit, AdWords,
appears to have been attacked over the last two days across several highly targeted
keywords and strings through an approach termed keyword hijacking.

AdWords is the contextual advertising division of Google that allows an advertiser
to create ads, choose keywords and pay only when someone clicks on them. The
program was developed in 2000 with the official launch of AdWords Selectâ„¢
taking place in January 2002. The advertising system is widely thought to be
the cornerstone of Google’s revenue.

Beginning Thursday, February 3, 2005, apparently several keywords across multiple
search topics have been attacked. Such search terms as “web hosting,”
“irs,” “mortgage” and even “ebay” have resulted
in significantly fewer AdWords contextual placements appearing in search results.

ClickRisk, a click fraud consulting service, issued a Google AdWords advisory
on February 2nd that botnets are able to “shut down or seriously impair
a Google Adwords advertising campaign by artificially inflating the number of
times an ad is displayed.” This in turn would cause AdWords to automatically
disable the targeted keywords essentially shutting down the campaign for those
words.

Adam Sculthorpe, security specialist and CEO of Clickrisk.com, and his team
of 19 researchers have discovered through extensive forensic testing and analysis
of Google Adwords, a new type of click fraud—Keyword Hijacking. Keyword
Hijacking is where an attacker disables campaign keywords to secure a higher
ad position. Sculthorpe explains, “this is achieved by disabling targeted
keywords across many advertisers’ campaigns simultaneously by artificially
inflating the number of times an ad is displayed.”

Speculation as to the cause throughout many blogs and forums has been wide
and far. One such example has regarded botnets using Google’s AdWords
API beta (a service that lets applications created by developers, advertisers
and third parties to more efficiently – and creatively – manage their large
AdWords accounts and campaigns directly with the AdWords server) to disrupt
the system. Another speculation has connected Google’s recent ICANN accreditation
to the AdWords attack.

The AdWords attack has potential far reaching affects. From Google investors
losing ad revenue across multiple industries to the industries themselves, the
dollar figure could be astronomical. Trey Gardner, Online Marketing Manager at
Globat.com said “Overall hundreds of hosting providers and web hosting
directories spend tens of thousands of dollars every day to attract the thousands
of potential customers searching the “web hosting” key term in Google…the
percentage loss of new customers today may have been greater than 15%.”

Comments:

Related posts:

1. Reseller Status Gained by Where 2 Get, for Google AdWords
2. WebStream Offers Google AdWords Search Engine Marketing Program
3. Website Hosting and Google AdWords
4. Hosting Google AdWords for Your iPhone
5. Lunarpages Web Hosting Debuts Free Google AdWords Credits