Conversions from smaller outlets

[ChrisW]

While the smaller outlets seem to offer a great deal with their extremely low cost per click, I am getting the feeling that the traffic our site receives from these outlets is almost worthless. It just makes no sense to me why Overture can convert at rates of 10X these smaller outlets unless they all employ click shops overseas.

One question about the alleged click shops in India and other third world countries is this... do you suppose that the smaller engines themselves are paying for these clicks? I don't see who else could make money off doing this besides the engines themselves. Any thoughts?

[seobook]

there are a ton of hokie partners. many 2nd and 3rd tier search engines will allow you to capture one of their search queries in a static text link and feed that into your proprietary engine. some of that is done on the legit, but there are also bots that are specifically designed to click ads to make people money. i think some of the engines like searchfeed share from somewhere between 30% to 40% of the click price.

a guy was recently arrested by the feds for creating a google adsense clicking agent by the name of Google Clique.

[AussieWebmaster]

a guy was recently arrested by the feds for creating a google adsense clicking agent by the name of Google Clique.

One out of thousands... but they have to start somewhere.