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How much of your audience is fake?

bloomberg.com

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Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#21

Post by meeper16 »

yclept wrote: post #20
meeper16 wrote: post #14

This is exactly why social networks are far less valuable than properties like Google that started with algorithmic foundations as opposed to rebranding the next geocities. I'll never trust facebooks numbers on their fake profiles especially when Yahoo kills close to 1mil fake profiles every month and while Ashley Madison was rife with them. Reddit started this way too, with tons of bots, fake accounts etc. We just d…

> Not many fake 'searches' are happening You think similar networks aren't abusing search?

There's a reason I used the term "compared to". And, the difference is in the billions that Google makes and is worth over Facebook aka AOL 2.0.1

A 'fake' or API-driven search is different than a fake social networking profile and it's associated bots.

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#23

Post by ecopoesis »

fideloper wrote: post #19
marwann wrote: post #13

Any clever advertiser doesn't judge the success of a campaign by its number of clicks, but by its number of conversions (and ultimately, revenue). What's become a new pain in the advertising space are spam/ghost referrals, messing your analytics only for the sole purpose of making you visit their websites, also adding up to the stack of fake audience of your site (which the article fails to mention).

The really crazy thing is that tracking from click to conversion is still not a truly solved problem! e.g. When a person clicks, and then closes the browser and/or views other web sites, only to come back as direct traffic later and convert. The funnel is very hard to track and very easy to lose. Not that I do this full time (I don't), but I've yet to really see a solution that lets me truly match up a person who cli…

Your example is actually pretty easy to track. That's why sites drop cookies and have look back logs.

Harder to track is when someone clicks on a link on mobile, and then switches to desktop to complete the transaction. Unless everyone is logged in, you have no chance of tracking the funnel.

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#24

Post by forgetsusername »

meeper16 wrote: post #14

This is exactly why social networks are far less valuable than properties like Google that started with algorithmic foundations as opposed to rebranding the next geocities. I'll never trust facebooks numbers on their fake profiles especially when Yahoo kills close to 1mil fake profiles every month and while Ashley Madison was rife with them. Reddit started this way too, with tons of bots, fake accounts etc. We just d…

>This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about in the social networking space.

Indeed. I was working for a Facebook gaming company around 2010. Through the "recruit a friend" bonuses and "have X friends click this" mechanics, there were incentives to simply make fake accounts to obtain the goals. We looked at our users and figured about half were fake Facebook accounts. I have to imagine the numbers for other companies, like Zynga, were similar, as they used the same mechanics.

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#25

Post by mattmanser »

meeper16 wrote: post #14

This is exactly why social networks are far less valuable than properties like Google that started with algorithmic foundations as opposed to rebranding the next geocities. I'll never trust facebooks numbers on their fake profiles especially when Yahoo kills close to 1mil fake profiles every month and while Ashley Madison was rife with them. Reddit started this way too, with tons of bots, fake accounts etc. We just d…

Incidentally, red face for the journalist, it turned out with regards to the Ashley Madison 'fake' profiles, the vast majority of them weren't fake.

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#26

Post by downandout »

meeper16 wrote: post #14

This is exactly why social networks are far less valuable than properties like Google that started with algorithmic foundations as opposed to rebranding the next geocities. I'll never trust facebooks numbers on their fake profiles especially when Yahoo kills close to 1mil fake profiles every month and while Ashley Madison was rife with them. Reddit started this way too, with tons of bots, fake accounts etc. We just d…

I personally know the founder of an SEO company that is running around 50 fake searches per second as I type this.

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#27

Post by meeper16 »

downandout wrote: post #26
meeper16 wrote: post #14

This is exactly why social networks are far less valuable than properties like Google that started with algorithmic foundations as opposed to rebranding the next geocities. I'll never trust facebooks numbers on their fake profiles especially when Yahoo kills close to 1mil fake profiles every month and while Ashley Madison was rife with them. Reddit started this way too, with tons of bots, fake accounts etc. We just d…

I personally know the founder of an SEO company that is running around 50 fake searches per second as I type this.

...and is likely pinging his 5000 or 500,000 fake social networking profiles every second.

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#28

Post by eecks »

meeper16 wrote: post #14

This is exactly why social networks are far less valuable than properties like Google that started with algorithmic foundations as opposed to rebranding the next geocities. I'll never trust facebooks numbers on their fake profiles especially when Yahoo kills close to 1mil fake profiles every month and while Ashley Madison was rife with them. Reddit started this way too, with tons of bots, fake accounts etc. We just d…

Doesn't Google make money off fake clicks on ads?

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#30

Post by meeper16 »

eecks wrote: post #28
meeper16 wrote: post #14

This is exactly why social networks are far less valuable than properties like Google that started with algorithmic foundations as opposed to rebranding the next geocities. I'll never trust facebooks numbers on their fake profiles especially when Yahoo kills close to 1mil fake profiles every month and while Ashley Madison was rife with them. Reddit started this way too, with tons of bots, fake accounts etc. We just d…

Doesn't Google make money off fake clicks on ads?

Not allowing fake ads https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6020954?hl=e... is different than allowing fake profiles to boost your monthly active user counts if your a social network.
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