4/6/2005 9:48:32 AM
Excerpt: Nathan McKelvey began to worry about foul play when Yahoo Inc.refunded him $69.28 early last year. He grew more suspicious when a$16.91 refund arrived from Google Inc. The refunds were for "unusual clicks" and "invalid click activity" and they suggested someone was sabotaging Mr. McKelvey's advertising strategy. He pitches his charter-jet brokerage the way companies increasingly do: contracting with Yahoo and Google to serve up small text ads to anyone searching the Web using certain words, such as "private jet" or "air charter." He pays the search companies a fee every time someone clicks on his ads.But Yahoo and Google determined someone was clicking onCharterAuction.com Inc.'s ads with no intention of doing business, thusunfairly driving up the company's advertising costs. Mr. McKelvey,turning detective, combed through lists of "IP" addresses, theidentifying codes supplied by computers when they access Web sites. Hefound several suspicious clicks from one address and about 100 morefrom one that was similar. Read the full article