What Are Click Farms
Click Farms might sound like an odd concept but they are actually one of the most common methods to commit click fraud.
A click farm is a commercial enterprise that employs a large number of people to repeatedly click on online content in order to artificially inflate statistics such as traffic, engagement and even click on paid ads.
The click farm layout is quite simple, people are paid to click on ads all day long, or click on social media posts to increase engagement. This often happens in third world countries where wages are much lower. Surprisingly, click farms are not illegal!
Click farms are also used to enhance social media profiles by giving them fake likes and followers. Many social media influencers, companies or just general users are buying these fake likes and followers. This essentially gives the profile increased popularity, which in return can allow them to monetise their social media accounts.
Click farms also mislead consumers, with many people under the impression that it is just a bot programmed to carry out fake clicks but in fact it is often a real person. Would consumers think again about purchasing fake clicks/followers if they knew what was happening behind closed doors?
An increase in click fraud is also causing more issues for social media sites, users are trusting social media less and less. Many organisations are keen to put a stop to this sort of behaviour. As click farms begin to be exposed we are now seeing how they operate.
What Does A Click Farm Look like?
A click farm set up can range from a one man band to hundreds of people in a warehouse. They are often using a range of different devices such as mobile phones, computers or tablets.
Some click farms operate in gloomy rooms, with minimal lighting and poor working conditions. With this being a minimum paid job, workers often use this as their only source of income and rely on these types of jobs to get by.
Struggling to picture it? This is a click farm set up that was recently found and raided. This is as simple as it gets, with people sitting at a make-shift desk and within reach of a number of devices. Raids of click farms have determined that mobile phones are usually the go to device, due to the small size.
After the raid it was discovered that the click farm housed more than 10,000 mobile phones to give fake product reviews and social media users fake likes. It turned out the owners also earned more money than their employees ever would in a year of working there.
As we learn more about these click farms, it has come to light that these workers sit for 12 hours a day not following any shift pattern at all to ensure they operate 24 hours a day. With all this technology in a small area the rooms can get very hot and often the workers find themselves being injured from working around exposed electrics.
Why Do Business's Use Click Farms?
The main benefit for a business is to increase exposure, especially when there is a new launch of a product or service. In this day and age, social media has incredible reach and if a business is new then they won’t have a big following like their competitors therefore they need this boost. This cheap tactic does not break the budget and can be a quick but short term solution.
A business can also use a click farm to excessively click on their competitors Google ads. By doing this, they will inflate their competitors Google ads costs until the budget is exhausted, this then allows them to take prime position on Google.
Is There A Solution?
Yes. With Click Guardian you can protect your business from click fraud and save hundreds on Google ads. People are paid to just click on your ads and waste your budget. But with the UK's No.1 anti-click fraud solution you can prevent this from happening.