One example of click fraud is ad fraud: when a website operator drives fraudulent clicks on PPC display ads on their own website. Click fraud perpetrators can set up webpages that display PPC ads, and then use click bots to "click" on those ads. With each click, the ad network has to pay the website operator (the scammer). The more fraudulent clicks there are, the more the ad network has to pay the website if the fraud goes undetected.Ad fraud can also be a financial attack on the company paying for the ads. In such a scenario, scammers target PPC ads on a web property they don't own. The scammer isn't looking to make money from the clicks, but the targeted company has to pay the ad network for each click, costing them money.Another use case for click fraud is when someone tries to game search engine rankings by artificially boosting the click through rate. "Click through rate" refers to how many users out of all the total visitors to a page click on a certain link. Click through rate is a ranking factor that search engines like Google take into account, although it's not known how much of a factor it is. The goal of click fraud in this scenario is to increase the click through rate of a webpage, thereby increasing the search engine ranking and causing more real users to visit the page.
