When Google first made its entrance to the political world known, I blogged in March about my concern over one "dirty trick" being the idea of "Modern Black Faxing."

As I wrote in my lengthy post about my concerns with Google entering the political arena:

But what about some of the “dirty tricks” which we haven’t seen yet? How will those impact Google’s plan and more importantly, how will it address those problems before they occur?

Modern “Black Faxing”

Back in the days when campaigns used faxes as a primary communication tool, an opponent (or their anonymous supporter) could cause monetary and physical damage to the other campaign by faxing dozens of sheets of black construction paper to their opponent. This was a way to wear out their ink cartridge and tie up the phone line. It seems kind of silly now, but I’m sure it caused quite a few headaches back in the days when people used fax machines.

But lets think about what could happen in the modern world…

What would happen if a major liberal or conservative blog — or an anonymous sock-puppet — were to make a similar call to action today to inflict a more pervasive form of damage?

For example, a blog could urge its readers to organically search for a term on Google which triggered sponsored ad words for the opponent to appear and then ask those readers to click on the sponsored links. Since a campaign pays for advertising on Google when it’s clicked, the opposing campaign could not only drain an online budget, but also cost a campaign thousands of dollars.

Google is in the business of curbing click-fraud. And I trust their team is smart enough to follow through with it. But with the anonymity of the web, is it viable to put it past a campaign or their supporters? How can this modern form of black faxing be prevented?

Via the excellent blog, Mashable, we find out that this modern form of "black faxing" has surfaced against Rudy Giuliani:

Today at Reddit we have proof of such behavior. Redditers are calling everyone to click on Rudy Giuliani’s paid ads simply because they cost him money. Think about it: a mass of people which is Reddit or Digg can actually create quite an AdWords bill for poor Rudy if they all start clicking like madmen; at the very least, Google will have problems evaluating the campaign and determining the “false” from the “real” clicks.

The thing is, AdSense is just too easy to abuse. Click an ad, and there goes a couple of dollars. Turn it into a meme or a viral joke and thousands go down the drain, together with the entire idea of click-based ads. In any case, what seems like a fun idea for a bunch of Ron Paul or Barrack Obama supporters is Google’s entire business model, and I wonder what are they going to do about it.

These concerns need answers and I'm going to contact both the Giuliani campaign and Google to see:

1. The Impact of this dirty trick
2. What the response will be from both parties

Stay tuned. These are the realities of the modern campaign trail.

UPDATE Nov. 28, 8:46 AM: I'm back with some answers. The quick and dirty answer is that this click-fraud effort had very little impact on the Giuliani campaign. A bit more:

1. Regarding the Mashable post I referenced above, David Berkowitz thinks that Mashable misspoke on several fronts and should amend the post as such. Berkowitz concludes, "This is just sloppy coverage, and while Mashable may not be in favor of pulling its posts, it should offer a number of corrections." Berkowitz makes some good points, however, I think it is worth noting that Mashable is the only blog that I have seen which reported on the issue of a coordinated click-fraud effort against a political candidate.

2. Regarding this instance of click-fraud, Adam Kovacevich of Google had this to say:

This is not the first time someone has tried to click on links to injure someone -- this is a very elementary type of click fraud , the first instance of which occurred long ago, even before we developed AdSense.

Our filters successfully detect exactly this type of invalid click, and have been doing so for years. When detected, we do not charge the advertiser (in this case, Giuliani's campaign) for those clicks.

Adam points us to the following links for more information about Google's policy toward and efforts to curb click-fraud:

* Invalid Clicks - Google's Overall Numbers (2/28/2007)
* How does Google detect invalid clicks (AdWords Help Center)
* Findings on invalid clicks (7/21/2006)

3. The Giuliani campaign has confirmed that they are aware of the issue and have been in contact with Google to resolve the issue.