Indian 'click farms' help boost UK web traffic

Low-cost IT workers in India are populating what have been described as 'click farms' in fake internet traffic to help British companies boost their online presence, according to a media report.

An investigation by The Times newspaper found that western companies are being offered packages costing as little as $1 per 1,000 clicks to increase internet traffic or purchase 1,000 to 10,000 Facebook "likes" or Twitter followers.

The newspaper's reporter posed as a potential customer for a British singer seeking to boost his online profile and was offered a range of services by several providers in Delhi and Mumbai.

"I can give you 1,000 likes on Facebook in six to seven days," Navdeep Sharma, whose company Indian Facebook Likes specialises in what he calls "social media optimisation", told the newspaper.

"It will take double the time for 2,000 and so on. Once the numbers increase, it will get faster. YouTube views are easier. I can give 3,000-4,000 per day," he said.

Sharma said most of his clients were American or British corporates.

"We started with search engine optimisation and moved on to social media when we saw the demand for it. We are a small start-up. Our clients are mostly abroad, in the UK and the US. We set up social media 'likes' for them," he explained.

David Sendroff, the chief executive of Forensiq, a US company that specialises in identifying fake internet traffic on behalf of advertisers, estimated that the market for false traffic was worth up to $600 million per year and was growing at 20 per cent per year.

"These click farms are generally coming out of places where labour is very cheap - India, Vietnam, Bangladesh. The real victims are the advertisers who end up buying space," Sendroff said.

"Nobody has been prosecuted for it," he added. Sendroff said that a wide range of companies and individuals were taking advantage of such services, including top western brands.

Pepsi, Louis Vuitton and Mercedes-Benz have been accused of buying fake followers on Twitter, as have celebrities including Paris Hilton and 50 Cent.