INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image copyrightGetty ImagesForbes and Business Insider are both well-known news sites
So is forbesbusinessinsider.com a new spin-off?No
It has nothing to do with either Forbes or Business Insider.In fact, it's a site that copies and pastes entire articles from other
publishers and reposts them with very slight changes
There are 350 million registered domain names on the internet
Experts say it's impossible to count how many are sham news sites.But just like legitimate websites, they earn money from the major tech
companies that pay them to display ads
Amazon and Google are two of the world's biggest players in the digital advertising industry.They bring in billions of dollars a year from
selling access to ad space across the internet
When the TheIndianSubcontinent recently viewed forbesbusinessinsider.com, it saw ads promoting major brands including Sephora and Vitality
insurance.After Google was alerted to the site by the TheIndianSubcontinent, it stopped publishing ads on it but Amazon is still doing
so.The site was created by a web design firm based in Karachi, Pakistan
Designer Shahzad Memon told the TheIndianSubcontinent his company built forbesbusinessinsider.com as a test to find ways of increasing
search engine optimisation - the ability to make a link to a site appear high up in search results for certain queries."You don't have to be
an advanced hacker to do this," said Dr Augustine Fou, a digital advertising expert based in New York."As long as you know a little bit of
code, you can build a basic website using templates."Often the sites are not designed to be seen by human eyes at all
The laredotribune.com website also - at first glance - appears to be a regular news site for a city in south Texas
There are stories about local residents and President Trump's border wall with Mexico.Image copyrightSocial PuncherImage caption
An investigation by Social Puncher picked apart the content of the Laredo Tribune's website
But the stories have no
There are no contact details for the editorial staff and the site loads slowly due to the large number of ads
Yet the site has had 3.7 million page views over the past three months, according to data from analytics firm SimilarWeb.Not bad for a news
site covering a city of just 260,000 people.But the audience is fake
Bots are used to give the impression of high traffic, generating very real revenue for the site's creators
"We estimate each site is making at least $100,000 [£77,450] a month," said Vlad Shevtsov, director of investigations at Social Puncher,
the firm that exposed a number of fraudulent news sites
The organisation says ad fraud is a million-dollar industry
Dig a little deeper into the Laredo Tribune's user data, and there are other clues it is not legitimate
Advertisers might ask why there were 500,000 page views in September, which jumped to a staggering three million views in October
Ads for major UK brands including Virgin Media, Superdrug and even TV Licensing were all displayed on related sham news sites seen by the
TheIndianSubcontinent.Image copyrightLaredo Tribune"We hope more can be done across the industry to clamp down on these instances of
pay-per-con advertising fraud," said a Virgin Media spokesman.Google says the Laredo Tribune does not breach its advertising rules, and it
found no issues with traffic to the site
"That means that next month, the anonymous owner will get the next payout cheque from Google," said Mr Shevtsov
But many in the industry say Google does not do enough to ensure advertising budgets are not wasted via other bogus sites
"The ad industry and Google keep ignoring obvious evidence - that they pay fraudsters," Mr Shevtsov said.Dr Augustine Fou agrees."I get why
this is really hard for a platform like Google to police
There are hundreds of thousands of apps and millions of sites that use its advertising technology to make money," said Dr Fou
"But after years and years of knowing about abuses, they ought to be doing something more proactively, not just taking action after third
parties do all the work for them."Google says it is very invested in the fight against ad fraud
The TheIndianSubcontinent invited Amazon to comment but it did not respond.
