This is simply wrong. I know that people click on AdWords campaigns to see what the competition is up to; specifically, what their landing pages looks like, what they may or may not be doing to move up the AdWords ladder, improve their quality score, etc.

This can be frustrating to advertisers because we really have no way of knowing for sure if we are paying for clicks from customers, or competitors hawking our sites, looking for some ideas. However, even I am guiltly of clicking on competitors ads, not in an effort to spend through their budget or cost them money, I am simply interested in seeing what a user may experience when a potential customer visits their site.

Today I stumbled across the following post in Google Group, which includes a dialog between a frustrated Website publisher and a Google AdWords Rep in which the AdWords rep actually advised his customer to click on competitors Advertisements!

Neily: Here is a suggestion...
Neily: Search on your keywords and you can look at the other sites
that come up as AdWords ads.
Neily: This will give you an idea about site design
Neily: Maybe this will help you understand the site quality guidelines
better.

Wow. I can't believe that Google would condone this type of behavior. Regardless of whether or not it goes on, Google should not take this position. As an advertiser, it upsets me greatly that Google is advising people to click on the competitions ads, at our expense.

Sure, it's not Click Fraud, but it is more than an inconvenience. And even if Google provided a tool or mechanism to view competitors landing pages without charging the competitor for the click, few advertisers would be incentived to actually utilize such a method as it's really not hurting them personally in any way.

Personally, I think Google needs to give an official statement as to their stance on this behavior. Here is a link to the thread: http://groups.google.com/group/adwords-help-basics/browse_thread/thread/ea3921563fcb59e