One of my client has a strange issue. he has advertised for most competitive keywords and he is paying high for those keywords.He is getting lots of impressions and hits but there is no sales. End of the day he realized that the hits are from competitors who wants to nullify his balance on adword account so that they get higher impressions. is there anyone facing the same issue? How do avoid? Is there a mechanism to avoid such hits and save some money?
This is click fraud. You should report it to AdWords. In the short term, if you know those peoples' IP addresses, you can block their IPs from viewing the ads.
It's not click fraud and Google's not going to do anything about it. mahendras - how is your client able to verify that it's a "competitor" clicking on their ads?
Is he speculating and ranting because he is getting hits and no conversions? Or does he have solid proof? I have been managing accounts for years, and competitor clicking is usually slim to non. Competitors don't just sit there and click your ads all day, they have better things to do. Even if they did, Google will void out all the other clicks as repeats.
Could it be that people searching for the competitors are really looking for the competitor? Maybe his ads resemble the competition too closely and people are being fooled into clicking on his ads instead of theirs. It happens all the time.
no i dont work with him, I was simply replying as to how I prove to our clients who rant about the same scenario.
Even if competitors click on your ad 100 times Google will charge only 1 click as it comes from the same IP.
probably this is something organized, they use different IP's for sure google adwords will figure it out easily just email them
Thank you very much guys for your help. My client doesn't have any solid proof but indirect analysis like his hits were coming from the city where more of his competitors have shops and his client were not. Also one good thing he tried was requested me to activate the advertisement for some specific time period say 6 PM to 12 PM. And the results were amazing, he was getting less hits ( saved money ) and more converted orders from the hits. This was opposite when he kept his campaign active through out the day ( when most businesses are open). So if anyone has tried this trick earlier, its good and if not then you can try this, it might work for you.
If you sell nationally, then sell to all locations but that city. This way the ad can never be shown in that city where the competitors live. If you find this works out and that competitors were a problem, then contact Google. They will investigate from within the fraud department and they WILL refund you. I have accomplished this many times for clients who actually have a valid case. If you want to advertise in that city, once problem 1 is resolved get back in touch with the rep for a solution.
Robert Priolo has the best advice - stop the run in your competitors city/zip code. I have found that competitors usually click on my client's ad in the beginning of the ad run AND where there ads are running adjecent to their own ads. I think that you can still use iSpionage for free to see where you and your competitors are running.