I am surprised that PPC Fraud does not get more attention. Have we all resigned ourselves to accepting it as the cost of doing business? Yet, each day it eats away our profits and advertising budget taking us off line and making our ads unavailable to legitimate buyers! Google and Yahoo have no real incentive to correct this problem. It generates massive amounts of revenue for their companies every day! Notice the Search Engines are offering the New Local Search, which has the ability to filter traffic that pertains only to a small business area. However, they do not offer the ability to limit foreign traffic from your site! Why is that? Because they are aware that many of the Fraudulent PPC come form other countries and do not want to lose that revenue! Any site whose only purpose is to generate revenue from advertising should be suspicious! Take notice of Shopping Directory Sites whose only content is PPC Ads appearing in your website statistics. Many have the same IP Address but use several different Domain Names through Masking techniques to avoid detection! Most of these sites cannot be found in a search on any Engine. So where does this traffic come from? Do they have their own Pay Per Read Network? Do they have their own Spy Bot network? Why would the Search Engines sign up such sites to carry our ads anyway? Again, they are counting on our ignorance and will accept the few claims made by advertisers who do the research and make the claim. This is peanuts compared to the revenue these sites generate for the Search Engines! I encourage every advertiser to write to Google and Yahoo insisting that they make following changes: 1. Ability to Opt Out of Advertising on Foreign Domains. 2. Ability to Opt Out of Sites whose only Content is PPC Advertising. 3. Ability to Filter PPC visitors outside your area of business. It is my belief that these changes would go a long way in fighting PPC Fraud. They are changes that the Search Engines have the ability to make but WILL NOT without pressure from the Advertisers. This problem will only get bigger unless we act together. These are my thoughts - What are yours?
I don't think I'm a victim of click-fraud myself, although if I am it's probably in Yahoo/overture listings as my revenue per click is much lower there. however, it seems like you are probably a victim? How do you know? You have some good ideas, but it will need some huge exposure to make it happen...
You check your stats from your site. Watch where your traffic is coming from. Visit those sites and see what they are. If their only content is Sponsered Ads...they are Suspicious! Do a WhoIs search on them and a little investigation. If you suspect you have a claim...Send your documentation to the Search Engine request a investigation. I am not Disappointed with my PPC advertising. I am quite happy with the results thus far. However, there are many things I will accept as the Cost of Doing Business. Fraud is not one of them! Evil Flourishes when Good Men Do Nothing! Unfortunately, too many advertisers and web site owners are not Tech Savvy. They Out Source the development of their sites, their SEO efforts, their Marketing programs, and even in some cases the administration of their site. They consider internet sales as gravy instead of meat! The Out Sources either do not care or choose not to enlighten their employers about such problems. This is why you do not have the Out Cry you would expect and would receive if it were Print Advertising or some other form they do understand. I was attempting to send up a flare to the Advertising Community saying "Heads Up Guys....Pay attention....Check your stats....File some claims...Ask for changes!" However, it appears the community of Advertisers I was hoping to reach does not exist. I regonize this lack of knowledge has it's advantages for those of us who do understand the potential and pit falls. It gives us an edge. It also creates all sorts of job opportunities and ways to take advantage of their ignorance....Like the Search Engines are doing and sites who participate in PPC Fraud. Thank you for your interest.
Personally, I very rarely setup adwords and allow it on content sites - adwords for search produces far better results and cuts down on fraud significantly. I agree that Google has the ability to do the things you say, but I am not sure that there is enough demand for those changes. I know it defies logic, but there are simply some advertisers (ignorant of how the internet works) that WANT to see their traffic stats go up - regardless of the cost. Google simply caters to a demand.
Google does more than Yahoo in this regard. They do have a geo-targeting of sorts. They are more selective in the accounts they sign up to carry our ads. And they give you the ability to OPT Out of certain Domains if you choose. Yahoo, on the other hand, has no geo targeting and no options to Opt Out of anything. They will pay your claims if you do the homework required. That Yahoo would sign up sites like the following supports my arguments. All of the following have the same IP Address, 72.35.4.17, the location of the server is South Africa. They use different default home pages and Domain names through Masking techniques. Their only purpose is displaying Yahoo Sponsered Ads. www.nationalceilingfans.com www.findceilingfans.com www.onlyceilingfans.com www.ceilingfansbuyersguide.com These are just the ones that hit my site. I am sure there are other Domain Names out there are for this IP Address based on different key words. Your input is appreciated. Cheers! Scout720
when i run my google adwords adverts i make sure they are never run in the content network. It costs me more per click but i always generate higher click thru rates. I also limit my adverts to certain demographics (like australia, united states and uk) and never anything else.. Im pretty sure click freud is occuring with my adverts however i can't prove it. All i can do is try to minimise it by targeting my adverts and doing the above mentioned things! I give it a couple more years till we have a more fool proof system (i reckon Microsoft will come up with it first)!
At least you are making an effort! Keep a close eye on it and file claim or ask for an investigation if you suspect something is wrong. The more trouble we make for the search engines about it the more attention it will get. The squeeky wheel gets the grease! Cheers! Scout720
Exactly, it's almost always best to optout of the content network entirely, and in most cases to optout of Google's partner websites. I like to only show results on Google itself, so I can better track my results. Brad
Hi, Have you anyone thought of advertising in the new internet marketing called PPCa (Pay Per Call) yet? This works similar to PPC (Pay Per Call) & obviously you can keep track of number of calls made to your site each day.This way you are on safe side of internet marketing & you talk to your customers directly. Also, this will lead into many sales to your site. I hope this helps...
How to determine whether there are fraud PPC clicks? Today I've noticed the number of clicks that Google AdWords states is greater than the number of visits made to my site within the same period. Why? Did anyone experience the same problem? Is it a bug in my tracking software (Sales-n-Stats)?
You might be interested in a project I started, the Pay Per Click Publishers Association. My mind wandered and the project is in need of a new owner. I'm looking for volunteers.
It is not a bug. I've just analized the history of visits and found that several clicks were made under the same visit. It appears as the same visitor clicked my link several times. Is it possible to set up Google AdWords so that clicks made by the same visitor don't qualify for PPC?
PPC = Click Fraud I found click fraud at Google to be as high as 80%, to include competitors and paid clickers and Overture/Yahoo hovering around 60%. This is for broad generic keywords. So to be conservative, let's say that 50% of Yahoo's and Google's revenue is from click fraud. Doing something about click fraud would be like asking a person to cut their nose off to spite their face. The entire PPC system is evolved around click fraud, they are not hoping on it, they are counting on people being people. If you disagree with me, why would they: 1) Allow sites to exist with sponsored ads that have zero content and zero ranking. Guess who's clicking on your ads, the owner or employees of this website in question. 2) Let sites carry sponsored ads, that are loaded with doorway pages and hidden text, when the normal site without the ads would be banned from either Yahoo or Google. 3) Let advertisers use their competitors names & URL's as keywords. 4) List multiple mirror sites on the same keyword. I have counted as many as 9 on one major keyword on Yahoo Marketing. Stop and really think about what they have thrown on to the table, think clearly now. If I have a legitimate website and I am trying to bring business and/or revenue in the door and sell my product or services. Why in the world would I ever want my competitors ads appearing on my site, so that I can lose a customer to make a 5 cents click? But of course not. Face the facts, you must play by their rules and/or lack of them. Click fraud will be present as long as there are PPC engines, but you can fight back by using specific keywords, misspellings and common keystroke errors, at least on Yahoo/Overture that is. Google has found that loop hole. Jack
For google adwords, my recommendation for small budget businesses would be to only display you ads in google search results and not content and network sites.