Good Clicks, Bad Clicks: Recognizing The Signs Of Click Fraud

December 11, 2009 by
Filed under: PPC 

Search engine marketing could be a billion dollar trade—but click fraud poses a threat to go looking engine advertising corporations and online marketers alike. Pay-Per-Click ad campaigns are a reasonably simple concept; advertisers bid on fashionable search keywords and pay the search engine ad companies every time somebody clicks on their ad. This can be a mutually useful relationship for the advertiser and therefore the search engine company. The matter comes when the advertisers’ numbers—and their bills—are falsely inflated through click fraud.

What’s Click Fraud?

Boris Mordkovich of Search Selling Normal, {a magazine} devoted exclusively to look marketing, defines click fraud as “any click made on a billboard with no intention of actually shopping for or wanting for info, however rather with the intention of depleting the advertiser’s budget.”

Who is Behind It?

Who would profit from deliberately running up your bill? To begin with, your competition would. The ads within the prime spots are continuously within the crosshairs of the ads a very little additional down the page. And if your competitor clicks on your ad a few times each day or some times a week, the search engines won’t notice such small numbers. Doesn’t sound like a lot of but it will very add up, especially when you have multiple competitors doing it. Therefore they just chip away at your budget until you can not afford to advertise on that search engine.

Another common source of click fraud is search engine affiliates. When webmasters get a cut of the revenue from the ads on their sites, they sometimes play the same game as your competitors. They quietly click away at your ad and raise your bill—and their profits—one click at a time.

“It Could Happen To You”—Fighting Back

When you think you have got found a case of click fraud, you would like to gather your information:

1. the questionable clicks
2. the keywords that were clicked on
3. after they were clicked on, and
4. the country from which the clicks originated.

You’ll be able to do that yourself by monitoring your server logs and looking forward to unusual increases in activity or repeated clicks from the same ISP address. Or you’ll get a 3rd party to analysis it for you. Clickclub.com, AdWatcher.com and WhosClickingWho.com are samples of services that can analyze that of your clicks are valid and gift you with all the relevant data in an organized report. This type of service could cost you from twenty to a hundred bucks a month.

You can email this information to your search engine and request an investigation for the purpose of getting a refund. Mordkovich warns that you must expect some resistance, however says “it’s necessary to elevate the problem to a supervisor.” If the search engines know you are serious, they can check up on your claims.

The key to not turning into a click fraud victim is to be aware. Watch the sources of your clicks. Check your server logs. Watch for spikes. Take into account a third party watchdog if necessary. Click fraud is each real and prevalent. Therefore use a little caution and you can save yourself a nice deal of money down the road.

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