Manage Subscriptions · Subscribe Now · F.A.Q.'s
HOME · Friday, May 16, 2008
Accounting, Management & Legal
Click Fraud Not Top PPC Concern
The issue is only one factor to consider
By: Boris Mordkovich
Comments: 5
Click fraud has been a popular topic of discussion for a number of years, and it doesn’t appear the issue will fade away anytime soon. The industry is full of various numbers thrown around putting the click fraud rate anywhere from .02 percent (claimed by Google) to 30 percent or more. Who should you believe about click fraud, and how much should you be worried?
First of all, it’s important to understand the real rate of click fraud can vary significantly from one company to another; thus, you should take any click-fraud rate numbers with a grain of salt. The percentage of click fraud will depend on a dozen different factors, such as ad position, bid price and specific industry type. The more competitive the industry and the more you pay per click, the more incentive there is for others to try to defraud you.
Second, it’s very important to understand that click fraud by itself is not the determining factor in whether your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign is a success. I have seen many clients afraid of trying PPC because of fraud concerns. However, the truth is click fraud only affects your campaign to some degree. Unless you have razor-thin profit margins, your campaign’s success depends much more on the quality of your ads, the targeting of your landing pages and the overall campaign effort. Granted, nobody wants to lose 10 percent to 15 percent (or more) of his/her advertising budget to useless clicks (and remember there are ways to minimize them).
Third, it’s important to be aware of the role of search engines and other companies involved in the whole issue. Search engines, in general, are very protective of their anti-fraud technology and don’t divulge information about it; thus, people turn to third-party services for assistance in detecting and preventing fraudulent activity. If search engines were willing to share some basic information about what they charge an advertiser for, with a breakdown of each click along with the IP address and the referrer (somewhat like a phone bill), it would be much easier to detect fraud and receive refunds. Hopefully, we will see changes along this line in the near future.
Ultimately, you should be aware of the issue, take action in order to detect it and prevent it, and ensure that you’re billed accordingly. But click fraud shouldn’t scare you off from advertising on PPC search engines altogether. That would be a much bigger mistake.
Blinklist | Del.icio.us | Furl | Ma.gnolia | Newsvine | Spurl | Reddit | Technorati
Published on Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Comments:
A question that is of further discussion is "What actually should be considered as a click fraud?"
Google Considers multiple clicks coming from the same IP address as normal user pattern like, for example, if the customer clicks on your ad and after seeing your home page presses the back button and then again clicks on your ad; you are actually billed for two clicks.
My sites have been running on PPC (Google Adwords) from the past 3 years and my monthly budget is around $3,000 USD. In this span of 3 years I got a fraud credit once and that, too, of only $1 USD. I have been complaining to Google about my increased daily budget; but my complaints have landed on deaf years.
In my opinion, a check should be put on the search engines and it should be mandatory for search engines to give the breakdown of each click along with the IP and the referrer. Search engines deliberately do not give the breakdown of the clicks along with the IP's because this will affect their Income resulting from false clicks.
An advise for an advertiser is that the click frauds from content network are more as compared to the search network (Google) so he should never run his site on the content network and the actual percentage of click fraud is anywhere between 15 % to 35%, depending on your daily budget and position.
Posted by: Rishi Sachdeva
Thursday, June 28, 2007
"In my opinion, a check should be put on the search engines and it should be mandatory for search engines to give the breakdown of each click along with the IP and the referrer."
We merchants should put pressure on this issue. I have been using Adwords for 5 years, and wonder how many false clicks I have incurred over the years.
Posted by: James K
Thursday, June 28, 2007
I'm running PPC ads with Google, Yahoo, Enhance, Looksmart, and MIVA. These 5 PPC service providers are all the industry leaders and claim to have the least click frauds and best quality of clicks. However, the truth is, from my owned developed PPC ads tracking software that is highly tailored to my needs, the shocking news is i found out the click fraud rate can be as high as 90% of the total clicks. Sales conversion is there, but my money is draining at the same time.
How ido I define the click fraud from the PPC ads tracking result? Click fraud is:
1) Clicks that are coming from similar IP within 1 hour;
2) Clicks that do not come from real visitor, but robot, spider or even purposely developed automated program;
3) Single click that duplicates and being charged multiple times;
4) Clicks that are coming from similar IP country over a period of time (might be within 24 hours or ã week), and such visitor don't seem to stay more than 1 minute in your site.
5) Click from a (service provider partnered) site that:
- having bad ranking (ALEXA Ranking) but still sending huge traffic to your site;
- having more than 10,000 sites being hosted under same IP;
- normally running as a very small engine or PPC ads search engine.
If you are having the same PPC ads tracking programs like me, you be will shocked by your PPC click traffic. You will know actually you need to pay only 30%~70% of your actual advertising budget to get the current sales amount.
From my experience, some good tips to share with you here are:
1) For Google, do not advertise in Content Network;
2) Always make sure your ads are published evenly over time;
3) Don't bid for the first 5 top positions if your budget is limited;
4) Always check the URL where PPC clicks coming from;
5) Whether the PPC ads works or not, it will tell you the result within a month
Posted by: Kaven N
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Google has recently released new "Placement Performance" report - essentially allowing advertisers to examine every single URL that brings traffic through Content Network. I highly recommend looking through that report and excluding websites that are either a) have a high potential of being click fraud (ad sense only sites) b) generated zero conversions.
More information: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=52762
Additionally, it might be worth looking at databases such as http://www.adsblacklist.com/ to exclude unwanted traffic.
Good luck!
Posted by: Greg Laptevsky
Friday, June 29, 2007
Ecommerce Articles
- Browse All Articles
- Browse our complete archive of ecommerce articles.
- Accounting, Management & Legal
- Ecommerce articles related to managing a small business including ecommerce accounting, business strategy and legal considerations.
- Conversion & Usability
- Online business articles about converting web site visitors into customers and how to gauge and improve your business website's usability.
- Development & Programming
- Articles to help designers, developers and programmers create successful, search engine friendly ecommerce websites and improve existing ones.
- Hosting, Infrastructure & Software
- Articles for ecommerce businesses about ecommerce web hosting, business infrastructure, business strategy and helpful ecommerce & small business software.
- Interviews & Profiles
- Interviews with prominent ecommerce business personalities and profiles of successful online businesses.
- Inventory & Shipping
- Ecommerce articles about inventory management, ecommerce order fulfillment and product shipping considerations.
- Marketing & Revenue Growth
- Articles relating to online marketing, email marketing and using the Internet to growing your business.
- Search Engine Optimization
- Search engine optimization articles for ecommerce business owners, strategists, marketers and developers.
- Shopping Carts & Online Payments
- Articles covering ecommerce shopping cart platforms and options for choosing an online payment gateway.
- Training & Education
- Tutorials and articles providing training and education for ecommerce business owners and developers of ecommerce websites.
Search Articles
Ecommerce Community
- Ecommerce Blogs
- Read our blogs about ecommerce topics written by industry professionals.
- Community Forum
- Connect with other ecommerce professionals to trade advice and answers in our community forum.
- Podcasts
- Check out our ecommerce podcasts covering topics ranging from interviews to tutorials.
- RSS Content Feeds
- Subscribe to our RSS feeds and have fresh ecommerce content delivered to you.
Ecommerce Resources
- Free Email Newsletter
- Sign up for Ecommerce Notes, our free email newsletter for ecommerce business owners and developers.
- Ecommerce Directory
- Browse our directory of ecommerce products and services, or submit your own listing in our directory.
- Ecommerce Glossary
- Familiarize yourself with terminology or submit terms to help others with our Ecommerce Glossary.
- Events Calendar
- Find out about upcoming ecommerce events or invite other ecommerce professionals by posting your own event.
- Press Releases
- Browse ecommerce related press releases and post your own press release for distribution.
- Ecommerce Store & Back Issues
- Pick up back issues of Practical eCommerce magazine along with other merchandise from Practical Ecommerce
About Practical eCommerce
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Look at frequently asked questions regarded using our website, subscribing to our magazine and more.
- Advertising Information
- Information about advertising in Practical eCommerce magazine, on our website, or in our email newsletters.
- Editorial Sharing
- Learn about options for sharing our content with your visitors, customers or employees.
- About Us
- Learn more about Practical Ecommerce magazine and meet our staff.
- Contact Us
- Contact Practical Ecommerce at any time for more information. We'd love to hear from you.
Copyright 2007 Confluence Distribution, Inc. and Practical eCommerce.
All Rights Reserved.
HOW would I "detect it and prevent Click Fraud"?
Posted by: JAMAL
Thursday, June 28, 2007