Did You Know?
PPC Click fraud occurs when ads are clicked on illegitimately by a person or by software with no intention of purchasing anything from the advertiser.
What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) Click Fraud?
Search engines offer advertising programs in which advertisers' text ads appear beside search results on the page when a searcher initiates a search query. These text advertisements are called "Pay-Per-Click" ads, because advertisers are charged only when visitors click these ads. M ost people define "Click Fraud" as any click generated, and paid for, where the intent is to drain the advertiser's budget.
There are numerous methods of click fraud. Some of these methods are difficult to detect and are running rampant throughout the Internet. Sadly, many PPC advertisers do not have the capacity to detect Click Fraud in their PPC advertising campaigns and are not even aware that there are parasites out there sucking a significant part of the daily PPC budget each day.
The biggest threat to the continued growth of Search Advertising is the increasing plague of click fraud. Advertisers know some clicks are more qualified than others, and not every visitor from their PPC campaigns will convert to a customer. But, they have a right to expect that the traffic they are paying for is coming from people at least marginally interested in their products or services.
Red Flags to Determine Click Fraud
- Repeat visitors from the same IP address.
- Slow down in your conversion rates.
- Under performing PPC campaigns.
- Clicks from outside of USA .
- Clicks At Unusual Hours
- Clicks through Proxy Servers
- Clicks through Anonymous Proxy Servers
- M ultiple clicks from the same IP address at a very similar time.
- Page Depth - How far did the suspicious visitor go on your site?
- Several one-page views per visit from the same domain or IP.
- Google AdSense Players abusing the program with Parked Domain Name servers.
- Affiliate partner sites running programs that generate automated clicks from robots and scripts.
- Sophisticated robots can generate multiple page views from an automated fraudulent session.
- Time spent on the site. An automated robot can generate many visits and lots of page views, but do so in an inhumanly short period of time. By knowing how long a typical visitor spends on your site you will be able to identify suspicious click activity.
- Evaluate what percentage of your site visitors accepts cookies (typically more than95%). Repeat visits though a sponsored link from the same visitor who does not accept cookies may be a robot that is attempting to deplete your ad budgets.
- Affiliate partners create a one-pixel frame that is invisible to the end user. They then pop click to the hidden frame while the user, completely unaware that this is happening, surfs their site.
If a fraudulent IP address is found, it can be blocked, but even that isn't foolproof. Simply blocking an IP may not stop the parasite. Because of proxy servers, many users may have the same IP address. For example, you may have many clicks a day come from one IP address that is really different users using AOL to connect to the Internet. Since these are technically different users, you cannot just block the AOL IP addresses.
Simulated Clicks
- One of the most difficult types of click fraud is a simulated click. These types of simulated clicks make them impossible to detect using web log analysis.
- Using a popunder and a real-time keyword list, an affiliate spawns a popup window containing the resulting advertiser's website. The user simply sees that a window has opened, not realizing they "technically" clicked a PPC ad.
- Affiliates can use an "invisible" i-frame positioned under the mouse pointer via JavaScript. When a user attempts to click any link on the page, the i-frame receives the click, launching a popunder containing the advertiser's site.
- There are programs that affiliates purchase that use open proxy servers from across the country that generate fake clicks. These programs are advanced enough to fake everything from legitimate IP addresses, specific click through rates, user agents, and even time and day traffic patterns. These clicks are generating what would appear to be "real" clicks from "real" users with no identifiable traffic patterns. These are virtually impossible to detect when analyzing log files.
Documenting Clicks to Get a Refund
Always keep accurate records when determining Click Fraud. You will need clear documentation to get a refund or to become a member in one of the Click Fraud Class Action lawsuits. Search Engines are in a unique position when it comes to Click Fraud. On the one hand they benefit from it. Google & Yahoo and these other PPC engines profits from the manipulation of its pay-per-click advertising service by others, and haven't done enough to end the practice.
We believe that the major search engines are seeking to conceal this problem and have not done enough to make their bills transparent and collect only for bona fide advertising. Clearly, the search engines have an economic disincentive to eliminating click fraud as it increases the revenue they collect.
Unfortunately, these online advertisers aren't always getting what they are paying for. Through our investigation and in depth analysis of web server logs, we have identified that in many cases advertisers are being billed for clicks which are not made or generated by bona fide consumers. |
