Pay Per Click Fraud

[danielmichel]

Pay per click is probably the best and most efficient way for webmasters to advertise for their websites. It is a fast growing new way for search engines and webmasters alike to get what they want from each other. Pay per click, like anything else too big to be ignored has its ups and downs. With popularity you can expect to get two even hands of the good and the bad. The web is a highly competitive place and in any competition you are going to have your cheaters.

Pay per click is the best and most efficient way of advertising for a number of reasons. Webmasters can expect the right kind of traffic to their website because they can expect visitor that really want to be there. Pay per click gets you the right kind of advertising instead of paying a monthly or yearly amount of dollars to get you banner somewhere and get the browsers that might see your banner and overlook it. With pay per click a webmaster bids on how much he or she is going to pay to get his or her website top listing on that individual's favorite search engine. If you paid $3.00 a click for a certain keyword and your competitors paid $2.00 your website would be listed before theirs. That, in a nutshell is how pay per click works.

Anyone who runs a business is going to try and find out what the best way to get ahead and sometimes those who fight the good fight don?t always win. So we have to cheat a little to get there. More and more webmaster now are comiting what is called pay per click fraud and the worst part of it is its now being looked at as a business expense. Rival websites are paying for pay per click fraud software that leaves competitors with empty pockets at the end of the day. Imagine having paid $3.00 a click for the right kind of traffic to your website and getting just the opposite.

When a visitor clicks on your URL because they have searched using a certain keyword and visit that website based on their search results they are just browsing "when an individual does it for the sole purpose of costing you money or financial harm" they are committing pay per click fraud. Imagine someone using software to do something like this. That would just cost you a fortune.

Google, being one of the most popular search engines out there is getting slammed with allegations. "Google listed click fraud as one of the potential "worries" that would-be investors should consider. In fact, they admitted to regularly paying refunds because of click fraud and stated that they may have to make retroactive payments. " Webpro News

[Jason]

I think pay-per-clicks are one of the worst ways to go about advertising... They're too easy to cheat and you pay extra.... Banner exchanges are one of the best ways in my opinion besides word of mouth of course....

[ninikins]

If you look at any pay to click program most of them seem too good to be true and like my grandmother used to say, if something seems to goog to be true, it probably is.

[CyCL3]

Originally Posted by ninikins

If you look at any pay to click program most of them seem too good to be true and like my grandmother used to say, if something seems to goog to be true, it probably is.

That's exactly right.

[chameleon]

Interestingly, I just wrote an entire series on pay per click fraud, the methods used and the possible defenses against it. Here's a few things to know:

1. Google and Overture, the two bigget PPC vendors, routinely screen ad clickthroughs before billing advertisers and don't bill for suspected fraudulent clicks.

2. Both companies will pay refund requests when the requests are backed up with evidence that indicates fraudulent clicks.

3. Most advertisers don't audit their own logs to check for possible fraud. They just pay the bill.

4, PPC advertising combined with context sensitive ad placement on sites like this DOES deliver targeted traffic to your website far more efficiently than most banner and link exchange programs. The only thing more effective is building your own affiliate advertisers program/network.

5. There are several companies working on click fraud prevention solutions that use community forums and reporting the way that the virus prevention companies do. One of them will be setting up their click fraud detection software as free open source software to make it available to everyone that pays for ppc ads.

[Danielle]

I wouldn't depend on income from pay-per-click advertising, that's for sure. I don't think that the majority of businesses would profit from this. Anyone have success with this?

[chameleon]

When you consider that Google Adsense and Yahoo's Overture are two of the biggest PPC engines around, the answer is 'a lot of people'. PPC advertising is a multi-billion dollar business - heck, they put the amoun paid out in fraudulent clicks in the $1+ billion range.

[Klaas Koopman]

It's not hard to check for fraudulent clicks is it? I mean google has banned alot of people because of this, so they probably have a great way of finding out, right?

[chameleon]

Google prescreens clicks - that is, they have a coded way of verifying click-thrus depending on a bunch of parameters - which they won't share with anyone. A lot of folks that advertise via ppc with google say that Google routinely bills them for only a percentage of the clicks that they get - i.e.- Google doesn't bill for charges that they think are fraudulent. But there are a lot that slip through. About a year ago, there were a bunch of reports about companies in India that were hiring housewives and students to randomly click on ads placed on their websites - that had been designed specifically to run google adsense ads - all day long.

[Cota]

I think everyone has tried that game....but, damn India!