Click Fraud Issue Growing- Emarketer Article Options

[Scottie]

Overview on the severity of clickfraud from Emarketer:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003856

(IMG:http://www.emarketer.com/images/chart_gifs/069001-070000/069581.gif)

Not surprising to see the huge numbers of publishers committing clickfraud... the system is just too easy and the huge numbers of crappy sites thrown up simply to place ads on them are growing as well.

It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to place some quality control on sites accepted for Google Adsense.

[Baronnn]

But next to site owners there can also be 'friends' or regular visitors who help a bit. Can't Google work out something like an IP-control?

[Betty]

If 50% of our google budget is taken up by fraud - that's VERY ALARMING!

What can be done? Is there anything I can do to track it? To stop it? To at least know if it's happening to me?

What are the signs I would look for?

[Martin C]

If 50% of our google budget is taken up by fraud - that's VERY ALARMING!

What can be done?  Is there anything I can do to track it? To stop it? To at least know if it's happening to me?

What are the signs I would look for?

One of many problems is the likelihood that fraudsters are taking a dollar off everyone, so you may be down $1,000 but it went to 1,000 fraudsters. The onus on you is to them quibble with the SE that a $ here and there was fraudulent.

A good way of detecting fraud in my view is to look for anomaly's in the stats, the problem is getting a clean base line so that you can compare. If you notice the clicks have gone sky high and the conversions remain the same it is a good indication that something is wrong.

If you can detect a load of clicks and prove that they visited the site for only a split second you should be able to get the SE to refund the clicks, (I'm not sure if they will or they won't) the problem is getting the proof.

One thing for sure is that the SE are not going to look for you, they will do the easy ones, i.e. multiple clicks from same IP, and just hope you think that that is enough and you don't mind too much being ripped off for the rest.

Adsense is just fraudsters heaven.

[Scottie]

My point is less about the occasional friends-and-family clicks on a legitimate website (although that's bad too) and more about all the mock-directories and scraped content sites that shouldn't be allowed to run contextual ads in the first place because no advertiser would knowingly advertise on those sites.

With an editorial review before acceptance, those sites would not be approved. Yet, Google only looks at one site from a publisher and then allows them to place the code anyplace they want.

[jwhitakr]

My point is less about the occasional friends-and-family clicks on a legitimate website (although that's bad too) and more about all the mock-directories and scraped content sites that shouldn't be allowed to run contextual ads in the first place because no advertiser would knowingly advertise on those sites.

I agree that clickfraud is a very big issue and that there is no easy solution.

However, if you are specifically concerned about where your ads are being displayed, you can also run a site-targeted campaign and specifically choose the sites you want your ads to run on.

[Ben's_hog]

Yes, this is spreading fast, big article in yesterday's SF chronicle. It just so happens that a 3rd party company had been contacting my CEO about getting us a refund from google.

I guess the previous director had participated in this companies beta program, they are claiming they found fraud. Now this company wants to take 50% of any money recouped from google.

I have read elsewhere that search engines are very good with refunding in full any occurences of fraud. Has anyone had any experience?


thanks guys, I'm a noob to both this forum and internet marketing. (3rd week in the field) So, any help would be greatly appreciated.

[jake55]

I was recently talking to a prospect who was concerned that there were a ton of clicks coming from VA. He believed this was click fraud. However since AOL bought that data center in VA (many moons ago from IBM I think), it could simply be AOL users, so if you cannot get a true ip, it is indeed very hard to track.

[Jill]

Welcome Ben's_hog! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/bye1.gif)

[Scottie]

Yes, all the AOL users will appear to be in Virginia when tracked by IP address. So that's not an indication of clickfraud in and of itself.

And I agree that advertisers should check and see where their clicks are coming from and block those coming from junk sites, but that still doesn't let Google off the hook for approving them in the first place, IMO.

Welcome, Ben's_hog! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/hi.gif)

[Martin C]

I have read elsewhere that search engines are very good with refunding in full any occurences of fraud.  Has anyone had any experience?

My experience from Google is that they do refund in full but the onus is on you to bring it to their attention and then they will take their time to investigate and only give exactly what is queried (i.e. no more to show good faith).

They will tell you that they prevent the majority of fraud before it hits the account, believe that and you will believe anything.

I'm not sure what the definition of 'Click Fraud' is, I think it is a made up term that has very little legislation backing it up; if I spent the whole day just clicking on Adwords and Adsense adverts, with no intention to properly visit the advertising website and with nothing to gain personally, am I committing 'click fraud'? Certainly I would be costing the advertisers money but I doubt I could be prosecuted. As far as I can see successful click fraud prosecutions are really just successful fraud cases, it gives an impression that 'click fraud' is a crime in its own right, I'm not sure that it is.

Adsense abuses can be penalised with Google closing the account, but they are not prosecuted. Do Google ever return any of the money that the closed account has cost the advertisers, I would like to hear from anyone who has received such a payment. After all Google will have all the information to hand but my guess is they will feel that it is enough that they put a stop to it, after taking their cut.

[BobetteKyle]

 
If 50% of our google budget is taken up by fraud - that's VERY ALARMING!

I agree that click fraud is definitely a concern - WAAAYYYY too prevalent - and an ongoing battle.

BUT, read the article and you'll see that isn't what the chart means. The survey did not say more than 50% of the budget is fraudulent. The survey is not anything about dollar volume, it is about how many of the survey participants said they were victims of click fraud and what kind of fraud they said they were victims of.

(It also isn't saying anything about the % of all publishers that participate in click fraud.)

In words:

- Of the 122 advertisers participating in the survey, 51 said they have been victims of click fraud.
- Of the 282 agencies participating in the survey, 145 said they have been victims of click fraud.

Note that this could mean they think it happened once (and lost a few cents), or it could mean they think it happened tons of times (and lost a lot of dollars)...you can't tell anything about total $ volumes or total $ percents from what's reported from the survey.

The chart Scottie posted is telling only about the 51 advertisers and 145 agencies that said they were click fraud victims, nothing about click fraud overall and nothing about publishers as a whole.

- Of the 51 advertisers that said they were victims of click fraud, 78% (about 40 of them) said it came from publishers or networks.
- Of the 145 agencies that said they were victims of click fraud, 59% (about 86 of them) said it came from publishers or networks.

[Ben's_hog]

well we're going to present our fraud claim to google. I will post an update on the outcome.

Unfortunately, I think this is going to lead to a slew of companies offering "fraud tracking" until google can police themselves to a level that people trust. Another way for people to find themselves locked into a useless contract.

[themac101]

I have read the posts above with interest. We are a small financail services company and have suffered our share of click fraud over the past few years. One month we ended up losing 10k (Overture) - lots of clicks and no conversions. It did take a while - but eventually our money was refunded - however it was very difficult to prove as we are in an expensive category. The money we lost severley disrupted cashflow and we nearly went out of business as a result.

It got me thinking though - over time click fraud should not really matter. If the total amount of bogus clicks go up - shouldn't the price of keywords go down? If people get less conversion they will just pay less. The total amount of clicks overall may go up - but
at the end of the day advertisers wil only pay what its worth to be listed.

In my opinion click fraud will never be an overall problem for the search engines but problems will always occur for small advertisers who can get their accounts emptied quickly (especially in high bid areas). There needs to be more done to help the little guy - analytics from google is a great start and it will be interesting to see what they add to it once it comes out of beta. At the end of the day, the more information we have about where our traffic is coming from the better.

[DJKay]

Yes, click fraud is a problem. I have had my share of struggles with Overture as well, but was able to jump on it fast enough & was able to get a refund. Have had troubles with clickfraud with some vertical sem providers as well, but again, I have been lucky because each time I have been able to pick up on it. Would not wish this stuff on anyone, its not fun. Saw the article in e-Marketer, but thought the data was suspicious and may be portraying some false conclusions.

Two thoughts:

1) There is a type of click fraud that entails a virus getting on your pc where results from searches, say on Google are spammed, so the results are not true google results and clicks are actually strained away. In my opinion, this type has the potential for hurting the engines more directly than the other types. And I can say from experience, these types of viruses are difficult to catch and wipe of your pc (was down for two weeks once). And the average search engine user probably would have a hard time detecting spammed results initially.

2) I don't come from the coding side of the house, and learned how to look at log files later on in my seo/sem career. I am still not great at it. But one thing I have picked up from the forum (thanks Jill) and understand is; the value of using different types of analytics and monitoring packages simultaneously. By looking at variances in results in a given period between the various analytics and monitoring apps I use, I have been able to spot trouble when its happening (hope it continues this way, knock on wood) and get on it.

Thanks for an interesting thread. Have to fly,

Best Regards,

DJKay