Pay Per Click Fraud - Paid Search Engine Marketing
PPC Click ManipulationCosts Companies Thousands
WebMasterWorld Post:Walked in this morning, had 6000 clicks before 12:30 eastern on a term that received 61 clicks yesterday.
I wanted to run down with everyone the steps we took to identify it, in case some people are curious as to how you catch it.
Steps for investigation that we took:
1. Observed a much higher than normal traffic volume (we're talking orders of magnitude higher)
2. Looked at my AdWords account, figured out these clicks were content and not search clicks.
3. Traced it to a specific keyword via our tracking system, then dumped all session information originating from that word and the AdWords source (we use a SQL based landing page system, so it's an easy 5 second query)
4. Compared offending IPs with known open proxies. No match, and the most clicks by a single IP was 7. So there was really no patterns within the IPs that were clicking.
5. Sorted by referrer in Excel, noticed that most clicks were originating from three main AdSense pages
6. Noticed that those AdSense pages had nothing on them but ads for this particular word. I assume they're getting the ads targetted to what they want via mediabot cloaking.
7. Phoned Google, talked to a helpful girl named Kate, who agreed that the clicks looked odd. She offered to pass the offending sites onto the AdSense team, and sent me a form to fill out for information.
Time to resolution: Approximately 15 minutes
The moral of this story is that you need to be measuring everything having to do with your AdWords account, especially considering Google does not break out content clicks within your account. It is quite easy to detect simple clickfraud on a large advertising campaign by tracking and observation. You don't need expensive products.
Companies that are addressing pay-per-click fraud and have used the techniques above to reduce PPC expenditures: www.i5design.com, www.gameinstinct.com, www.pharmadirections.com, www.lucasandassociates.com, www.sentrysafetysupply.com, www.paragonbankmortgage.com.
Breaking News: Phone calls from 2 high level google editors confirm that a french court has found google guilty of trademark infringements relating to the google adwords ppc system being used in France. More details on this story will be posted as soon as we have legal clearance from our attorneys.
For more information about PPC fraud and a leading ppc fraud law firm click here:
http://www.peakpositions.com/
Carol Jacobsen
Database Optimization Administrator
Peak Positions, LLC
SEO Blog. Organic SEO Blog. Search Marketing News. SEO Done Right examines search engine optimization, the most effective form of internet marketing. Breaking SEO news and emerging developments at Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Leading Organic SEO Consultants Peak Positions debunk the many myths, hype, and spin related to SEO and search marketing.
