Pay per click search engine advertising is one of themost popular ways to promote a website. With Overtureand Google leading the pack, the industry as a wholehas grown immensely in the past few years. Accordingto a report by PriceWaterHouseCoopers, they estimatethat Internet Advertising brought in more than $9 billion in 2004 alone.
With PPC advertising you choose keywords/phrases,then bid how much youd like to pay for each click.When a searcher goes to a search engine and typesin one of your keyphrases, your short text ad appears,and if they click on it your account is then charged.In a perfect world this is the way it would work, but thanks to unscrupulous people, theres a dirtylittle secret known as click fraud.
Click fraud is simply the act of clicking on adsfor the direct purpose of costing the advertisermoney. Its similar to paying out cash for falseleads. According to InternetWeek.com, 60% of thosewho responded to a survey conducted by the SearchEngine Professional Organization had stated thatfraud is a problem when it comes to PPC advertising.
So where does click fraud come from Well, there are actually a few different sources:
1) AdSense Users: Google Adsense has a programcalled Adsense that pays website owners torun their Adwords ads and compensates them perclick. Google does monitor this and its againsttheir terms of service to click on any of the ads on your own site. If they find a publishers doing this, they will lose their accounts, butsome may still be clicking under the radar.
2) Your Competitors: Your competitors could beclicking on your ads over a period of severaldays in order to deplete your ad budget.
3) Software: There are those who use automatedclicking tools, such as robot programs, toclick on PPC listings.
In some Asian countries, people are often paid to click on PPC ads for hours. Many dont know why they do it, and dont care, only that theyll be well rewarded for their efforts. If you do a searchon any search engine youll see plenty of sites looking to hire people for just this purpose. Formore on this see...http://tinyurl.com/2ka5g
Most PPC networks have measures in place to protectyou against click fraud. Overture tracks more than50 data points, including IP addresses, browser info,users session info and what they call patternrecognition. They have a proprietary system inplace for detecting fraud and a specialized teamthat monitors things and works with the advertisersto stop it.
Google offers suggestions to avoid click thru fraud,such as using negative keywords to keep your adsfrom showing up for products and services that areunrelated. They also suggest adding tracking urlsto your links so you can track the traffic comingfrom Google. An easy way to do this is to add a to your links along with the identifier. For example,a tracking link to identify Google would look likethis:
http://www.yourdomain.com/referer-google
If you go through your log files, youll be able tosee your Google traffic at a glance.
If you suspect fraud, Google asks that you contact them right away, as they have a team of researchersthat will investigate. They also take action to blockfuture impressions from anyone they identify ascommitting click fraud. Like Overture, they also haveproprietary technology that distinguishes betweennormal clicks and invalid ones. Google never billsyou for any bad clicks that are caught by theirsystem.
So whats an honest website owner to do You needto be alert to any suspicious activity by researching your server logs or stats. If youreexperiencing a lot of clicks and no sales youllalso want to take a closer look. You need to watchfor any spikes in traffic, usually on one keywordor phrase and coming from only one PPC source. Youneed to measure and track all of your PPC accountsclosely.
If this sounds like too much work, you may want tolook at an outside service to take care of it foryou. A variety of new services have opened recentlyto help combat the click fraud problem.
1) Keyword Max: http://www.KeyWordMax.com
Offers up a service called Click Auditor, whichmonitors the activity on your PPC accounts andalerts you to any suspicious activity. You canrequest a free demo at the site.
2) Click Detective: http://ClickDetective.net
A website monitoring service that uses sophisticatedtracking mechanisms to determine whether visitorbehavior is normal or not. Offering a 15 day freetrial. Easy to use, you just copy and paste a snippetof code on your page and add a campaign ID by logginginto your account.
3) Click Assurance: http://ClickAssurance.com
An Internet Security Firm that specializes in clickfraud. They will audit your PPC accounts and go after any refunds you are due because of fraud.
4) Whos Clicking Who: http://WhosClickingWho.com
An independent auditing service that tracks individualusers for fraud. Can also detect abuse coming fromproxy servers. A one month subscription is $79.00, which includes free installation and up to50,000 transactions per month.
5) ClickLab: http://ClickLab.com/products/click-fraud
This service isolates bad clicks with a scorecardbased detection system. Pricing starts at $50.00per month and is based on the number of sites youneed to track and their page views.
ClickLab also has a nice white paper you shoulddownload while visiting: How to Defend Your WebsiteAgainst Click Fraud.
Click fraud isnt going away anytime soon. If anything, it will probably get worse before it gets any better. Its up to you as a vigilantwebsite owner to do what you can to keep yourPPC advertising costs down. You cant stop it,but with the right tracking in place, it can bemanaged and controlled, and hopefully kept to aminimum.
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A dollar and a dream, is all you need said the television commercial. The lure of the Lottery is a seductive one: plunk down a dollar and you might become a millionaire for life. The promise of pennies from heaven makes the Lottery a daily habit for millions. People flock to convenience stores every morning to buy a newspaper, a cup of coffee, and a lottery ticket.
I see that same kind of passion and unrealistic dreaming among Google AdWords advertisers. Why Because they heard they can strike it rich with Google Adwords. It doesnt help matters any that Google makes it ridiculously easy to get started with their pay-per-click program. All you need is five dollars and a dream!
Google doesnt advertise that message of course. However, for most advertisers, its still a huge gamble nonetheless. Do advertisers make money with Google AdWords Some do, yes. However, the vast majority of advertisers might as well blow their money on lottery tickets.
Is Google AdWords to blame for so many advertisers losing their money That depends on your point of view. Are lotteries responsible for people gambling and losing their money
In my opinion, the answer to both questions is yes and no. Lotteries would never admit this, but their whole purpose for being is to entice people to gamble. I mean, cmon. Thats why they exist. If people didnt gamble, there would be no lotteries.
Yes, lotteries hide behind legislation and the pretense that the money they generate goes toward education and other laudable endeavors, and for the most part thats true.
However, its also true that there are people barely living above poverty level, spending money they cant afford on lottery tickets. They get sucked in, because like the television commercial said, its only a dollar. However, those dollars tend to add up pretty quickly, when youre spending ten or twenty dollars a pop on lottery tickets.
Its the same with Google AdWords. People who wouldnt ordinarily advertise get sucked in, because its only five dollars to get started. But when Google charges $500 to their credit cards every couple of weeks, and they havent made any money, the harsh reality of the situation sets in. Its not nearly as easy as they thought or heard it would be.
Of course, its easy to blame Google AdWords. However, most of the blame has to fall on the shoulders of the advertisers. The majority of Google AdWords advertisers, simply dont have a clue about what theyre doing. They read some e-book about how to make money with Google AdWords, and instantly think theyre ready to conquer the world.
Its just not that easy, people. You still have to have some fundamental knowledge of advertising, in order to succeed with Google AdWords or any type of advertising for that matter. You have to educate yourself first.
And the best way to educate yourself is by reading real advertising books like Scientific Advertising, by Claude Hopkins and How To Write A Good Advertisement, by Victor Schwab and Advertising Secrets Of The Written Word, by Joseph Sugarman.
Educate yourself first, and then lay down your money. Thats how it works. To do otherwise, youd be better off playing the lottery!
About The Author
Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions Comments Dean can be reached at mailto: .
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