According to Andy Jones, a member of the Best Practices Search Engine Forums, fraudulent clicks are just another aspect of the business. Any of us that use AdWords or any other PPC has to pay for a certain percentage of fraudulent clicks, he said in a forum discussion. I factor it in as a cost of doing business.
Can you believe that In other words, hes saying, I know the pay-per-click companies are stealing my money, but its okay, because Ive considered that fact ahead of time.
Unfortunately, that mentality is pervasive among pay-per-click advertisers. No wonder the pay-per-click companies arent making stopping pay-per-click fraud a top priority. Who can blame them If their advertisers dont care, why should they Heck, with all of the money the pay-per-click companies are making, its actually more cost effective to issue an occasional refund, than to develop technology to eliminate click fraud.
And if you read between the lines of the following statement, Google even admitted as much:
In a recent filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google acknowledged, We are exposed to the risk of fraudulent clicks on our ads. We have regularly paid refunds related to fraudulent clicks and expect to do so in the future. If we are unable to stop this fraudulent activity, these refunds may increase. If we find new evidence of past fraudulent clicks, we may have to issue refunds retroactively of amounts previously paid to our Google Network members.
That statement doesnt exactly instill any confidence, now does it
And if Overture is asked about click fraud, theyll just issue their standard company line:
Our Click Protection System is sophisticated software that evaluates each of our advertisers clicks. This software makes decisions as to the validity of any click. Our Click Protection System uses search and click data to make both rules-based inferences and pattern recognition-based inferences about which clicks are valid clicks. We have two patents pending related to this technology, so we cannot currently disclose too many details about the methods we use.
Do you honestly think newspaper, magazine, radio or tv advertisers would just sit back and let those media get away with blatantly stealing their money You know they wouldnt.
Then why do pay-per-click advertisers allow it I dont know the exact answer to that question, but I have my theories: First of all, youre talking about a whole different level of sophistication with pay-per-click advertisers, compared to media advertisers. Many pay-per-click advertisers dont even know how to access or even analyze their log files, so they have no idea how much money is actually being stolen from them.
In addition, some pay-per-click advertisers are making more money than theyve ever made before. And rather than upset the apple cart, theyd rather keep quiet and allow the vicious cycle of click fraud to continue, so that they can keep cashing those big checks.
I also suspect many advertisers are afraid that if they complain too loudly, they may be penalized in the search engines, in regard to their free listings.
If my theories are accurate, silence is one heck of a trade off, if you ask me. Why Because according to a report on MediaPost, an online study done by Clicklab revealed that fraudulent clicks can account for more than 50 percent of your total clicks.
So, if the goal of pay-per-click search engines is to bring lucrative, targeted traffic to your web site, what are the pay-per-click search engines doing about the click fraud epidemic, to prevent abuse that needlessly drive up your costs and reduce your ROI
Unfortunately, since so many pay-per-click advertisers are willing to play the role of lambs going to slaughter, the pay-per-click companies really dont have to do anything.
In the meantime, your ROI is going to continue to plummet, and the pay-per-click companies are going to continue to milk those cash cows (AKA) pay-per-click advertisers, for all theyre worth!
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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What was once such a good thing is now a rip-off and a sham!
Im talking about pay-per-click search engines, and how theyve become a really bad investment!
There are two reasons for the deterioration of pay-per-click search engines: high bid prices and out of control click fraud.
A few years back, you could get popular keywords at a halfway decent bid price. Nowadays, even moderately popular keywords are ridiculously high.
How high Well, let me give you an example, using the most popular pay-per-click search engine: Overture.
Lets take the popular keyword phrase, home business.
At the time this article was written, Overtures top bid for the keyword phrase home business was an exorbitantly high $2.28. Just to get on the first page, it would cost you $0.61, which would place you last at number forty.
Now lets just delve inside the numbers for a moment, shall we Im not going to even bother breaking down the number one bid price, because quite frankly, its obvious the top spot is reserved for and controlled by the high-rollers.
So, lets break down bid number forty. The bid price of $0.61 means that for every 100 visitors Overture sends to your website, its going to cost you $61.00. Now, heres where the numbers really get interesting.
According to the so-called experts, a decent conversion ratio is right around one percent. In other words, one out of every one hundred visitors to your website converts to a sale. I happen to know for a fact that most websites dont even come close to converting one percent. However, thats a subject for another day.
Using the very generous one percent conversion ratio, heres the problem. Unless youre selling a big-ticket item and making $100 or more per sale, its impossible to make any real money with pay-per-click search engines. You just cant do it!
For example, if youre selling a $20 e-book and youre paying $61 to get one hundred visitors to your website, with a one percent conversion ratio, that means your website is making a measly $20 for every one hundred visitors. That leaves you $41 in the hole. Even, if you were selling a $50 product, youd still be $11 in the negative.
And even if you cut the bid price in half and made it $0.30, theres still another problem. Its called click fraud and its a major problem among all of the pay-per-click search engines.
In a nutshell, click fraud is what occurs when someone fraudently clicks on your ad over and over again, without any intention of responding to your offer. Click fraud hurts advertisers by driving up the cost of each click because many online advertising programs adjust the price of each click based on the popularity of a particular keyword and the number of competing advertisers.
And depending on how popular your keyword is, it can take just a few minutes to register hundreds or even thousands of clicks. Click fraud can quickly deplete your pay-per-click account and leave you with nothing to show for your expentiture.
At the present time, the pay-per-click search engines seem to be powerless to stop click fraud. To their credit, Google even admitted as such.
In a recent filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google acknowledged, We are exposed to the risk of fraudulent clicks on our ads. We have regularly paid refunds related to fraudulent clicks and expect to do so in the future. If we are unable to stop this fraudulent activity, these refunds may increase. If we find new evidence of past fraudulent clicks, we may have to issue refunds retroactively of amounts previously paid to our Google Network members.
In conclusion, because of unreasonably high bid prices and rampant, out of control click fraud, I consider pay-per- click search engines a really bad investment, and recommend you stay away from them!
About The Author
Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions Comments Dean can be reached at mailto: .
Visit his website at: