10 points to combat fraud Seen

Pay-Per click fraud dates back to when he was still Goto.com Overture. Only, it was not as severe as the recent pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is becoming very popular for getting highly targeted traffic as well as making an affiliate-based commission.

So what is pay per click fraud?

In an ideal world, you and I will pay a fee for a site that offers a PPC program and is home to our listings every time the ads are clicked by a visitor. The visitor then examines our site and eventually makes a purchase. We make money.

In click-fraud-world as it is today, those shots that you and I have to pay from potential customers. But scam artists, automated scripts hitbots known as "competitors", subtle, and even affiliates who just click on our ads, in order to earn a commission offered by the providers of PPC. We lose money.

Fraudulent clicks or "click spam" can be defined as any type of trigger that occurs with zero chance of a conversion to occur, or visit a website is not originated from a legitimate user. Click fraud happens on a regular basis - even more than we can imagine.

India Times published a shocking article about a mother who goes to work every night while holding a baby in her lap. She is to click on PPC ads. She does not care about ads, but diligently keeps count - is $ 0.18 to $ 0.25 per click.

"The trend is catching on in India," - says Goutam Rakshit, chairman, Advertising Council of India - "It 's a numbers game with regard to media buying is concerned, anyone who can manipulate numbers gets the edge This is unethical, and .. should be curbed. "

John Squire, vice president for product marketing for Coremetrics, estimated that his company's customers are spending about $ 10 million a year to fraudulent clicks. We are spending about $ 10 million consumers who do not exist.

How much are you paying for customers that do not exist?

If you think that the funds are running out of the PPC campaign because of a fraudulent click activity, affiliate generated fraudulent activity, or if you are merely suspected of trafficking that occurs without any increase in sales - then perhaps you need to start getting tougher with the PPC analysis.

You can always request a refund from the provider to publish PPC campaign if you click on suspicion of fraudulent activity. But, you will not get a refund if you do not have hard core facts to prove it.

And now, here are the facts.

1 a. In a less technical note, define a unique URL for the sales page that will pass through the PPC program. Cloning your sales page and save it under a different URL.

If the page is selling vitamins for example, and say that the URL is hotvitamins.com, save it as hotvitamins.com / power. Alternatively, create a sub-domain, for example power.hotvitamins.com.

So, use this page "cloned" sales for your PPC campaign. In this way, the traffic just to reach this page from the site of PPC. Just do not link this new URL to any other site. Want a 100% pure PPC traffic so you can keep an eye on it.

1b. For additional technical staff, you can assign a unique session ID to each URL in PPC campaigns. I'm seeing both techniques in use.

2. Use a simple log analyzer program to begin to study the data on the clicks received, including date, time, referrer, visited pages, URL, IP, etc. Your webhost should already provide a log analyzer program or a "Tool Statistics of the site. "

Otherwise, maybe it's time to change your hosting, or you must install the software on your own log analyzer.

What do you want to do at this stage is to find something suspicious. Following that completes the "Site Statistics Tool" is, at the end of the day you want to be able to capture the IP address of each click.

Then, look at the amount of clicks from each IP address, click and choose timing behavior. Perform a "reverse lookup IP address" to see who is making those clicks.

Basically, you want to be able to collect as many details as possible for each click. Whether you depends on your hosting is the tool that provides, or install software themselves, or outsource, make sure you have the ability to capture the IP address.

If the IP address has not been captured, or cookies have not been generated, which is an indication of clicks are generated by automated scripts known as "hitbots".

3. Begin tracking the conversion ratio. You can choose to track conversions on your system is using conversion tracking, tool, or using a third-party conversion tracking. There are a lot of conversion solutions at low cost monitoring.

In some cases, the services they offer to track clicks will have a sales conversion option available to you. It is a service that you absolutely want to get if you do not want to face alone.

But, if the ratio of sales is very low or even zero, the odds are very high that you're being bullied by someone. It could also be the product of low demand or high competition, but if you're getting high amount of traffic from your PPC campaign and lower sales to zero, the odds are very high that you could be the victim of a click-fraud.

So, what to do if you suspect that you're receiving fraudulent clicks on your PPC campaign?

4. Be thorough - very thorough. Make sure you have data that points to the questionable traffic. We must have proof of suspicious clicks. Make sure you have a legitimate case, although you should recheck your records. The PPC provider will ask for the facts and not opinions.

5. Carefully documenting your analysis of traffic during your PPC campaign. Document everything about the campaign - the handwritten notes, e-mail exchanges, scribbles, reports, screens, etc.

6. Be sure to record every one of the click, either from your server logs or third-party processor that can be contractors for this purpose.

7. Document all relevant competitor positioning. Since Google changed its policy on paid search ads, there have been various reports on competitors of the same product by manipulating the new Google system.

They are people with more technical knowledge to manipulate the system for their own good, while the countryside killing people without any technical knowledge. They are breaking the rules of Google, but they know when to pause their campaign (consciously) and when you wake up again.

8. On another note, please call to see if competitors are experiencing click fraud. Your PPC campaign may not be the only one having these false clicks. Two cases of victims presented to the PPC provider will make a stronger case.

9. When we feel very confident of having a strong and clear that you were a victim of click fraud, contact your PPC account and submit your information with a request for reimbursement. Their investigations can, and we take time.

10. In the meantime, continue to monitor your activity click and record any additional data.

It 'a shame that we have to be so involved to protect ourselves. We pay for advertising so that we can free our time and let someone else do it. But with the severity of the PPC "click spam" today ........ you snooze - you lose.

If the PPC providers do not solve this problem, perhaps there are other ways to bring highly targeted traffic with less stress ....