Competitors | Web Traffic Fraud.com

February 13th, 2010

Web traffic fraud or click fraud as they are commonly known occurs in several different ways. In this article, we will look at two ways in which click fraud is most commonly perpetuated. Here they are:

1. Budget Attacks: Search engines often offer an option for advertisers to cap their ad spends by setting a daily budget or highest dollar limit for the various pay per click ad campaigns that they may be running. After the daily budget is reached, the ad is removed from the search engine pages and thus won’t be available for potential customers. This is a very useful feature for advertisers as they can now control what they spend for advertising. However it also enables a competitor to click multiple times on the ad till the upper limit is reached. If competitors click daily on your ads, at different time intervals, this type of activity is almost virtually undetectable.

It is a very common form of attack, but there is no data about how large the problem is. The chances of a budget attack is less because of two factors:

a.) Most fraudsters who are your competitors are novices at click fraud and do not cover their tracks very well so it is easily detectable and hence only someone who really wants to destroy you enough to risk being caught would engage in it.

b.) It does not bring direct revenue to the competitor, except that he can get the indirect benefit of driving you out of business.

2. Click Farming Attacks: These are more prevalent than budget attacks as there is a huge potential of earnings for third party click fraudsters and it is also easier to conduct since all you need is a click farming website. Even if you do not have a strong competitor trying hard to put you out of business, you can be subject to this kind of web traffic fraud. This occurs when websites which run the ad try to generate maximum revenue by clicking on the ads in their website. They can even engage third parties to do this (incentive click traffic). This is really hazardous for the advertiser as he loses money for the clicks received on his ads without this translating into additional sales and revenue.

Click fraud is quite common in today’s online world and if you are a small business owner, then you need to be aware of it in spite of what the big search engines say -trying to minimize web traffic click fraud. Be aggressive and proactive in protecting your ad campaigns from being attacked by those who make small fortunes due to their click fraud efforts.

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Web Traffic Fraud: Who Commits It?

February 3rd, 2010

As pay per click prices steadily increase so will click fraud scams surrounding it. Web Traffic fraud or click fraud happens mostly in PPC advertising where a person or a computer program (bot) repeatedly clicks on an ad, without the intention of visiting the target link. The aim of web traffic fraud is to generate a pay per click revenue that does not give the advertiser an opportunity to earn a sale.

Any person who promotes a PPC ad can indulge in this behavior to artificially boost his revenue split. However since that is punishable by law in many jurisdictions often third parties are used to boost the clicks.
For example, if a blogger runs a PPC campaign such as Google adwords in his site, he may ask his friends and family to click on the ads so that he can earn more revenue. This may be done with a good intention, however if the blogger is accused of a web traffic fraud, then the plan might actually be counter-productive and cause his affiliate account to be suspended and all funds earned withheld until final reconciliation with advertisers.

There are also fraudsters who commit web traffic fraud (click fraud) with a malicious intent. These can include competitors of the companies who own the websites running PPC ads. If they are both operating in a highly competitive market, then the competitor may want to deplete the advertiser’s online campaign budget by making him pay an exorbitant amounts of money for traffic that does not generate any revenue.

Another type of rampant fraud found on PPC engines are competitors of people who host PPC ads on their sites (i.e. adwords content network) . When a competitor clicks on these ads, it may seem as if the publisher/webmaster is doing this to artificially boost is revenue. This may lead to a cancellation of the contract with that publisher/webmasters site. If an online content publisher uses PPC ad revenue as his main income stream then this kind of attack could be devastating and put the site out of business.

Then there are competitors that simply click other advertisers ads depleting their advertising budget in a effort to make them drop the ad from the rankings so that their ad will dominate. These people do not look for the financial reward but rather the satisfaction that comes from having attacked an ‘enemy’. These attacks are the worst to fight against since its very difficult to detect methodical clicks slowly say after day. You must always be careful about these fraudsters, whether you are a publisher or an advertiser. There are many ways to catch them. Bookmark this site to find out in future articles regarding click fraud.

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