Web Traffic Fraud.com

You would be fooling yourselves, if you believe that your ad is immune to web traffic click fraud. If you have been lucky enough not to have been a victim yet, you can be almost be sure that sooner or later you will get hit by fraudulent clicks that range from invalid to incentivized clicks. Though you cannot completely overcome click frauds, you can reduce the impact of web traffic fraud within your online advertising campaigns. In this article we will look at some of the things that can be done to decrease your exposure to click fraud.

Disable Content Syndication: One of the easiest and most effective manner in which you can minimize the vulnerability to web traffic fraud is to disable your ads within the content syndication network. All search engine advertisers such as Google and Yahoo have this feature and you should disable it.

On the other hand we believe that the content networks can generate good traffic volume that does convert well but if you are a novice to these types of networks it’s like playing Russian roulette with your ad budget. On the other hand, some websites receive a lot of prospective customers from ads in the content network and by disabling this; you are potentially filtering out these legit customers as well. So you can be aggressive in stopping “click-farming” but at the same time are you “throwing the baby out with the bathwater?”

PPC Audits: Today there are several third parties who offer click fraud detection and click fraud auditing services. The advantage of engaging their services is that they would be able to log statistical evidence needed to prove click fraud from your web server logs by micro analysis. Once you get their reports, you can then submit it to the search companies and request for a refund for clicks that were not genuine. Keep in mind that this is a tedious process and most search engines are reluctant to give cash refunds. Instead they would at best grant you additional ad exposure as a refund. Also remember that in this case the search engine appears to be the final decision maker (judge and jury) and they can simply refuse to accept your claims by sticking to their guns and claiming that they were genuine clicks. Your only recourse at this point is a lawsuit and what small online business has the budget for a tedious expensive lawsuit?

Site Blocking: This is the last option that you as a business owner may have. This enables you to blacklist certain sites so that your ad does not appear to them. This is a very useful way to not just reduce web traffic frauds, but also to minimize the low value clicks.

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© 2010 WebTrafficFraud.com

If you are a small business owner who has decided on relying on PPC advertising as a part of your online marketing campaign, then you need to know how to protect yourselves against web traffic fraud. This is especially important in areas such as electronic cyberspace where the competition in the online market place is too fierce to ignore.

Web traffic fraud can cause a devastating financial impact on your business operations. And like any other catastrophes it is better to prevent click fraud or at least identify it as soon as it occurs and even take corrective actions before it occurs.

As we know search engines like Google which run popular PPC networks such as Adwords are aware of the growing menace of web traffic fraud that cost its customers millions of dollars each year. There are several inbuilt mechanisms in these programs which handle stuff like automated script based click generators. And the search engines try their best not to invoice these clicks to the advertiser. However some kinds of fraud escape even their watchful eyes and filters and therefore as an advertiser you need to do what it takes to protect yourselves against undetectable click fraud, rather than trusting the search engine to handle.
After all its your hard earned dollars that are at jeopardy.

DIY: Doing it yourselves entails that you have the technical prowess to identify click fraudsters. However, it could be really difficult to go through thousands of IP addresses, domain names etc. and log files, especially after heavy web traffic spikes that an attack can cause.
Outsource It: There are several vendors who offer great tools to prevent web traffic frauds. It would be a great idea to purchase these tools or hire an expert outsider to do the fraud prevention on your behalf.

There are certain things that you should keep in mind while selecting your vendor for fraud prevention. The first and foremost is that the service is reliable and reputable. Ask for frequent tracking reports so that you know what they are doing. Also get a vendor who has got positive feedback about their solution’s effectiveness. And keep in mind many third party ad tracking service providers skimp on fraud detecting in their system. Usually it’s a addon to ad tracking not a proactive fraud detection system.

Once you identify that a fraud has occurred, immediately notify your advertising network provider. Possibly you will be reimbursed in time – but make sure you have stringent no nonsense log data to back up your suspected fraudulent clicks, otherwise that money will be gone forever.

Bookmark this site. You probably have many questions and concerns. We cannot possibly answer all of them in one article. Or please leave a comment or question. We will be happy to respond.

© 2010 WebTrafficFraud.com