Web Traffic Fraud.com

The Truth about Web Traffic Fraud on the Internet.

Click Fraud: The Fight between Search Engines and Advertisers

Click fraud or invalid clicks as some like to call it in a effort to minimize its definition, is an area of contention between pay per click search engines and advertisers ever since PPC ads have become a popular means of advertising for small business owners and an equally popular means of earning revenue for website owners and bloggers. While search engines like Google claim that they have their own internal mechanisms to detect Click Fraud and that they do not charge advertisers for clicks that are not genuine, critics of PPC advertising point out that Click Frauds are being done in increasingly innovative ways that are too difficult to detect by software programs.

For example, one of the newest ways in which Click Fraud happen is to use spyware to capture user behavior in a website. These programs would then automate the click on the Google adwords. The advertiser would assume that it was the effective ad that brought him traffic while in reality he would have got the traffic even otherwise. And because it originates from the same IP that ultimately visited the site, Google and other search engines would definitely charge the advertiser for the click. Thus all traffic to the site, whether it originated naturally or through PPC ads, will get accounted for as PPC ad effectiveness. This may even have a spiraling effect as the advertiser may spend more and more dollars on PPC ads, making him increasingly vulnerable to frauds.

In a way the fight between search engines and people perpetuating Click Frauds is like the fight between software viruses and virus protection firms. Each group keeps devising new strategies and the war goes on. Meanwhile, you as a small business owner need to keep your eyes open to identify any signs of Click Fraud in your website and quickly try to make amends. Read up on click frauds, how they happen and learn about all that you can do to protect your site. After all you are paying your hard earned dollars for internet advertising and you deserve to get protection against frauds and should be paying only for genuine clicks that have good conversion rates.

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

Ways to Indentify Click Fraud?

As a small business owner, you have used PPC advertising or maybe planning to use PPC advertising. If so, you need to be aware of a type of fraud that is prevalent in PPC advertising known as Web Site Traffic Click Fraud or the term Google uses, “invalid” click. In simple terms, it involves artificially boosting the number of clicks on the ads using either human beings or pre-written programs known as bots. As a small business owner, this will impact your business budget as well as advertising plans. Given below, is a list of things that can negatively affect your ROI (return on investment)

Tracking of advertising returns: When you calculate the revenue per click that is generated you will make mistakes, as you are now taking into account invalid clicks too. This may make you feel that your PPC advertising is not worth the money spent on it and you might abandon the campaign prematurely.

Financial loss: Pay per click advertising requires you to pay the search engine for each click on your ad. If people or programs who have no interest in your offers click on your ads then you end up paying the search engines money without any hope of financial gain. With the increasing number of online businesses competing with each other, keyword CPC (cost per click) have been steadily increased over the years. Many feel CPC is becoming out of reach for many small business owners.

But you need not worry too much as there are things you can do to protect yourselves from click fraud. First is to watch out for any sudden unusual activity in your web traffic without a corresponding increase in sales. This is a clear indicator of Web Click Fraud is happening and you need to immediately alert your search engine about this.

You can also engage the services of a third party fraud detection monitoring firm to analyze your web server logs and identify the clicks that did not originate from a genuinely interested party. You can then submit these results to your search engine and ask for a refund. But remember that the upper hand lies with the search engine and you may need to really fight it out before your claims are accepted.

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