Web Traffic Fraud.com

If you are an owner of a home business or a bigger e-commerce website who relies heavily on PPC advertising to direct prospective customers to your website, then you need to be aware of what is known as web traffic fraud or click fraud. In simple terms, these are clicks which originate from a source who is not interested in the products or services that you have to offer.

Since web traffic fraud can cause you huge monetary losses, you need to know about how you can detect the early signs of fraudulent web traffic that might be getting redirected towards your ads. Noticing these signs will help you take quick action in reducing impacts towards your ad spend, thereby minimizing your losses. You should periodically scan the standard reports provided by Google to look for these signs that can point towards a possible web traffic fraud.

1. Sudden increase in clicks without a corresponding rise in conversions: If you notice that the click rates have suddenly shot up without a similar increase in conversions, then it almost always points to a web traffic fraud. You can easily see this by looking at the ‘cost per conversion’ metric given by Google and Yahoo. If you notice this value suddenly doubling then you know that something is going wrong.

But remember that PPC’s want you to keep your eye on conversions ‘only’ because it takes your focus off of rising CPC’s you are being overcharged.

2. Sudden spike in ad impressions on content networks: If the number of ad impressions within the content network is rising then it is a sure sign of click fraud. This occurs due to your ad being triggered by keywords from a site that indulges in click farming. You will be especially subjected to this, if your keyword is highly competitive. Try to stay away from highly competitive keywords. There are many 3 word phrases that are extremely targeted for pennies on the dollar -not dollars.

3. Quickly Running Out of Budget: If you have set an upper limit for your daily budget and you suddenly notice that it is getting depleted faster than usual then it could be because of click fraud. This happens more so, when you have enabled ‘content network’ (Google’s approved third party websites). Chances are by the time you discover you max budget is being depleted then traffic fraud may have been ramping up slowing for many weeks. Go back a month and check your logs to the present to spot any irregular click behavior.
Remember that these are just pointers that warn you that there might be a possible fraudulent web traffic clicks being committed against your ads.

One way to ‘supplement’ your efforts in monitoring third party traffic for fraud is to engage the services of a third party for detailed auditing of your web server logs. Some of these agencies are experienced in monitoring and detection fraud. Bottom line is that it will be your word against the search engines when disputing traffic fraud. It will serve you well to have a “neutral” third party providing logs to support your claims.

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There are several companies who are working on developing products that can easily identify web traffic fraud or Click Fraud. Some of these solutions essentially need the co-operation of the advertising networks, and so these firms are trying to develop a good rapport with these networks but are met with resistance for obvious reasons. Broadly solutions are available that tackle web traffic fraud. They can be classified into two groups:

1. Forensic Analysis: These rely on an analysis of the log files in the web server of the advertiser. This will give a detailed idea about factors such as where the traffic originated from and what was the subsequent behavior of the traffic after reaching the landing pages. Since these tools use the normal industry wide log files, advertising network companies such as Google can independently verify the data that comes up from this analysis. The flip side of this method is that the people who actually do the forensic analysis should be reliable and have a high degree of professional ethics and honesty.

But realize that short of a court order you will never see a Google traffic log file. So the burden of proof lies on the shoulders of the advertisers with no real leverage to enforce the findings of fraud.

2. Third party Tools: There are web-based solutions that can be used to tag the ads. This involves the use of a JavaScript or a tiny single pixel image on the landing page of the advertiser. Cookies can be used to collect information about the visitor into a third party storage location and while doing an analysis of web traffic fraud this can be downloaded and analyzed. These products range from simple raw data of traffic to be further analyzed to higher end scrapers and filters, which highlight clicks that seem to not originate from a genuine buyer. It is very easy to add false information to the log files (user agents, IP addresses etc.) of the advertiser’s web server and therefore a third party storage of data (third party fraud auditing service) is more reliable and acceptable to an advertising network. However caveat is that if the fraud originates from or is directed against a publisher then these solutions may not be easily able to trace the pattern as they are focused on a single advertiser alone and see only a small part of the entire traffic volume.

Thus these solutions reach conclusions based on a snapshot of data thereby increasing the possibility of a wrong diagnosis and false positives.

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© 2010 WebTrafficFraud.com

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.

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