Archive for the ‘How To’ Category

How to Identify Competitor Click Fraud

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007

In the second article in our series on competitor click fraud, I go on to detail how to spot competitor click fraud.

In a previous article I documented the tell tale signs of click fraud, this post will expand upon those ideas to help identify specific competitor click fraud.

The first stage is to be aware of your competitors. There is a very simple way to tell who your potential click fraud competitors are:

Type your key words into your search engine of choice and your competitors will be revealed to you, under the sponsored link section. Take some time to note the domain names of your competitors including the companies who are not reaching the first page as they are more likely to engage in dubious practices to get their ads on the first page.

This must come with the caveat that all of your competitors are not advertising all of the time so they may slip through the net, the answer to this is to search for your competitors a number of times, and at different times during the day.

Equipped with this information it is now time to fire up your analytics program. They key piece of data you should be analysing is the domain metric. This will either be the IP address of the person visiting or in the case of a corporate system, a NAT address coming from the domain of the competitor. If you are presented with an IP address use the IP to Domain name lookup tools from www.whois.org to find out who the perp is.

In the next part of our competitor click fraud series, I will discuss what to do if you are the victim of this type of invalid click. Should you go in all guns blazing or are there more subtle tools in your arsenal?

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How To Create an Invalid Clicks Report - Video Guide

Monday, October 8th, 2007

In a previous post Click Fraud To Do List I discussed how overlooked, but very important the invalid click reporting function is. In this multi media vPost I show how to generate an invalid click report.

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Click Fraud - The High Risk Countries

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

It is a well documented fact that certain countries are more likely to produce click fraud, in a previous post I discussed Geo Targeting to reduce click fraud. This post is a list of the high risk countries, where, if possible, you should block from accessing your pay per click campaigns.

  • Eygpt
  • Ghana
  • Indonesia
  • Lebanon
  • Macedonia
  • Morocco
  • Nigeria
  • Pakistan
  • Romania
  • Somalia
  • Ukraine
  • Vietnam
  • India
  • Russia

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What is Click Fraud?

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

In short click fraud is the nefarious clicking on pay per click ads in an effort to gain an advantage other than that specified by the Advertiser.

Click fraud comes in two main types, clicks to increase a content publishers revenue and clicks by competitors to impact on a company?s Adwords budget.

Fraudulent clicks to increase a publishers revenue is when a company or individual is using the Adsense program to monetise their web site content. Using this programme, Google display relevant ads on the website and pay the owner when someone clicks on the ads or in the case of cost per impression for a certain number of visits to the site to display an ad.

The fraud occurs when the owner clicks on links displayed on their site to increase the revenue generated. These clicks may be manual or automatic via a ClickBot (discussed later).

Competitor fraud is when companies or individuals click on the ads of companies competing on the same keywords as themselves in an effort to drive up their advertising costs or to exhaust the competitions daily adwords budget so they can then display their own competing messages to sell the same or similar products.

Click-bots are the way that organised click fraud is committed. The bot is a piece of computer code which is programmed to click on a particular ad over and over again automatically.

Should advertisers be afraid of click fraud? Yes they should, it is thought to be one of the main concerns for Google about their future and there are reports of large numbers of hijacked computers which can act as a network of Clickbots launching sustained attacks. These are being employed by organised crime gangs so the report says.

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Getting a Click Fraud Refund from Your PPC Provider

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

In this post I discuss the mechanics of obtaining a refund from the three main search engines Google, Yahoo and Microsoft if you suspect you are the subject of invalid clicks.

The first stage of your click fraud reparation process is to gather the appropriate evidence of a click fraud attack. The more detail you have, the more likely that your supplier will give a refund.

I have developed an MS word template for evidence gathering, please leave a comment on this post and I will e-mail a copy.

The information required is:

  • A brief description of why you think you have been the subject of click fraud
  • Date and time of attack
  • IP addresses of problem hosts
  • Campaign details
  • How much refund you think you are entitled to

Once the evidence has been gathered it needs to be submitted the the search engine

Google

The Big G has a special on-line form to complete to request an investigation.

They request much of the information already mentioned above, but without the value of the suspected fraud. I would advise completing my form and sending this to the Google operative who contacts you during the subsequent inquiry.

Yahoo

The second placed search engine has a special name for a click fraud investigation and that is a “Click Investigation”. To obtain start an investigation, go to your search marketing account and click on customer support link at the top of the page.

Set the type of inquiry as click protection and the subject line to “click investigation request” supply the following information

  • The date(s) of the click activity within the last 60 days you would like investigated
  • The specific keyword(s) associated with the clicks.
  • Use the “Attachment” tab if you want to upload a screenshot or additional information, including your weblogs.

The new traffic quality centre has a very concise section on applying for click fraud reparation including an SLA for response times to your request.

Microsoft

The Microsoft Adcenter does not have a dedicated method for initiating a click fraud investigation, rather you are directed to the central customer support function.

If you need personal assistance and can’t find your answer in Help, we invite you to phone (800) 518-5689 or submit an e-mail request at the Customer Support e-mail website.

Microsoft AdCenter Customer Support is available 7 days a week from 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. Pacific Time in the United States.

They do not state what information is required so It is advisable to collect the data mentioned above

I hope that helps in the first stage of initiating an investigation. The next post in this series will discuss what to do if your provider says no to your reparation request.

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CPM Explained

Tuesday, July 24th, 2007

CPM is an abreviation for cost per thousand impressions where M stands for the latin term for one thousand. The abreviation is a throw back to print advertising where the term meant cost per thousands of homes the publication would reach.

In a Google Adwords context it relates to site targeted advertising where you will pay a set amount for one thousand impressions of your ads on a site or type of site your select during ad creation, as opposed to pay per click advertising when an advertiser only pays when the ad is clicked upon.

CPM ads can be text ads, image ads or click to play video ads, and they are generally used when a company is trying to build brand awareness. An example of this could be a car company who has released a new model and they want to pay for repeated image ads to be displayed on a leading car review site which runs adsense advertising.

I hope that clears up any questions on what CPM or cost per impression is.

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