Blog Maintenance

I am upgrading this blog from the Blogger platform to Wordpress over the next few days.

This will cause interuptions to my normal service over the next few days.

I have decided to migrate for a number of reasons:

• More flexibilty in my system
• Better and wider widget development
• Better comment management
• New and simpler theme.

Rest assured, I will keep the same RSS feed so once I am back online service will resume as normal.

During the transition this blog will still be available at fraudulent-clicks.blogspot.com

Click Sentinel

I  came across a new product in the click fraud product portfolio called Click Sentinel.

It is one of the increasing number "community" click fraud products where data is collated from a number of advertisers to help gauge the real level of click fraud which we cannot get due to the lack of transparency from the search engines.  I talk about this subject at greater length in my post Click Fraud Caring Sharing Few.

Click Sentinel is a javascript implementation of click fraud software.

I have not yet completed my review of the product but first impressions are a good product.

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(AF) Did you know that the higher the bid costs of yoru keyword, the higher the risk of click fraud.  Use Wordze keyword research tools  to help predict high charge/high risk keywords. 

Who's Clicking Who Please Don't Sue

In noticed the following disclaimer on click fraud software supplier Who's Clicking Who website.  I wonder if they had a visit from a certain search engines attorney?

WhosClickingWho?™ Independent Auditing Service is a tool developed solely to help identify abusers fraudulently clicking on Pay-per-click listings, and in no way implies any abuses by the Pay-per-click Search Engines themselves. We believe legitimate Pay-per-click Service companies are also as keenly interested in preventing fraudulent click activity as their customers are. PPC Audit Inc. makes no assertions as to what constitutes fraudulent click activity. Such determinations are to be made between the PPC search engine user and PPC search engine provider, based on the user's data provided.

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(AF) Who's Clicking who? provide an excellent click fraud monitoring solution with 30 days free trail, go on sign up they may need help with legal fees :-) 

September Bubble Up

I am bubbling up my favourite posts from September from the depths of my blog to give them a second airing

• Low Quality Clicks as a Form of Passive Demonstration
• Fair Isacc Click Fraud Study
• ClickBot Autopsy
• Pay to Read FaceBook Application
• Mechanics of Click Fraud Software

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(AF) Using the techniques in Aaron Wall's SEO book, I am gaining positions with Google's organic placement.

Stumble Upon User Ate My Hamster

No not really, just trying to drag the fickle Stumblers into this blog post to read about the consequences of their website channel surfing.

For the uninitiated, Stumble Upon is a social networking application where people stumble around the internet as if they were channel surfing in the ad break with the aim of finding new and interesting web sites.  If they like the site they give it a thumbs up or else they give it the dreaded thumbs down.  The social aspect is that the newly stumbled sites can be shared with a group of friends.

It's a great site and it can generate a ton of traffic for blogs such as this, but the problem from a click fraud perspective is the profile of a Stumbler is exactly the same as a paid to read click fraud farm.

What we see on our analytics from a Stumbler is a person landing on our site, spending a fraction of a second before moving on.  If someone is carrying out a click fraud investigation, it is hard work to see past these valid Stumbler profiles and not judge them to be click farms clicking on paid ads and then moving onto the next site to carry on their fraud.

The way to get past this problem is to limit which referrer you are analyzing from.  Stumble Upon is quite clearly the source, drill down on you ppc provider and ignore all Stumble data.  This should help pin point if your are the victim of click fraud.

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(AF) Click fraud software from Click Tracks

Advertise with Fraudulent Clicks

Looking to buy ad space on Fraudulent Clicks ?

I run ads above the fold as a 468 x 60 banner, or as 120 x 600 banner in the right hand navigation bar.

Each spot costs $100/month and payment is via Paypal. Your ad will be shown on all pages.

I also participate in the Pay-Per-Post program. Using this system, you can hire me to write a post about a product or service. Although this is a sponsored post, I retain the right to compose my post as I see fit. If your product is flawed, I will write that it is flawed, if it is good, the corresponding post will reflect this. I charge $100 per post. Click on the link below to create an assignment.

Visitors are generally interested in web marketing and in particular click fraud.

If you are interested, please contact me.

Click Fraud's Caring Sharing Few

One of the biggest problems in the monitoring and investigation of click fraud is getting the real figures of the problem.  There is no shared analytic data between advertisers, click fraud software suppliers and the search engines and as a result levels of click fraud differ from 0.02% according to  Google up to 50% from some click fraud software suppliers.

A few shining lights stand out from the crowd.  These organisations are collecting large volumes of data and are creating a transparent and available view of click fraud to the wider advertising audience.

At the head of this field is Click Forensics, Inc. This company publishes the highly acclaimed click fraud index on the back of it's click forensics monitoring solution.  Their software is free to small time advertisers and chargeable to larger corporations.  The most important part of the process is that the data is captured centrally and analytical research is done on a large data set.  The result of their investigations are published quarterly as the Click Fraud Index.  The last reported CFI was at 15.8%

Click Forensics are fearless in their pursuit of transparency and their CEO Tom Cuthbert is in constant gladiatorial combat with Shuman Ghosemajumder   Google's invalid click Czar ( some call him the click fraud MIB, covering up all traces of indiscretion).  They joust on the real level of click fraud.  Google doubts the validity of Click Forensics data gathering technique and in return they question Google level of transparency.

Click forensics is not the only player in this arena, and these groups are not providing these services for  altruistic reasons, they are either trying to sell click fraud software to advertisers or are attempting to sell the data collected to the paid placement companies such as the search engines.

I would  advocate that all advertisers participate in some sort of data sharing scheme, in a previous post Fair Isaccs were recruiting advertisers to share their data under tight non-disclosure agreements if you would like details on how to participate in their study please contact me.

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(AF) The most important resource I use for my search engine optimisation work is Aaron Wall's excellent SEOBook. 

Mechanics of Click Fraud Software

This post discusses the three main methods used by click fraud monitoring software to ensure your pay per click campaign is free from fraud.  It also discusses the requirements to retrofit each method into your existing ads.

JavaScript

This method requires a small piece of javascript code to be added to the landing page of your website.  This javascript then reports back to a central server when a click through from a PPC ad is made.  The server is hosted either internally or externally by a click fraud service provider.  Increasingly companies are selecting hosted options to reduce complexity. 

This method require very little change to the actual pay per click campaign.  Editing the landing page of the campaign and adding javascript code will take very little time.

Some service collect keyword data and require a change to the ads as well.  This is in the form of adding a keyword tracking tag.  An example of this would be on Google Adwords, the landing page would need to be changed from

www.landingpage.com/product.html

to

www.landingpage.com/product.html?kw={keyword} 

The amount of time to implement this type of change will increase depending upon the number of ads your company is running.

Re-direction

The second method of data capture is via redirection. 

The landing page of the advertisement needs to be changed to point to a gateway server.  Once a user has clicked through on an ad, they are briefly sent to the gateway server where the pertinent data is collected.  The user is then seamlessly redirected to the real target page.

This method required more retrofitting for existing campaigns as every landing page needs to be changed to point to the new gateway servers. 

Log File Analysis

The last method I will discuss is log file analysis.  Using this technique, web server log file are imported into an analysis program and  analytical analysis of the log is made searching for tell tale patterns in the data.

Some system provide an automatic upload of the log files via ftp every 15 minutes or so to provide near-line analysis and reporting of problems. I am not aware of a product which supplies real time analysis via this method.

This method requires no changes to campaigns as analysis is based entirely on raw log data. 

In a future post I will discuss my preferred method of evaluating and choosing a click fraud monitor

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(af) Who's Watching Who uses javascript on the landing page method.

(af) Adwatcher is an example of redirection

(af) Click Tracks uses log file analysis

Pay to Read Facebook Application

Whilst Browsing though Facebook applications today, I came across one which looks remarkably like a pay to read scheme.

Cash Cliques as it is know, asks people to click on websites, stay on the site for 30 seconds and then move onto the next one.  In return a small trickle income is sent to the clicker via Paypal.

The sales copy for the application states:

By simply adding this application you can earn $ for clicking on websites, you don't even have to look at the website just wait 30 seconds and click on the next and get paid for everyone you click on!
We're not talking $Millions but a couple of extra quid a week for simply being on Facebook is better than nothing!
You can be paid by PayPal or cheque so you don't have to worry about revealing your bank details!
If you don't like it you can remove the application at any time, like any Facebook application! But UNlike other Facebook applications, this one can make you REAL money!
Good Luck!

In a pay per read scheme, the user will usually click through on a pay per click link, costing advertisers money, the clicker then pauses to simulate a real person reading content on a website before moving on.

The people who benefit are content providers taking a share of the ad revenue from systems such as Adsense or competitors trying to deplete the daily marketing budget of another company.

I would recommend that no-one signs up for application of this sort as they are just another manifestation of click fraud. 

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((AF) Free trial of Web Analytic software ClickTracks

Problem With Google's Invalid Click Reporting Function

A quick post to raise a rye smile, I was submitting my usual monthly click fraud report and it is too big for the Google system to handle and it was rejected, there is just too much fraudulent activity from the content network this month.

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(AF) Search Engine Marketing Magazine Search Marketing Standard

ClickBot Autopsy

I was fortunate enough to be given a guest blogging spot on Seo Scoop, where Dazzlin Donna let me write a post about ClickBot.A.

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(AF) Pay Per Click Campaign Analytics from Click Tracks

BlogRush Impression Fraud

BlogRush a new blog syndication service has just opened it's doors and already nefarious users have found a loop hole and are using impression fraud techniques to generate traffic to made for ads sites.  MFA sites are suspected to be creating a large portion of click fraud on the content networks.

Blogrush is a reciprocal advertising platform for bloggers.  For every load of my blog pages, the feed of other burners is displayed on the widget (check out the widget to the right of my posts), this in turn allows my feed to be shown on other bloggers BlogRush.  This reciprocal advertising should hopefully generate traffic. 

BlogRush have been forced to manually vet every new blog in the hope of sifting out low quality MFA sites.  Let hope the manipulative few will not spoil what looks like a quality blogging tool.

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(AF) Search engine optimisation information SEOBook

Impression Fraud - A Definition

A new term has come onto my personal radar and that is impression fraud. I would like to define this term for readers of this blog.

Impression fraud is a close relative of click fraud, but instead of effecting pay per click advertising budgets, it is effecting advertisers who use pay per impression or CPM as it is also know.

CPM is an abbreviation for cost per thousand impressions where M stands for the Latin term for one thousand. The abbreviation 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.

With impression fraud, content publishers are generating repeated reloads of their website in an effort to increase impressions and thereby generate revenue.

There are doubts whether impression fraud gets past many of the filters used by the search engines.

I hope that helps define impression fraud for you.

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(AF) Pay Per Click Campaign Analytics from Click Tracks

$1 Billion, the cost of invalid clicks

Google has estimated that invalid clicks cost them $100 million in lost sales per percentage point, they go onto say that the invalid click rate they are seeing is 10%. This equates to a staggering $1 billion in lost revenue.

In an interview for Forbes Shuman Ghosemajumder Google's manager for trust and safety said:

Our invalid clicks rate — the activity rate — has remained in the range of less than 10 percent of all clicks every quarter since we launched AdWords in 2002. At Google’s current revenue rate, every percentage point of invalid clicks we throw out represents over $100 million [U.S.] per year in potential revenue foregone

This figure is comprised of all the clicks that Google's filters intercept and mark as invalid, this type of click will include actual click fraud from bots etc along with things such as reloads which count as a double click.

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(AF) Click fraud software from Who's Clicking Who

Testing the Google Invalid Click Filters

I have been the recipient of a barrage of invalid clicks, what is more I know exactly who has committed this indiscretion; Google.

My click fraud monitoring software has detected a large number of click emanating from an IP address in Mountain View California. 

These clicks are over a number of keywords from and via and unknown user agent i.e. it is not a browser and the clicks seemed to display and automated pattern in that they happened very quickly with a very small time on the site.

A quick check of the whois records shows the IP address belongs to one of Google's servers. I am 100% sure that the the clicks are a system check by the Adwords program and the Google filtering system will mark the clicks as invalid but I intend to submit an invalid click investigation report to Google and ask them to confirm that clicks emanating from inside of the company are not credited to my account as true clicks.

The complete lack of visibility of the filtering process, a necessary evil to protect the integrity of the process from abuse, leaves advertisers in a predicament where the phrase trust me I'm a search engine rings true and we have to assume nothing is getting though the search engine filters.

I already have my headline ready for tabloid publication if it turns out I have paid for these clicks

"Google Gazumps Genuine Growth"

I will report back on the post in a future post.

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Contact Me to Monitor your campaign against click fraud

Affiliate Marketing Click Fraud

I run a monetised blog as you can no doubt see, and another form of click fraud that occurs is the failure to record clicks emanating from publisher sites back to an advertisers site.

I am NOT suggesting any of the advertisers I publish on my blog are anything but 100% honest, they have been specifically chosen to match the niche I write about, but in the wild west that is the Internet there are operators whom are less that scrupulous about recording clicks.

Why I classify this as click fraud is that the failure to register a click which results in a sale is denying publishers their legitimate commission for generating traffic and sending to the advertiser.

The solution to this problem is to use some sort of system which records the click before redirecting the link to it's correct location. This can be written in-house or a 3rd party product can be bought. This is the method used by the big third part affiliate programs such as TradeDoubler.  I have the benefit of a personal click fraud system (see my consultancy service) which also acts as a affiliate tracking service, but this not fool proof, it only captures the data from the point of click and does not verify the conversion unless the advertiser is kind enough to implement some conversion java script code on the conversion page.

This is exactly the same problem that the search engines have, there is no complete set of data from the click on the ad to the conversion thank you page.

This  lack of transparency is an issue across many areas of internet commerce.

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Below is an example of an affiliate link which redirect through my ad monitoring software and records the click.

(AF) Search Engine Marketing Magazine Search Marketing Standard

Aaron Wall - "Click Fraud is a Huge Issue"

Acclaimed SEO consultant and author of the best selling e-book SEO Book claims that

"Click fraud is a huge issue"

In his e-book he talks about filtering out sites which are creating low quality click from the Google content network.  This is an extremely effective way to block fraudulent clicks by restricting which sites publish your ads by monitoring for IP addresses which repeatedly click but generate no value.  A word of caution is that man ISP hide their users behind one IP address, so you may be restricting all of AOL when it is only one user from that network. 

His seminal work on SEO which is constantly update as SEO techniques evolve can be downloaded from the authors own website (af) SEOBook.

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Contact Me to Monitor your campaign against click fraud

Low Quality Clicks As A Means of Passive Demonstration

I was musing the other day on whether click fraud or invalid clicks could ever be a good thing.  This lead me to the concept of using invalid clicks to demonstrate against evil corporations by effecting their bottom line. 

Here is the scenario I envisaged.  My evil corporation, lets call them MegaBad Things Corp has invented a new anti ageing cream for sale only to the wives of mega wealthy Oligarchs, the terrible thing is that they make the cream by squashing cute ickle kittens  into a gooey mess whilst they are still alive, to make things worse the machine operators laughs (he has to laugh, it is in the corporate squashing manual) and twirls his evil waxed moustache.  

I'm outraged, I must take action , here is my plan:

• I find the keywords MegaBad Things corp are bidding on, in this example it is the name of face cream "From Hag to Fab"
• I find a large group of like minded people and tell them my plan
• At a pre-defined hour of action we type in the keyword and click on the paid ad
• We browse around their site for while, looking at various pages before heading off to the investor relations page
• We click on the contact us link and send a message in the following format

I am complaining about your kittie squashing actions.  I have done this by effecting your bottom line via your pay per click budget.  I have clicked on a link without any intention of buying your products.  This is eating up your daily budget and reducing sales.

Please stop squashing kitties, I will continue to perform this act until you stop your actions.    

• Net effect, hundreds if not thousands of messages to the investor relation team, PPC daily budget eaten up by low quality clicks with the desired effect of reducing sales.

MegaBad Things is an evil corporation and they are not about to lie down and take this type of cr*p from a bunch of liberal and probably poor cat lovers, so they approach the search engine and demand a refund.  Are these click fraudulent?  I don't think they are, they are very low quality to be sure, but the company has invited people to find their website by typing in the particular keywords.  Just because they don't buy "Hag to Fab" does not mean the process is fraud.

It could work, but I am prepared to bet that as soon as MegaBad Things Corp e-mails their analytics showing a trail from a keyword to the investor relation page the search engines will cave and issue a refund.  They know who pays the bills.

Keep on fighting the powers brothers and sisters. 

Fair Isaac Click Fraud Study

I was very fortunate to have a discussion with Joseph Milana from the research department of Fair Isaac on a click fraud study they are currently running. 

Fair Isaac is a company which supplies business intelligence product across a wide range of business sectors, the product they are most well know for is Falcon Fraud Manager which protects 20 of the worlds top 25 financial institutions against credit and debit card fraud. 

Fair Isaac's core competency is the analysis of large data sets, the data mining they do gives them the ability to do deep statistical analysis looking for patterns which appear pathological.  Using their knowledge and techniques to spot fraud in the credit card arena, the are performing a study into click fraud.

Fair Isaac have issued a call to the broader ppc advertising community to supply data with which they can complete a very detailed analysis of click fraud in an attempt to ascertain if there is a real problem. I have agreed to help them collect this type of data through a call to action of this blogs readership to supply data for their study.

They require the following atomic level data and most saliently, after click information i.e. did the click convert   The items marked in bold are required, the others are would like to have:

- Session ID

· Date-time of visit

· URL referrer (particularly relevant for tracking the traffic arising from affiliates)

· Client IP address

· URI Stem (the page accessed)

· User Agent (browser related data used by the client)

· Advertising Campaign (including Publisher)

· Keyword

· Daily spend limit

· Click cost

· Link ranking (i.e., w.r.t. the placement of the ad on whatever page by the Search Engines)

· Conversion Indicator

· Total time of the session

· Total number of pages migrated during the Session.

The output of the study will be a report to the general market place on their click fraud findings along with a private report to each company which participates in the study.  It must be stressed that they cannot assist in any reparation of ppc fees.

If the findings are positive that click fraud is a serious issue, it is envisages that Fair Isaac will introduce a click fraud detection product.  Their thinking is to place the product at a point where click fraud is detected and advertisers are not billed rather than relying on refunds from the ppc suppliers.

Any data supplied by advertisers will be protected via an NDA (non disclosure agreement) so you can be assured that any data you supply will be treated with the strictest of confidentiality.

If you are interested in contributing to this study, please contact me in the first instance and I will put you in contact with the Fair Isaac's research team.

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(AF) Search Engine Marketing Magazine Search Marketing Standard

Google's Invalid Click Detection System Confirmed

I was very pleased to see that the Google invalid click detection system had intercepted some suspicious activity on my adwords account.

I was running a campaign to drive traffic to this site, in particular to advertise our consultancy services and a number of low quality clicks were captured by my click fraud monitoring software.

I was repeatedly clicked by the same IP address over a period of a few minutes. I took this information and matched it back to my adwords campaign and not only had I not been charged for the clicks, but they had not been registered on my account.

I am very pleased with the outcome, but the lack of visibility of this information is still a concern. Why should I be using third party products to prove Google is catching low quality (or even fraudulent clicks).

I intend to leave the monitoring in place and ensure all future invalid clicks are not registered and to capture evidence on attacks not catered for by the Google algorithm.

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(AF) Click fraud software from ClickTracks

Mobile Click Fraud

Some commentators in the Blogosphere are suggesting that mobile click fraud will become a problem.  In his article A Thorny Issue: Detecting Mobile Search Click-Fraud Chris Silver Smith discusses the fact that PPC on mobile search by providers such as Google is inherently susceptible to click fraud due to:

• Lack of IP address
• No Geo-Targeting information
• No ability to hold cookies in older devices 

Chris's article is excellently written and researched, but I would add one fact to his piece in that click fraud on a large scale via a mobile device is probably not cost effective for the fraudster.  It is my experience (in the UK) that WAP based browsing is hugely expensive where the end user  pays per KB downloaded. Comments on the cost of WAP browsing or other mobile methods via 3G for example from other countries would be welcomed.

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(AF) Search Engine Marketing Magazine Search Marketing Standard

Click Fraud is catered for by max CPC

I read with great interest about one commentators idea that market forces and adjustment to max cpc cancels out click fraud.

In their post the blog talk from computer to cd they state:

The key point is that click fraud is already taken into effect when advertisers select the highest amount they will bid. For instance, there is no difference whether an advertiser pays $0.83/click for 121 clicks with 21 being fraudulent, or $1.00/click for 100 clicks when there is absolutely no fraud. In either case, the advertiser pays $100 and generates a profit of $20, and Overture and/or Google make $100. What changes is the advertiser’s yield (e.g., the percent of clickers who purchased the book) which in turn effects their highest bid price. That is, with fraud, 30 out of 121 clickers (24.8%) purchased the book, and without fraud 30 out of 100 clickers (30%) purchased it. Without fraud, the bid price in an efficient market will rise from $0.83 to $1.00.

In summary, online advertisers must focus on analyzing and improving their internal metrics (e.g., conversions) and not worry about click fraud as it is already incorporated into keyword bid prices. Hopefully, the frivolous lawsuits and refund requests spawned by apparent click fraud will end as those in the industry recognize this undeniable fact.

I am not sure if this model stands up to a sustained distributed attacks from click bots, but I think this is a very interesting concept.

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(AF) Click fraud software from Click
Tracks

Combating Click Fraud E-Document

I have recently come across an interesting e-document called (AF) Combating Click Fraud. It is written by IncreMental Advantage and has contributions from some of the major players in the click fraud arena.

The publishers review is shown below:

While its origins go back to the late 1990’s, its only over the past few years that “click-fraud” has come to the forefront and become a topic of concern for advertisers, web publishers, and search engines alike. IncreMental Advantage estimates that click fraud cost Internet advertisers close to $ 700 million in 2006. Click fraud has become so pervasive that it has begun to significantly stunt the growth of Internet advertising. Given the global reach of the internet and e-commerce, the issue is not isolated to the United States. And while there are many differing views on the severity of the issue, no one can deny its existence. Among the issues addressed in this report are: • Competitors committing click fraud • Keyword manipulation including jamming, gap surfing, and friendly URLs • Clickbots and click farms • Domain tasting • Click fraud arbitrage • Litigation against click fraudsters • Technological solutions This report features interviews with senior executives of companies offering technological solutions and financial alternatives as a means to combat click fraud. These include:

• Fair Isaacs Corporation
• Authenticlick • ClickLab, LLC
• Think Partnership
• MordComm, Inc. /AdWatcher
• ClickDefense Inc.
• ClickFacts Inc.
• IonReport, LLC

The e-document is available for download from amazon.

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(AF) My list of Click Fraud Books My Amazon aStore

Getting a Click Fraud Refund from Your PPC Provider

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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(AF) Search Engine Marketing Magazine Search Marketing Standard

Click Fraud Monitor - August 2007

In this monthly recurring post, I plot create a table of click fraud percentages from various sources.

I do this because the rate of reported click fraud varies hugely from source to source.  At the bottom end, the search engines claim very low levels of click fraud and at the opposing end, suppliers of click fraud services use scare mongering tactics to state click fraud is at artificially high levels.

From this I produce a very unscientific statistical analysis and calculate the average of these percentages.  The aim of this analysis is to balance the hype from both ends of the spectrum, and over time hopefully this will give a trend of "claims".  Will it go up or down, I will be interested to find out.

If there are any sources I have missed please leave a comment and they will be included in future monitors.

Organisation	% Click Fraud Aug 2007
Google	0.02%
Fraudulent Clicks	3.9%
Yahoo	12%
MSN	no data found
Click Fraud Network	15.8%
Adwatcher	20%
Click Tracks	20%
Who's Clicking Who	50%

 

Augusts Click Fraud Monitor Average: 11.95%

Sources

I include a link to all sources I use to calculate the rate

Google

Yahoo

Click Fraud Network

AdWatcher (af)

Click Tracks (af)

Who's Clicking Who (af)

Fraudulent Clicks - I include my own measurements  from my adwords invalid clicks report and details of invalid clicks from click fraud software running against my accounts.

Time Zone Targeting to Exclude the Click Fraudster

In a previous post I discussed Geo-Targeting to exclude potential click fraud, in this post I expand upon that to add time zone targeting to exclude potential low quality clicks.

If the majority of your potential customers live and work in particular time zone, target your ads to only be shown during key times in that zone.

An example of this would be a UK company selling a B2B service.  The best time to target potential customers who will give real value to your campaign is during office hours, Monday to Friday.  So in this example, it would be prudent to only run the ads GMT 09:00 - 17:00.

This combats click fraud by presenting as small a time frame as possible to the click farms and click bots.  This does not of course exclude manual clicks from competitors in the same time zone.

Over and above click fraud, this method of time targeting also helps to improve the click quality and hopefully your conversion rate.

This method is not a cure for click fraud, but it should (to expand the metaphor) be one of the drugs in your medicine cabinet.

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(AF) Search Engine Marketing Magazine Search Marketing Standard

Google's Chief Finance Officer to Resign

George Reyes is to resign after five years and a half years with the search Giant.

Mr Reyes succsessfully brought Google through it's typically innovative IPO. For readers looking for the click fraud angle, he was the Google exec who famously said that the click fraud problem may kill off the current search engine business model.

"I think something has to be done about this (click fraud) really, really
quickly, because I think, potentially, it threatens our business model,"

There has been no comment on what he plans to do in the future.

The complete press release is available on the Google press site
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(AF) Search engine optimisation information SEOBook

Click Fraud 101

Here are a list of my posts designed to be the beginners guide to click fraud.

• Click Fraud - Definition
• Click Fraud - Detection
• Click Fraud - Reparation
• The Click fraud to do list

As I add posts, so this list will be updated, please syndicate this site for future updates.

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Contact Me to Monitor your campaign against click fraud

Yahoo Create Traffic Quality Centre

In a similar move to Google, Yahoo has create a click fraud resource which they call the Traffic Quality Center

My first impression is that this is a comprehensive tools for Yahoo advertisers.

More soon ...

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(AF) Click fraud software from Who's Clicking Who

Trust Me I'm A Search Engine

As I have mentioned in the click fraud paradox, search engines do not inform advertisers which clicks are invalid in case their detection methods are hacked. All automatic click fraud reparation is done on a trust basis. They do not charge x% because they have detected these clicks to be invalid, and we have to trust their detection methods and that the other percentage is truly billable.

Let me don my cynical hat for the moment and say "No I don't trust you. Your money is made through clicks on adverts, you bottom line relies on the largest number of clicks possible. You want to cover up the invalid clicks problem."

Flip back to my optimistic fedora and cock it at a jaunty angle I reply "It is not in the interest of the search engines to hide the invalid click issue. Our advertising spend is based upon trust and once that trust is lost, our money will be taken elsewhere."

Cynical hat (it's an authoritarian black leather number by the way) "They know we will go elsewhere, that's why they cover their tracks"

Optimistic (green with a black silk band) "We need to trust them."

Trust is the central tenant of our relationship with the search engines, and their lack of transparency on which click is invalid causes a problem. We need a mechanism with which to gain trust.

I find myself repeatedly saying we need independent verification. In the same way that auditors check computer system controls for stock holders of public companies, I would like to see auditors check the controls of search engine invalid click processes.

I do not expect them to publish how it is done, only that it works well. This should be an on-going process.

So this is a call to the search engines, engage the services of the big four accountancy firms and have them audit the processes on the advertisers behalf.

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(AF) Click fraud software from Click Tracks

Click Fraud Haiku Game

Submit your click fraud Haiku as a comment to this post, the standard haiku format is a triplet of lines containing five, seven, and five syllables per respective line.

I am offering the company or individual with the best haiku twelve months free click fraud montitoring. This prize has a value of £1,200 (British Pounds).

Here is my effort

The click was not real
botnet targets my keyword
reparation now

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(AF) Click fraud software from Adwatcher

The Click Fraud Paradox

"I cannot tell you which click is an invalid click because you can work out how to create invalid clicks." Said the search engine.

"So how do I know you are detecting all the clicks?" replied the advertiser.

"Trust me I'm a search engine."

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(AF) Search engine optimisation information SEOBook

Click Fraud Software Reviews

There I was, busy researching and preparing the most in-depth analysis of all the click fraud software on the market and then I stumbled across this site where someone has done all the hard work for me.

www.adtrackerreviews.com

It's an excellent piece of work, very much along the lines of what I was doing, not that I am bitter about being pipped at the post (grumble grumble).

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(AF) Search Engine Magazine Search Marketing Standard

Click Fraud A-Listers

In this post, I take a leaf from Hollywood's book and name the people whom I think are A-Listers in the world of click fraud.

The Hollywood A list if the roster of the most bankable film stars, a 100 point check list was developed by journalist James Ulmer,

I am opening this post up to comments to expand this list and create a who' s who in click fraud so please let me know who should be added.

In at number one

Shuman Ghosemajumder

The Googleite and member of the Click Quality Team. Whenever Google want to talk with authority about click fraud (I know I keep calling it CF when they call it invalid clicks )they seem to roll out Shuman.

And at number two only because it is the second place search engine

Reggie Davis

Reggie is Yahoo's click fraud Czar, not as vocal in the blogsphere as Shuman, but Reggie has been tasked at an executive level to combat click fraud.

Neil Matthews

Sterling chap writes an excellent blog (will quite probably drop out of the top ten in the very very near future). He it witty intelligent and attractive to women of all ages.

Please leave your comments so we can make up a top ten.

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(AF) My list of Click Fraud Books My aStore

Operation Bot Roast

No this is not the latest title of a XXX rated DVD, this is an official FBI operation to crack down on 'bot related cyber crime.

Robot or bot nets are collections of hundreds or even tens of thousands of computers infected with a virus which allows the "bot herder" or perpetrator of the attack to run programs which attack other machines on the Internet. These programs typically attempt to do the following:

• Steal the computer owner’s identity;
• Launch massive spam campaigns;
• Engage in click-fraud—schemes which artificially inflate the number of visitors to a website; and
• Launch denial of service attacks that can cripple web servers and crash sites.

The owner of the infected machine is typically unaware that their machine is under the control of the "bot herder". It is therefore critical that end users take PC security very seriously. Anti virus software should be updated and OS patches such as those automatically sent out by Microsoft should be applied.

In the wider world of click fraud, bot net attacks can be very difficult to counter against. How does a system identify a single bot net click, which then stays on a page as if reading details against a real person clicking through and reading the contents of an e-commerce site? Expand this to tens of thousands of IP addresses and we get the very real threat of click fraud.

Details of the operation are available on the official FBI website.

"Hey Scully want to check out my bot?"

"Put that away Mulder!"

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(AF) My list of Click Fraud Books My aStore

Click Quality Council

And lo the white council did meet and Elrond ordered that before them they be presented the ring of the enemy..

No, not that kind of council, but a click quality council has been formed of eminent members of the click fraud community and it has agreed upon an eight point action plan:

Advertisers should never pay for double clicks or repeat clicks from the same session.

Advertisers should never pay for traffic from bots.

Advertisers should have control over where, when and to whom ads are distributed.

Domain and IP exclusion lists from search providers should be easy to use and maintain.

Search providers should provide advertisers detailed referrer information on all traffic that is billed.

Advertisers should never pay for traffic originating outside the specified geo-targeted settings.

Search engines should adopt third-party validation for click quality as other media companies have done for their audience validation.

Search providers should provide an easy mechanism to reconcile paid clicks on a monthly basis.

Further details of their work including an interesting videocast can be seen at click quality council

This commentator cannot agree more with the seventh point, the sooner third part auditing of invalid clicks is introduced the better. Search engines are refusing to be transparent to their customers, so companies such as the big four accountancy firms should be sent in to test, but not diverge the methods of invalid click detection and reparation.

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Contact Me to Monitor your campaign against click fraud

Geotargeting to Beat the Click Fraudster

A simple yet effective way to cut down on click fraud is to restrict access to your on-line ads to the countries which commit the most click fraud.

At first this may sound like a poor idea, restricting your potential advertising audience, but as most of the people recruited to pay to click schemes are in low income areas in the developing world, it is unlikely that these countries will supply a large number of your potential customers.

So a quick how to:

Review the analytics of your site, to see where your clicks are coming from.

Review where the majority of your business comes from.

Hey presto match the two together and exclude the countries which are not generating business and are the potential source of click fraud

The Click Fraud Network produce an excellent heat map to graphically shown the largest sources of click fraud originate. This resource can be used as a tool in your geo-targeting.

(heatmap courtesy click fraud network)

Even if you are not a subject of click fraud, reducing access to your ads to countries which are not producing quality click through is a best practice in optimising your campaigns.

Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center

Google have created a new resource centre for click quality.

Click quality is the Google euphemism for controlling click fraud (okay okay invalid clicks) and although there does not appear to be any new technical resources on the site, the overview makes very interesting reading for anyone interested in how Google's various layers of click fraud detection work.

The introduction from the site reads:

About the Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center
The relationship between
Google and AdWords advertisers is built on trust. Advertisers rely on the
relevance of our ad placement, our reporting statistics, and the quality of the
clicks their ads receive. We take this trust seriously, and we know that AdWords
couldn't exist without it.
In order to stay abreast of your concerns, we
constantly speak with advertisers and keep a close eye on online advertising
journals and blogs. We've seen that many of you have questions about click fraud
and the impact it might have on your AdWords accounts. In particular, we've
heard your concerns about 'click farms' and the quality of clicks received on
the content network. To help address these and related issues, we've created
this website to aggregate various resources on click fraud.
We hope that you
find this resource center useful. We're still working on expanding the website
and are eager to incorporate your feedback. Feel free to pass along
your suggestions on how it could better suit your needs.

Google's Click Quality Mission Statement

The mission of Google's click quality team, the group of individuals tasked with developing antidotes for and responding to click fraud have revealed their mission statement.

The mission states:

Protect Google's advertising network and provide excellent customer service to clients. We do that by:

• Vigilantly monitoring invalid clicks/impressions and removing its source
• Reviewing all client requests and responding in a timely manner
• Developing and improving systems that remove invalid clicks.impressions and properly credit clients for invalid traffic
• Educating clients and employees on invalid clicks/impressions.

If this commentator could add another item to the mission it would be

"Report transparently to clients on invalid clicks"

Extracted from the Tuzhilin Report.

(AF) Search Marketing Standard - Subscribe Now!

Search Engine Marketing Magazine

I recently came across a new publication called Search Marketing Standard Magazine(af). This is a traditional print publication specialising in search engine marketing topics including:

• Pay-per-click advertising: keyword selection, click fraud, local search, etc.
• Search engine optimization: ranking, web directories, SEO strategies, onsite optimization, visitor statistics.

To my knowledge this is the first print publication for search engine marketing (please comment on this post if you know of others) and to me this marks a level of maturity that the profession of search engine marketing has gained.

The magazine is published quarterly by Boris Mordkovich and subscription is available on-line for a very reasonable $20 for one year.

Adwords Click Fraud - Reparation

Over a number of posts I will be discussing the basics of click fraud. What it is, how to detect it, how to report it back to Google and lastly what Google is doing about click fraud.

Part three is how to notify Google, attempt to gain reparation and stop the continued abuse of your ads.

Once you have ascertained that you have a suspected click fraud problem, you need to do two things. Notify Google and then exclude the problem IP addresses.

Google have an on-line form to complete. Their invalid click team will then launch an investigation. The form requests details of the campaign, keywords, details of IP addresses and other information which makes the campaign owner suspicious of click fraud.

Once this has been completed Google will then launch their investigation. Here lies the rub. The investigation is not transparent and companies can not be assured that they will obtain a refund. Techniques for increasing your chance of a refund will be discussed in a later posts.

Once domains committing click fraud against your ad campaign have been identified, it is the best practice to exclude them from accessing your site in future.

From the Adwords campaign manager in the tools section there is a tool called IP exclusion tool. Enter the detected IP addresses and your ads will not be shown to the click fraudsters.
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(AF) Click fraud software from Click Tracks

Click Fraud Rises for 4th Consecutive Quarter

Click Fraud as a percentage of total pay per click activity rose to 15.8% according to invalid click monitoring body Click Fraud Network. This is a rise on click fraud for the 4th consecutive quarter.

According to the report, the key findings for Q2 of 2007 were:

* The overall industry average click fraud rate was 15.8 percent for Q2 2007. This is an increase from 14.1 percent for the same quarter in 2006 and 14.8 percent for Q1 2007.
* The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 25.6 percent. That’s up from 21.9 percent for Q1 2007 and 19.2 percent for Q4 of 2006.
* Traffic from botnets doubled from Q1 to Q2 2007 and contributed significantly to the increase in click fraud rates.
* In Q2 2007, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside North America came from France (5.1 percent), China (3.2 percent) and Australia (3 percent).

The Click Fraud Network collects anonimised data via it's monitoring product Click Forensics. This product works by inserting tracking code into web pages and reporting back to a central server in much the same way as Google Analytics. This service is free to advertisers who have less than 100,000 paid clicks per month, and chargeable for larger users.

Full detail of the report are available on the Click Fraud Network

Adwords Click Fraud - Detection

Over a number of posts I will be discussing the basics of click fraud. What it is, how to detect it, how to report it back to Google and lastly what Google is doing about click fraud.

Part two is how to detect click fraud.

In short you should suspect click fraud activity if you see a marked increase in clicks but no increase in conversions as a result.

This is a fairly general statement, and needs to be qualified. There may be a legitimate increase in clicks due to the following:

Competitor Activity
Your competition may have stopped running their ads on similar keywords and your campaign and you are picking up their clicks.

Google Network
If your ad has recently been approved to run on the network as a whole over and above search results, you may see an increase in low quality clicks. A second reason for an increase would be if your ad starts running on a high volume site.

Seasonal Changes
If your site sells seasonal products or services, then click through rate will increase at your busy time of the year.

Budget Chnages
If you increase your max cpc or max daily budget then there will be a corresponding increase in traffic. This may not

Ad Relevancy
If you have recently changed your keywords and they have become too general, the corresponding increase in traffic will probably be of low quality and will not generate conversions.

If you can rule out the above items, then it is probably time to accept you have a problem and begin an investigation.

Review your web logs, are your receiving multiple clicks from one IP address. Again this must come with a caveat, certain ISPs mask the real IP addresses of users behind a single address.

Run an account level or campaign level report for invalid clicks and trend this over a few months. Has Google spotted and not charged you for an increasing amount of invalid clicks.

If the answer to the above two areas are yes, then it is time to report this to Google for reparation. This will be covered in the next post.


It should also be added that there are companies supplying a more proactive approach to click fraud detection.

{BLATANT SELF PUBLICITY WARNING}

Our consultancy service provides a click fraud monitoring service which monitors trends and can even automatically notify your PPC provider that reparation is required. For a no obligation discussion about our services and our flat monthly fees contact us.

Click Fraud To-Do List

If you are a pay per click campaign manager, then I would like to ask you to one thing today; run an invalid click report from your Adwords account.

As part of their move to be more transparent Google added this additional metric to campaign and account level reports and it is surprising how many people are not taking advantage of this information.

A quick how to:

Login to your Adwords account and go to the report section. Select campaign or account reports, and select the invalid click check box, run your report as normal.

The result was quite a shock to me, for the small period I selected, there were a total of 324 clicks with the invalid clicks result at 24. This means that a little over 7% of my clicks are invalid.

Please note, these are only the invalid clicks that the Google tools pick up, and since Google keeps their click fraud monitoring techniques a secret we do not know what else may slip through the net.

I am interested to get a view of other peoples click fraud percentage, for those of you who run the report, please post your percentages as comments to this post.

Adwords Click Fraud - Definition

Over a number of posts I will be discussing the basics of click fraud. What it is, how to detect it, how to report it back to Google and lastly what Google is doing about click fraud.

Part one is a definition of click fraud.

In short click fraud is the nefarious clicking on Adwords 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 advertisig costs or to exhaust the competitions daily adword 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 programed 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.

In the next post in this series I will discuss how to detect if your ads are the subject of click fraud.

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(AF) Click fraud software from Who's Clicking Who

Re-Branding Exercise

I mentioned in a previous entry that Matthews Middleware Consulting is not an appropriate name for what I do anymore, and that I would be re-branding after my companies financial year end.

Well July 31st was year end, and the process to become Fraudulent-Clicks.com is underway.

I have decided to focus on click fraud or invalid clicks as Google call this increasing area of concern.

The blog entries will focus on click fraud and my click fraud investigation and reparation consultancy service has been launched.

Existing Adwords clients should not be concerned as all contracted engagements will be carried out to the full.
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Is your business a victim of click? Contact me for details of my investigation and reparation service.

The Four Benefits of Google Awords - Number Four Flexibility

Google constantly talk about the four benefits of their Adwords programme as reach, cost, timing and flexibility, Over the course of four posts I would like to explain in detail what the four benefits are.

In this post I discuss flexibility.

Google Adwords is a very flexible marketing medium compared to other less dynamic formats such as print. Ad can be created and set to run very quickly, it is estimated that an ad will appear within 15 minutes of its inception.

Following on from the fact ads can be created quickly, there is an unlimited amount of editing, starting and stopping of ads from the campaign management interface on a users account. Once the presses roll with a print ad, there is no changing it.

The last area of flexibility is to do with the placement of an ad. Messages can be run in multiple languages or in a single one, worldwide, in a country, in a state. Adwords is even flexible enough to create ad which only run on computers within a radius of a point of latitude and longitude.

Over four posts, I have detailed the benefits of Adwords of cost, reach, timing and flexibility links to all four posts are shown below

reach
cost
timing
flexibility

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Google Offer Free Campaign Optimisation Advice

I'm going to get thrown out of the Guild of Campaign Managers for this post, but here we go anyway.

If you ask the nice people at Adwords central they will review your campaign and make suggestions on how to improve your ROI and ad performance.

What is more they will do it for free, simply fill out an online form and optimisation tips will be returned within 10 working days. It is then up to the campaign manager to implemenet the changes or not. Check out the inside Adwords blog for more details.

There is a small catch, this service is only available to Adwords users in US, Canada and the UK.

Of course if you want to pay for campaign optimisation then contact me, no, I'll get my coat then.
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Need a Google Adwords campaign manager then contact me

The Four Benefits of Google Adwords - Number Three Timing

Google constantly talk about the four benefits of their Adwords programme as reach, cost, timing and flexibility, Over the course of four posts I would like to explain in detail what the four benefits are.

In this post I discuss timing.

The timing benefit of Adwords is that ads are displayed when people are actively searhcing or browing for content related to the ads.

As an example if someone is searching for blue widgets and an ad is being run against those keywords, the message will be displayed to the potential customer at the right place at the right time. This greatly increases the chances of a sales conversion.

When compared to offline advertising such as newspapers, there is no way to engage an audience at the crucial time when they are making purchase decisions.
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What is Cost Per Click?

Cost per click or CPC as it is known is web marketing circles was a revolutiinary advertising method when it first hit the web. Whilst Google did not invent PPC, they have quickly become the major player in the space.

Google Pay per click is when advertisers create small ads which are placed on search result pages or on other pages in the google distribution network such as Froogle, Gmail or the many content providers using Adsense.

Whereas many traditional advertising mediums use the cost per impression model, CPC users only pay when an internet users clicks on their ad.

Goto.com (later Overture) is thought to have originated the PPC model.

In February 1998, Jeffrey Brewer of Goto.com, a 25 employee startup company (later Overture, now part of Yahoo!), presented a PPC search engine proof-of-concept to the TED8 conference in California.[4] This and the events that followed created the PPC advertising system.

Source Wikepedia
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The Four Benefits of Google Adwords - Number Two Cost

Google constantly talks about the four benefits of their Adwords programme as reach, cost, timing and flexibility, Over the course of four posts I would like to explain in detail what the four benefits are.

In this post I discuss cost.

The cost benefits of adwords are no minimum spend, the advertiser sets a daily budget, the ad publisher sets the cost per click and the availability of free tracking and management tools. All of these areas are detailed below.

The fact there is no minimum spend is very useful to the small or medium sized company dipping their toe into web marketing and at the other exteme it is an excellent tool for large corporations to test out new keywords without having to invest large sums of money into the process. A company can decide to spend five pounds, three dollars of a few euros, find that Adwords is not for them and retreat back to their traditional advertising methods.

The ability to set a daily budget is very important for many advertisers. It allows them to control absolutely what they will spend over a given month. If a company sets their dailhy budget to be $50, the total cost for that month will be the number of days in the month mulitiplied by fifty. Nothing more and probably nothing less as Google will take your underspend for day x and add it to your daily budget for day y.

Using the cost per click model, and advertiser is able to set the value of their advertising. They will only pay the amount they specify. If they value a click at 50 pence then a click will cost no more than 50 pence. It is often the case that Google's technology will reduce the cost of the click to 1 unit above the next competitors bid.

The final cost benefit Google provides are the additional (and in my opinion excellent) tools for tracking namely Analytics. Other companies would charge a premium for these types of services, Ebay jumps to mind for their extended subscription services, but Google gives them away free to improve the quality of the advertising experience.

In conclusion Adwords users have greate control over the cost of their campaigns, something usually not true with other forms of advertising.
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What is Click Through Rate?

Click through rate or CTR is a metric used within an Adwods campaign to show how effective an ad is. CTR is defined in the following manner

numbers of clicks / number of impressions as a percentage

For example if your ad has 44 clicks and has been displayed 2500 time on Google and it's associated properties then your CTR is 0.02%

The higher the CTR rate, the better performing your ad is.

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Adwords Click Fraud - Part One Definition

This post has been moved to our dedicated click fraud blog fraudulent-clicks.com

Book Review - The Google Story

The Google Story
Written by Davis A. Vise this updated version of his book details to startup and rise of Google. It shows the quirky nature of it's founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and gave me some insight into why Google appears to run like a college campus.

Whilst this book does not provide any new insight into Adwords it provides a very intersting background into the company.

One of the best bits of the book is a sample entry exam paper for potential Google employees.

Link to Amazon to purchase The Google Story
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The Four Benefits of Google Adwords - Number One Reach

Google constantly talk about the four benefits of their Adwords programme as reach, cost, timing and flexibility, Over the course of four posts I would like to explain in detail what the four benefits are.

In this post I discuss reach.

When Google talks about reach it is talking about the huge numnber of internet users which are potentially exposed to Google or Google affiliated sites which display ads.

The most obvious place where ads are shown is on the right hand site of a search result under the sponsored links heading, but ads are also shown on other Google properties such as Froogle and the hugley popular Gmail web based email system which shows ads in contecxt to the messages you are reading.

The second area where ads are run is on the sites which use Google as their search provider. Companies such as AOL and NTL have contracted Google to supply search results and sponsored links on their main sites. These

The last area where ads are run is on third party content sites which have signed up for Google Adsense product. These sites are known as content publishers and include small scales bloggers (such as this site, see the ads at the top of the page) to large well know publications such as the New York Times. The Google system analyses the pages and displayed ad in context to the content of the web page. For example an article in the NYT about a new greener car may show ads on hybrid cars next to it.

It is estimated that 80% of the internet audience is exposed to Adwords ads in over 100 languages in countries around the world.

This is the huge reach that Adwords can bring to advertisers large or small.

In the next post I will discuss cost.
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CPM Explained

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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Harnessing The Power of Multi-Language Adword Campaigns

One of my clients works in a multi language environment and I would like to discuss the benefits of a multi language adwords campaign.

The client in question is a recruiment agency supplying staff from Eastern European countries and in particular Polish staff to companies in the UK. Poland has recenly become a member of the European Union and as a result Poles are legally allowed to work in any of the member states without restriction. The benefit of employing Polish or other eastern european staff is that their cost of living and consequently their wage demands are usual less than their similarly skilled colleagues from Britain.

My client is able to harness the reach of Google in multi languages by creating ads in polish for display on Google.pl wbich connects to their multi language website. From there they could register their curriculum vitae (resume) and hopefully be matched up to positions in the UK.

Using Google's unique world wide reach companies in one country can very easily connect to other companies or in this case potential employees from a different country.
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New product to monitor your trademark in Adwords

I stumbled across a product new to me which adds an interesting dimension to the monitoring of large companies trademarks in Adwords ads.

The protection of trademarked items in Adwords is a hot topic. This was highlighted by a major legal battle between Geico and Google where Geico claimed that Google was infringeing trademarked items by allowing other companies to bid on the word trademark Geico and Geico Direct.

Geico is a well respected car insurance company supplying policies to public sector emloyees in the US. It found that other insurnace companies were bidding on it's trademarks and as a result taking business from them.

They took the case to court in an effort to sue Google for their losses.

Google won the case, but in the aftermath of this, new trademark infringement policies were put in place. If you find someone running ads which are not approved by you as the trademark holder you must notify Google, the ad will be reviewed and pulled if applicable.

The new system from AdsGooRoo automatically scans ads for your trademarked item and produces daily reports and even automated reporting to Google of the problem.

The blurb from their site states:

AdGooroo Tademark Monitoring(TM) finds those advertisers who are bidding on or incorporating your trademarks in their ad copy. Daily alerts, executive summaries and eauotmated complaint forms save your time and mony. Protecing your company's brand name has never been easier.

If your are interested in protecting your trademarks in Adwords, why not check out their product at www.adgooroo.com

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Q & A : Ask me a question about Google Adwords

If you have a question or a problem with Adwords then post a comment on this posting and I will endeavour to answer it. The best queries will be added to the main blog as new posts to help other readers of this site.

Please note due to time constraints, I reseve the right to answer only the most appropriate comments.

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Disclosure Policy

This policy is valid from 15 August 2007

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

This blog abides by word of mouth marketing standards. We believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content.

The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog does contain content which might present a conflict of interest. This content will always be identified.


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Advertising

Looking to buy ad space on Fraudulent Clicks ?

I run ads above the fold as a 468 x 60 banner. Each spot costs $100/week.

Visitors are generally interested in web marketing and in particular click fraud. Your ad will be shown on all pages.

Payment is via PayPal.

If you are interested, please contact me.

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(AF) Search Engine Marketing Magazine Search Marketing Standard

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy
What is the purpose of this Privacy Policy?Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. has created this privacy policy in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to our users. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for this website: www.fraudulent-clicks.com. Please continue reading for complete details on the Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. privacy policy.

What information do we collect from users and how is it used?
Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this policy.

Surveys & Contests
From time-to-time, our site requests information from users via surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Information requested may include contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code and age level). Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site.

Referral Program
If a user elects to use our referral service for informing a friend or colleague about our site, we ask for the friend's name and E-mail address. We will automatically send the friend a one-time E-mail inviting them to visit the site. Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. applies the same privacy protection for all referrals and third party information that is provided by a user. Their information is stored for the sole purpose of sending this one-time E-mail. The friend may contact us to request the removal of this information from our database.

Correspondence
If you correspond with us via E-mail or snail mail, or if other third parties such as hosting suppliers provide us with information about you, we may gather the information in a file specific to you. We only collect the Personally Identifiable Information that you provide to us. While we may gather market data from other resources, the scope of our knowledge about Personally Identifiable Information based upon your use of our site is entirely up to you. Like many other websites, Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. collects information about users' utilization and navigation of our site. This information helps us to design our site to better suit our users' needs. For example, our site will track the URL that you visited before you came to our site, the URL to which you next go and your Internet Provider (IP) address. We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our site. Your IP address also is used to help identify you and to gather broad demographic information.

How does a customer 'opt-in' or 'opt-out' of Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. promotional E-mail?
Our users are given the opportunity to opt-in to receive promotional E-mail at the time of registration. Promotional E-mail does not include E-mail necessary for our site's services. We ask that a customer actively check a box to receive E-mail about special offers and hosting tips. At anytime a user can request removal from the distribution list.

Does the Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. website use cookies? If so, how are cookies used on the website?
Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to a user's hard drive for record-keeping purposes while visiting a site. Like most major websites, Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. uses cookies on certain pages of our site. Cookies make using the Internet easier by, among other things, saving your passwords and preferences for you. For example, a cookie lets the Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. website remember that you've registered, which allows us to speed up your future activities at our site, and which allows you to enter your password less frequently while visiting our website. We may also use cookies to deliver content specific to your interests. Our cookies do not contain any content specific information. Our cookies do not contain any personally identifying information although cookies may enable us to relate your use of our website to personally identifying information that you previously submitted. For example, it enables us to enhance personalization on the website, such as calling you by name when you return to our site. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies, although your browser may permit you to decline cookies. If you do decline cookies, your use of our site may be slowed because you may need to re-enter information.

What are the policies of linked sites and other third parties?
This privacy policy only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. Although you may interact with hosting suppliers as a result of visiting our site, or link to other sites or third parties via our website, Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. is not responsible for the privacy practices of third parties or the content of linked sites. We encourage you to read the posted privacy policy whenever interacting with any website.

To whom does Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. release information?
Please be aware that despite our best intentions and the guidelines outlined in this privacy policy, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Moreover, we may be legally obligated to disclose information to the government or to third parties under certain circumstances, such as illegal activity on our Site. Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. reserves the right to release personally identifiable information to law enforcement or other government officials, as Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd., in our sole and absolute discretion, deems necessary or appropriate.

How will I know about changes in the Privacy Policy?
Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. reserves the right to update this privacy policy from time to time. Please visit this page periodically so that you will be apprised of any changes. However, we will only use Personally Identifiable Information in accordance with the Privacy Policy that was in effect at the time the information was collected. If at any point we should decide to use that information differently, we will notify users by way of E-mail so that users can approve or disapprove of such use.

Google Radio Ads

Google are currently in the test phase of an extension to the Adwords system. The new system is Google for Radio Ads.

A group of users from the United States have been selected to participate in the user test phase to iron out any problems before a wider beta test programme is rolled out.

Details are scare at the moment, but Radio ads are controlled from the usual adwords account, where ads are created and distributed with metrics on how the ad is performing. Users target their ads by selecting appropriate radio stations for their ads to run on. Information on whether Google provide voice talent is unknown at the moment, but I will monitor the programme and report back as it matures.

This new phase of Google's expanions is powered by the aquisition of a company called dMarc Advertising who's platform to place radio ads and the technology for them to be broadcast was already at an advanced stage.

My opinion on this is that Adwords is developing into a multi media advertising solution. Added to Google Print Ads I can see companies turning to their Adwords account as their first stop for all advertising needs.
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Need a Google Adwords campaign manager then contact us>>

Google Adwords Myths

With my consulting work I hear a number of untruths about the Google Adwords system Here are the top ones and my reply to them.

It is very expensive.
It can be as expensive or cheap as you like depending upon your daily budget, cost per click and the quality and effectiveness of the keywords you select. An example of this would be a daily budget of £2.50 with a highly targeted keyword costing 5p per click. This would return 50 leads. as this is highly targetted, they would be qualified leads.

I don't sell world wide, why would I advertise on the web?
Adwords can be targeted to countries, locations, even to a radius around a geographic location. I have run one ad which is centred around the post code of my office for a 25 mile radious, That is how targted it can be.

Adwords is only for big business.
Rubish. Adwords gives small businesss the same benefits as a large budget ad campaign run by multi national corporations. The reach of Google is empowering small businesses rather than big businesses.

It takes too long to get an ad on the system
Once your ad has been created it takes approx. 15 mintues to start running on the Google system.


Hope that clears up a couple of myths.

Google Certified Advertising Professional

I am pleased to announce that I have gained my Google Certified Advertising Professional status after a long period of study.

I'm very proud of my 89.7% pass rate, but will not rest and my laurels, rather I will be going over the areas where I lost marks.

This examination pass is a big deal for my company and clients, I am now able to offer promotional discounts of adwords advertising. I am sure this will help a number of my client test new campaigns.

Neil Matthews

What Has Middleware Got to do With Adwords?

In short nothing, the middleware in Matthews Middleware Consulting Ltd. is to do with my previous work as a middleware consultant for large companies. I specialised in IBM Websphere and Tivoli technologies before a change in direction to become an Adwords consultant.

The difficulty in moving over comany details mid financial year means I will will keep the middleware tag for a while.