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.

--

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

$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.

--

(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.

--

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.

--

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.

--

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.

--

(AF) Search Engine Marketing Magazine Search Marketing Standard

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.

--
(AF) Search Engine Marketing Magazine Search Marketing Standard

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.

--

(AF) Search Engine Marketing Magazine Search Marketing Standard

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.

--
Contact Me to Monitor your campaign against click fraud

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.

--

(AF) Click fraud software from Click Tracks

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."

--
(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).

--
(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.

--

(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!"

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

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.

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!

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.
--
(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.