Click Fraud Update for 2006 ‘ pay to read, practical tips, and the future

Business Week recently published an article detailing the experiences of some pay per click advertisers affected by ‘pay to read’ or ‘pay to click’ websites which pay users to click on adverts from search engines’ content networks such as Google AdSense.

This is one example of methods used to make money at the expense of legitimate advertisers who use PPC tools such as Google Ads (AdWords) or Yahoo Search Marketing, although there are some others:

• Competitors clicking on adverts manually
• Automated bots
• Links within spam emails
• ‘Scraper’ websites produced with automated or stolen content in order to rank, which display ppc advertising.

As an advertiser you do need to accept that your competitors may click on your adverts (which the search engine will filter if done repeatedly), but in most cases large scale click fraud tends to only affect highly competitive markets where there is a high ‘bounty’ per click – it is by no means a constant problem in all markets.

However it is still prudent to take some steps to reduce the risk of this affecting you:

Monitor your log files: Using a website analytics program you can monitor a range of information that might indicate changes in the quality of visits to your site provided by pay per click advertising. These can include sudden increases in single page visits, a large number of visits form unusual geographic locations such as Asia, or a large drop in your click to sale/lead rate.

Monitor any ‘content’ advertising you may be doing: If you use pay per click advertising to advertise on the search engine’s network of content websites such as Google AdSense or Yahoo Publishers network, there could be an increased risk of you receiving poor quality clicks from ‘pay to read’ schemes, meaning this activity should be monitored closely.

Be aware of your contractual agreements with the search engines: Both Google, and Yahoo require you to notify them of any disputed clicks within a set time period, so you should monitor your stats at intervals more frequently than this to make sure you are able to start a dispute. The search engines will also will not reveal the data or methods they are using to police the problem.

Although the onus is currently on the advertiser rather than the search engine to highlight any problems, efforts are being made to lobby the search engines here. The click fraud network has been formed to represent advertisers, plus there has been discussion of setting up a independent third party to monitor the quality of search engine clicks.

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