March 31st, 2008 by andy
So, Yahoo created a new portal/channel/whatever focused on women age 25-54. It’s called Shine. You can reach it at shine.yahoo.com.
But not Shine.com
Let me get this straight…. You pick some abstract word as a title. Hey, I give you props for not going after something like Fasnozzle. Good job there. But why Shine? Anyway, so that’s it. But you pick a term that you don’t even own the domain for? Really???
I shake my head in complete disbelief.
Here’s the news link – http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006722.html
March 20th, 2008 by andy
As my wife can attest to, when something angers me I have a really hard time letting go. Some might call it perseverance, I think she just calls it annoying.
So, following up from last time when Yahoo said they found no problem with the traffic… They kindly suggested using their groundbreaking domain exclusion tool and change my tactic settings.
So, based on what they’ve told me (and what I’ve known for awhile about their detection systems), here’s the way to commit click fraud on Yahoo*…
1. Register a bunch of domains and park them.
2. Get a fresh proxy list, have a friends and family network, employ a PTR system, set up an arbitrage system on a second or third tier PPC system,
find open WiFi networks, employ a botnet, build a browser helper object or any other number of ways to generate clicks from multiple IP addresses.
3. Distribute small number of clicks on each domain but never have multiple clicks from the same IP address.
4. Stamp the CTR by flooding the domains with impressions that don’t click.
5. Profit.
Sure, eventually enough advertisers may ad the domain to their block list to make it ineffective, but for $7 I get to start ALL OVER AGAIN.
All they’re doing is looking at the lowest hanging fruit. The click fraud guys are MILES ahead! The pattern is right in front of Yahoo’s eyes if they even bother to check the registration of the domains. The domains I’ve added to my exclusion list are based on domain names residing on the same servers as what I’ve seen to be problematic domains. Of course, they can just go register a few more domains and start again. Before you know it, I’ve hit my 250 max.
And I’m one of the GOOD GUYS! I’m sure the click frauders have many more ways than what I’ve detailed above.
It’s 2008. Try to keep up.
*Obviously, I DO NOT recommend or advocate doing any of the steps above. If you do, you’ll be stealing and that’s illegal. So don’t do it. But if you’re an advertiser, you need to know just how easy it is to defeat their ‘sophisticated’ systems.
