May 2008

Looks like there was no sale of America.com. Last I saw, and that was with approximately 6 hours remaining in the auction, the bid was at $1,050,000 and had not yet met the reserve price. Whether the bid was by a legit bidder or a friend of the seller trying to drive up the price is unknown, but it did make it into the 7 figures. I wonder what the the reserve was…

I’ve spent a LOT of time studying click fraud. You can find other posts here detailing some of my battles. In that time, I’ve caught dozens of parties engaging in it and studied them to figure out how they’re pulling it off so that I can fight back against it. I’ve created detailed reports and submitted them to the PPC businesses (Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc…) pointing out issues and have had a lot of success in getting credits for the bad traffic to my clients.

Unfortunately even though I may have been able to get credits for my clients, those credits usually end up just being eaten up by the same culprits. Also, the PPC businesses have become much more stingy when it comes to these giving these credits. If you can get any credits at all these days, it’s usually a tiny fraction of what you believe you are owed.

When people come to me now asking for help with their click fraud problems, I tell them not to expect to get any recovery from the PPC businesses and that they need to get in front of the problem and be much more vigilant in their click fraud prevention efforts. You can’t expect the PPC businesses to do it for you.

Here are 10 methods that any advertiser can use to reduce their exposure to click fraud:

1. Know your traffic sources - Most PPC systems have their primary display point (Yahoo.com, Google.com, etc…) but also have additional distribution partners for their ads. The majority of bad traffic and clicks come from the downstream distribution partners. Find a stats program that gives you full referral information. By seeing the full referral, I can see the downstream partners and measure the quality of the traffic I’m receiving from them. Make sure you have your tracking strings tagged with the correct PPC network identifier so you can know which distribution network the offending site is in.

2. Use the domain/channel exclusion options - Once you have a decent sample size of traffic from various referrers, use the domain blocking feature to prevent yourself from showing up on those sites. In this instance, I’m referring to Yahoo and Google in this instance as they are the only two at this point to allow this sort of blocking. Yahoo currently has a 250 domain limit, but you can push them to expand that number for you. Google allows you to opt out of entire channels like the Parked Domain channel.

3. Use whois to block domain groups - One thing that PPC businesses DON’T look at when they’re identifying click fraud is the registrant of the domain. Usually, if somebody is running a decent click fraud racket, they’re spreading the bogus clicks over a number of domains in order to fly under the radar. If they’ve got an actual site, can use the Reverse IP function at Domaintools.com to identify other domains they may own. Don’t be surprised if you see those in your logs, as well. Another option is to buy a Registrant Search report to identify domains they own and add all domains owned by that person/business to your block list for future preventative measures.

4. Use conversion tracking - A lot of catching bad traffic ties into basic web marketing. If you’re using PPC to sell something, you should have conversion tracking in place to know which keywords are producing your sales. If you have conversion tracking in place, you can see which sites are driving your sales. Google or Yahoo gives you a 6% conversion rate yet Site-A-Bingo-Winner.info has delivered hundreds of clicks and no sales? Block it.

5. Turn off or lower content bids - Yahoo, Google and MSN all have a lower tier Content Match distribution group. For Yahoo it’s Yahoo Publisher Network, for Google it’s AdSense. Those are those skyscraper text ads you see all over. They don’t usually perform very well. You have the option to opt out of them completely or edit your bids for those channels.

6. Don’t bid on high cost terms - According to a recent Click Forensics report, the overall industry average click fraud rate was 16.3% for Q1, 2008. It would be a mistake to take this number and assume it is universal for every term. The fact is that the more expensive the click, the higher the rate of click fraud.

7. Don’t bid for #1 - In line with #6, it’s assumed that the number 1 bidder for a term will be bidding the most and that click will be the most expensive. If you move down to the number 2 or 3 position, you may find you get less questionable clicks, not to mention less general curiosity traffic.

8. Restrict your geographic targeting - It’s not a mystery, but a lot of bad traffic comes from outside North America. This may sound prejudiced, but it has proven itself out time and time again. Traffic from Russia, Turkey, India has been problematic for a long time. New campaigns now (at least I know this to be the case in North America) start with North America as the default. There is problematic traffic in North America as well, but this may be one tip at reducing if you have your floodgates wide open.

9. Daypart your bidding - Humans tend to do most of their searching during the day. Bots (specifically the less sophisticated ones) will run 24 hours a day so the fraud rate increases at night. Turn your traffic off at night to reduce these opportunities.

10. Don’t use 2nd tier PPC systems - It’s tempting for new advertisers to see CPC’s on FoofyDoofy.com PPC system costing one tenth of what it would cost for the same term on Google. There’s a reason for that. Most of those systems deliver extremely low quality traffic. If you really want to test it out, throw $50 at it and track it very, very closely to see if it performs for you.

Conclusion:

Click fraud and garbage traffic exists. It’s not going to ever go away. Trusting the PPC networks to look out for your best interest will just leave you frustrated and with lighter pockets. There’s no one way to cut it out entirely but if you follow the steps above, you can SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE your exposure to click fraud and low quality traffic. This is not a one time fix. Fighting click fraud requires constant vigilance and adjusting your strategies appropriately.

Just got home from watching Indiana Jones 4. Like Godfather 3 and Rocky 5, it never should have been made.

Random thoughts that came to me throughout the two hours that I will never be able to get back…

1. All this movie is missing is Ewoks. (But just then, a bunch of monkeys showed up that basically filled the role.)

2. How long until the Disney ride is announced? (**edit - Too late)

3. Shai Labeuouueueooueaeio(sometimes y)f. My new rule: If he’s in it, don’t see it.

4. Skulls with frickin lasers

5. This is like a video game played on super-novice level. Or with the immortality cheat code used.

6. I don’t really remember the Temple of Doom movie except that it had really grating and annoying sidekicks. Oh wait…