Archive for the 'Click Fraud' Category
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.
February 29th, 2008 by andy
After three weeks and me calling and saying “Hey, remember me?”, Yahoo finally came back with the results of the traffic review. It was the standard boilerplate response of finding no problems with the traffic. Despite providing IP addresses, geo identification, terms, referrers, domain ownership evidence, timestamps and pageviews, Yahoo couldn’t find any issues. Really. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!
So anyway… $100 down the drain. But not really, as I made sure to also point this info out to a few respected journalists and executives at click fraud detection businesses.
February 6th, 2008 by andy
I’ve been a click fraud hound for many years now. People that know me closely will tell you that I tend to obsess over this stuff. Yahoo has been a thorn in my side since I started because their traffic quality plummeted after they lost MSN and started filling in with no-name search partners and parked sites. Click fraud is actually what first led me to my interest in domains and learning about that whole world. I learned that not every domain parker is involved in click fraud, but they’re sure getting a black eye from it by not speaking out more against it. It surprises me that they don’t do more to protect their golden goose. But I digress…
Last night I set up a new campaign in Yahoo. First time in a long time because of my bad experiences with them. But, I figured it would be as bad now that I’m bidding on MUCH less expensive terms. WRONG-O! The following is what I learned from a 50 click test.
I loaded thousands of geo-specific terms. Los Angeles (keyword), Montana (keyword), Tuscaloosa (keyword). You get the point. I turned it on around 10:45 PM. Using Yahoo’s close-to-real-time reporting I watched the clicks adding up. I was seeing CTR over 75%. When I got close to 50 clicks, I paused the campaign and went in to my logs to check the clicks. I took the IP addresses and ran them against a geo-location database. I wish I could say I was shocked by the results.
Now, what someone in West Virginia is doing looking for a Chicago (keyword) is beyond me. Sure, it could happen. But not 99% of the time like occurs above. This is one of those things where taken at face value maybe wouldn’t look like bogus traffic. Yahoo certainly didn’t seem to have a problem with it as they charged me for all of them.
October 2nd, 2007 by andy
Yahoo has finally taken a BIG step towards solving their traffic quality problems.
For years now, their have been complaints from far and wide about their distribution network (read: parked domains). And for years now they’ve done nothing about it, leaving it up to the advertisers to solve the problem by adjusting their bids.
Now they’ve enabled a feature allowing you to load in a list of domains on which you don’t wish to appear.
It’s a major step, and it will be good for those clean domainers out there because advertisers may begin to feel more comfortable with the traffic and start up the bid races again, resulting in greater income.
However, just sitting here thinking about it, I can foresee some problems.
1. As an advertiser, you can only block the domain once you’ve been hit enough to determine it’s bad.
2. Once a domain has been blocked by enough advertisers, the fraudster will just go buy a new ‘clean’ domain. Rinse and repeat.
3. Some decent person may come along and buy a domain and find out too late that it’s already been poisoned and added to many advertisers’ blacklist.
4. Once a domain is on the advertiser’s blacklist, it may never be reviewed again for quality despite new ownership.
Some people will get hurt by this, I suppose. It will be mostly those advertisers that don’t utilize the feature or have adequate tracking and by domain acquirers that don’t do their due diligence prior to picking up a new domain.
*Caveat* This new feature just started. So far, I think it’s only available to platinum level advertisers. And whether it actually works or not remains to be seen.
September 21st, 2007 by andy
Apparently TrafficClub (Moniker’s parking service) is delaying payment because an upstream partner thinks they smell click fraud.
I’ll tell ya, I would hate to be a parking company these days. Their margins are getting seriously squeezed. Yahoo and Google are taking bigger cuts(why? because they CAN) and there are so many parking services now that domainers will hop to a competitor for a higher rev share.
On top of that, they’re getting slammed for allowing click fraud. I’ve been deep into tracking click fraud for a couple of years because I’ve been an advertiser for one of the most expensive PPC areas. Obviously, the amount of attempted click fraud grows exponentially with the price of the click.
Click fraud drives me insane because it’s such a preventable problem yet Yahoo and Google do so little to really prevent it. Well, I think Google actually does a decent job.
What I find curious is that G or Y may do these investigation and they may find some evidence of bogus traffic. They then withhold payment. But credits back to the advertiser are rare. So, who keeps that money?
