Click Fraud: What it is, What You Can do About it - Becoming Proactive
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What should you do if you have determined that you are a victim of click fraud? As reported by ClickZ, the owner of the online insurance business came up with a clever solution. Since he was able to trace the clicks to a local IP address, WhosClickingWho helped him set up a customized pop-up window. Whenever the person from that IP address clicked on that ad, the window, featuring the business owner’s text, appeared. It said, “Stop, you weasel! I know who you are and have reported you to the proper authorities.” This stopped the problem cold.
This was only the first step, however. The business owner took his documentation of the click fraud to both Google and Overture, and the reaction he got was most instructive. By his own estimate, Overture reimbursed him for 95 percent of the fraud, but Google only reimbursed him for 50 percent, and took longer to get back to him besides.
If you want to do the analysis yourself, you need to obtain your website’s server logs. You should be able to get these from your Web hosting company. Once you have them, there are a number of data points to examine. These include the following:
- Repetition of IP addresses
- A large or irregular number of clicks from the same geographic area
- IP addresses that belong to cloaking software companies
- A change in the amount of traffic seen for certain keywords, particularly a rapid increase
- A doubling or tripling of clickthroughs without any bid changes or rank changes (or, possibly, a corresponding increase in business)
This is not something you can do once and then just forget. Compiling statistical data takes time and effort, but it is the kind of data that Google and Overture will take seriously; you cannot approach them with a suspicion and expect them to listen unless you can back it up with hard data. You should monitor you bids daily, and even review them weekly or monthly. Remember, nobody is going to be as interested in making sure your business succeeds as you.
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