Definition of Click Fraud

Click fraud is defined by the majority as a malicious attempt to exhaust the daily budget of any pay per click advertiser. Usually it's generated via software that crawls the search engine and clicks on targeted (or all) adverts that show up for a related search term.
Nowadays many advertisers become to feel more and more tempted to practice click fraud in attempt to drive up the marketing costs of their competitors. Things become from bad to worse when the Cost per click (CPC) of the traced search term is very expensive. Click fraud, although on rare occasions and particularly for smaller search engines can be revenue driven by their own affiliate networks.

Almost all (if not) any search engines with pay per click program support 24/7 tracking systems to identify click fraud and remove any subsequently generated charges from the advertiser's costs. For example Google, the leading pay per click driven engine, is able to detect consistent and rapid clicking on adverts from a single IP. Of course, as mentioned in the beginning, those who practice click fraud are programming very advanced cloaking software that sometimes outwit with ease any search engines' protective system.

Based on accurately reported click fraud, Google issues data adjustments and money refunds. To block click fraud attempts even more successfully, the company has recently launched new and more advanced mechanisms, including human-based factor and technology-driven systems.
Recent analyses show that click fraud criminals plan to throw their attacks by using rolling IP addresses from multiple countries. For this purpose they even hire full time job employees to click on adverts all day long. Therefore it's not a surprise that click fraud is mainly detected in countries from the so called "third world" where the cost per labor is very low.

Google have to deal with another problem, equally problematic to click fraud. It is the so called "impression fraud" which occurs when someone manipulates in one way or another the impressions for a specific search query. The main purpose is to increase the number of impressions so high that the clickthrough rate can decrease lower than the limit and the result will automatically be suspended by Google for low CTR performance. Therefore the crippled advertiser will fall down the rankings which means other will have the opportunity to improve and also lower cost per click costs due to the decreased competition.

There are a lots of opinions regarding how much exactly is the revenue generated by click fraud. One say its big, other say its...very big. To be able to imagine its scale many believe that if this negative process was missing or if there was a chance completely to eliminate it, all Pay Per Click engines are going to suffer really hard because a significant income and revenue will disappear. However, all PPC engines are well aware that if they are to survive they must maintain the trust of their advertisers.

Tips and tricks to combat Click Fraud

Any pay per click advertiser must know and practice several tips and tricks to avoid click fraud:
1. Add click fraud tracking tool to your site that will flag potential click fraud attacks but most importantly save any strange movements in your click traffic. You can find dozen of monitoring tools while browsing the market. Just to mention few: AdWatcher, Click Authority, ClickDefense, Authenticlick, KeywordMax, Click Sentinel, ClickDetective, etc.

2. Add accurate analytics tool such as Google Analytics to be able to monitor the quality of your visits and be able to solve faster potential problems. Regularly create and analyze reports with overall site traffic, impression and click included. If any drops in conversion occurs carefully investigate the possible reason because rapid change in statistics and metrics is most of the times clear indication that something or someone is manipulating them. Huge number of clicks which does not convert into new sales/leads could reasonably considered as click fraud. Therefore it's necessary to keep and save all your historical data so you can compare the conversion rate before and after the attack.

3. Also be aware of what we spoke above - the impression fraud. If you have enough history data pay special attention to keywords that Google have moved to inactive due to low CTR. Try to analyze your data and see if these search terms have been performing with success over time and if suddenly some of them have been deactivated.

4. If any click fraud detected report it to Google as fast as possible. Also send them historical data, screenshots, whatever proves you have that identify the source. Google tend to take this in consideration and remove potential click fraud costs from your charges.

5. Try to stick with the popular pay per click engines which have branded destination where consumers go to search - Google AdWords, Yahoo Search and MSN adCenter where traffic quality perform much better. The more a PPC engines depends on affiliates for its traffic, the more susceptible
it will be to fraud.

Feel free to contact us for free advises on any potential click fraud issues.