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I've a new client spending £10 per click at present on very competitive phrases. We suspect that his main competitor is clicking his PPC ads.
I haven't been able to go through the logs yet :(
Is there any way to use IP banning to prevent this? The opposition won't see the site but presumably the click-thoughs still register at Overture?
(Incidentally can someone point me to a tutorial on banning IPs on Zeus 4.1. Is it the same as using htaccess on apache?)
If we are seeing the same known IPs "visiting" constantly solely for the purposes of wasting my clients £££, is there any action that can be taken?
What would you say to Overture?
All help welcome
Thanks
John Ring
Even if you banned an IP from your site, the click will probably still register. As the link tried to get them to the site.
Just guessing though.
If someone has the same IP then their clicks won't count more than once from my testing.
I tested one of my rarely used terms and put it to 10 cents. Late at night I clicked many times.
I signed up for AOL account just to see how OV handles AOL clicks.
I clicked many times, but OV only counted clicks that had unique IP addresses. Since AOL and others use shared IP's, they may use something like IP+machine name.
I don't have a modem dial-up account and don't know anyone who does. All cable modem around here.
Anyway, banning an IP won't do any good since they only count 1 click per IP/machine name...from my testing.
AW
Anyone else have similar experiences?
John
"If you have an IP typing in many expensive phrases and clicking only once on each phrase, does Overture have protection in place to safeguard against this"?
A good Q I thought....
J
Multiple clicks from the same machine sometimes show up immediately in the reports, but I think Overture runs a program throughout the day that analyzes these clicks and removes them as I've had days where my account balance went up instead of down, and some heavy adjustments at the end of the month reports where my balance was given a decent amount of credit.
eWhisper
"If you have an IP typing in many expensive phrases and clicking only once on each phrase, does Overture have protection in place to safeguard against this"?
Well, how could you safeguard against that when it's a likely scenario.
If I'm a regular potential customer I may want to search and click a bunch of links for 'widgets' then 'blue widgets' then 'blue widget company', 'blue widget firm', and so on...
I'd have the same IP for all those searches most likely.
If your client happens to bid on a spread of phrases like that- I'd suspect they'd pay for each and every searched term that ended up clicked.
It is Pay Per Click after all and you do bid for specific terms.
Bottom line is that if your client goes on Overture and decides to bid in the Top 3 they will for sure be clicked by competiton if not malicious intent then for sheer curiosity.
So, tell them to anticipate an initial bunch of clicks 1st day or so until their competion checks them out.
It shouldn't be so horrible though.
Regards,
AW
From what I can tell at Overture, the only way for a competitor to abuse your phrases is for each person in the company with their own individual computer to click each of your keywords once each day.
Well, not exactly. :(
They could all have AOL installed and connect through their LAN, and get different IP's at least a few times per day.
Or have Dial-up accounts and computers both at work and home...
Also, their is some 'privacy software' that allows you to connect to websites via Proxy servers. Some software rotates IP addresses from a pool of dozens of frequently changing IP addresses.
_Very_ few 'normal' people know about that though.
AW
I have been told that "it is easy to change your IP or if you have aol to log off and then back on to change your IP and then click on your competitors ads again after deleteing your overture cookie of course... in this way you could easily add a few dozen clicks to a competitors ads every day and on every different keyword..."
Overture has no protection against unusual traffic... as you mentioned a competitor might have $5000 in thier oveture account which can be wiped out in a single day with proxy servers and scripts which change the IP address and disguise the cookie...
And don't kid yourself... I would estimate that 10% of overtures revenues are the result of overture benefiting from the fraud of others...fraud overture has little interest apparently in turning off when it is clearly happening according to thier own daily average estimates.
I have been told that "it is easy to change your IP or if you have aol to log off and then back on to change your IP and then click on your competitors ads again after deleteing your overture cookie of course... in this way you could easily add a few dozen clicks to a competitors ads every day and on every different keyword..."
Overture has no protection against unusual traffic... as you mentioned a competitor might have $5000 in thier oveture account which can be wiped out in a single day with proxy servers and scripts which change the IP address and disguise the cookie...
And don't kid yourself... I would estimate that 10% of overtures revenues are the result of overture benefiting from the fraud of others...fraud overture has little interest apparently in turning off when it is clearly happening according to thier own daily average estimates.
If your clients competition has nothing better to do than to click your clients ads, then they are not likely to be competition for long.
Unless you have evidence to support the click spam claim then you'll fail in any attempt to get recompence. Overture are merely the facilitator of the service, they can't be held accountable for your clients competitors juvenile behaviour. If you sold cricket bats and someone used it to batter an old person to death, you wouldn't blame the shop that sold the cricket bat would you?
Of all of the providers of PPC Overture have the best fraud protection in place.
I'd suggest that your client puts in place their own tracking solution to actually see the level of activity on their site and then approach their competition with a cease and desist if they can get overwhelming evidence that it is indeed them. Spammers by their devious nature will invariably be able to hide their tracks.
If they are paying £10 a click then without their own tracking I'd suggest they shouldn't be spending that sort of money. How do they know if they are making money? (even with the competitor spamming)
First stage is obviously the tracking, you're right. At the moment though their ROI is simply based on the no of calls/emails they get...
Simple!
J
