Referring domains pay people to click ads

Why does Yahoo take in these affiliates?

[beren]

I've been getting a few clicks from domains that, when I look at the websites, promise users to "get paid to read your mail". They offer users a chance to sign up and "Get Paid for Reading Emails,Clicking on ads..."

I'll complain to Yahoo, but it's like pulling teeth trying to get money back from them. They'll probably be rolling their eyes when I say I'm getting 1 click per day per offending domain. Why bother?, they'll think. (Each click costs over $20.)

More importantly, I would really like Yahoo to adopt a policy of not allowing their affiliates to facilitate this type of distributed fraud. The people I normally contact for refunds almost certainly can't do anything about this. This may require a letter to the head honchos at Yahoo, because if it doesn't stop soon, it could become a serious problem.

[JohnCanyon]

I have done quite a bit of analysis on my clicks from the overture system. 3/5's of the clicks that I receive are from very questionable "affiliates" of which 7/10's of those clicks originate from countries such as India, Thailand and Indonesia.

The unfortunate reality is that I have to spend alot of time doing this analysis in order to get my money back from Overture/Yahoo!, rest assured they are not going to do it for you.

My theory is that someone is paying these people in such countries to perpetrate click fruad. I would happily give examples of such sites if contacted.

Anyway, my advice is obtain a quality click tracking mechanism and stay on top of it. Since we spend to the tune of $5-10k+ per month with Overture/Yahoo! this is imperative to my business.

Cheers.

[soquinn]

I didn’t realise that overture even had affiliates? I mistyped a website address and ended up here:

<snip>

this website feeds out overture advertisers. Are all overture campaigns distributed through overture affiliates?

[edited by: werty at 2:54 am (utc) on April 30, 2005]
[edit reason] Removed URL [/edit]

[fischermx]

That is an UltSearch's domain!
Which means merely a PPC template ...
So, is it Overture ads made for this!? I mean, well, I didn't know overture allowed this.
I mean, I thought overture affiliate network was a small group of premium sites, not PPC parked pages ...
I'm stumped!

[bostonseo]

"That is an UltSearch's domain!
Which means merely a PPC template ...
So, is it Overture ads made for this!? I mean, well, I didn't know overture allowed this.
I mean, I thought overture affiliate network was a small group of premium sites, not PPC parked pages ...
I'm stumped!"

Back in 2003 the quality of distribution partners was much better. Now they won't even give you a break out of where your clicks come from. Why do you think that is? If all their clicks came from Yahoo and MSN like most think, I'm sure they'd have no problem telling you that. But that's not the case.

[soquinn]

Do they publish a list somewhere or allow you to block certain affiliates?

[Tropical Island]

Do they publish a list somewhere or allow you to block certain affiliates?

No. To clean it up a bit do NOT choose to be under "content".

This will not entirely help as you will still get "search?" results from domains that are just PPC from Over from type-ins.

We get a steady stream of traffic from one site that is nowhere to be found in the regular serps although it does have a PR5. It has no content - just a page of Over PPC's.