Need advice on suspicious looking referrers turning up in Paid Search

Or am I just paranoid?

[Connie Child]

Hi,

My PAID search drill downs are turning up stats that are all almost identicle.

I have over a thousand of these for just ONE of my campaigns... and many campaigns that all seem to be all coming from the same four our five referrals.

There are only five unique referrals.
All the landing page strings include a major PPC supplier and one or two of my search terms (exact matches). All the OS's are Windows XP (95 percent) or Windows 2000 (5 percent). All the browsers are IE 6.x.

They are so uniform as to be really weird.

The only non-uniform aspect is the host; all different.

Guidance? Advice? Or am I paranoid?

--C.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[edited by: Receptional at 1:59 pm (utc) on Oct. 18, 2005]
[edit reason] I took off the name of the PPC supplier.... for now... [/edit]

[Receptional]

Hi Connie,

I certainly DON'T think you are being paranoid. Just in case you are, I have taken the PPC supplier's name off, but you certainly should be wary.

Usually, irregularities will be investigated by the PPC companies and fraudulent traffic refunded, but the smaller the company, the worse they are at doing this efficiently.

My hunch is that it IS fraudelent traffic. Explain your findings to the PPC supplier and certainly reduce or pause your spend with them until they investigate and respond.

Dixon.

[Connie Child]

Thanks Receptional... Glad to have another - beter informed - perspective.

I am following your advice.

--C.