Can this be for real?

So many fraudelent clicks from adwords

[jimberan]

I installed some new tracking software which has a component that deals with fraudelent clicks. Called up the reports at the end of the first day day using this software and got a bit of a shock when i looked over the suspected fraudelent click report from my adword campaigns. I have no idea if this can be real so I would just like to check with all the experts on WW.

The report shows a number of IP addresses that have clicked multiple times on an ad within a period of a minute or less. One for example was an Asian IP address and the clicks on the ads originated it seems from google.co.uk and the report say 12 clicks came from this IP address all within one minute. Has anyone ever seen something like this? There are a number of different ip addresses listed that clicked 3-5 times within a minute on an ad. Does this seem possible and if so should I go for a refund on those clicks. It does end up on a nice sum at the end of the day especially if this is going on each day and if these are in fact fraudelent clicks. Any suggestions or view on the matter would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys! Jim

[cgrantski]

Unfortunately that's not unusual. But it still may not be fraud, because IP addresses can be shared, for example by users of a corporate or ISP proxy. At my company there are 85 of us. But we appear to the outside world like one IP address, and only one. So I hope your software checks more than just this. The other things to check would be the User Agent field in logs and of course the cookie.

Although I'm trying to be cautious, I would say that it's probably fraud anyway. You could have lots of visits to your site from one IP address in the space of a minute due to word of mouth. But clicks on Google ads? A lot less likely.

I suggest you round up your logs or these particular lines in your logs and send them to Google. Or you can send the output of your program, provided your program provides the exact time of those hits. I've gotten quick action by Google when I do this. Calling your Google rep is the best first step. Good luck.

[jimberan]

Thanks, will definitely do that!

Is there any way that I can check results from the past 6 months and for how much more this happened and to gather proof. Is there any way through the server logs going back to when we started. The new software is only usefull for actual data. Any idea?

One more question if I may. By how many clicks per minute on the same ad from the same IP address should i report it to google? Anything more then the 1 or as of 3 hits for example. Just want to make sure I dont look like a complete fool. Thanks!

[cgrantski]

I don't have a good answer for "how many in a minute is worth reporting." I would say 5 or more. 3 or 2 can easily be legitimate.

As for finding this through logs - It's certainly possible, provided of course that your google visits are clearly marked in the URL somehow.

For what it's worth, I look for fraud like this: I get a report on all the IP/User Agent combinations for each paid keyword, per day, using my traffic analysis program (mine is WebTrends Enterprise). In a daily report, I look for IP/UA's that came more than 2 or 3 times per keyword that day, then I see if those same IPs did the same for other keywords. I pull the suspicious IPs then open the logs and find their hits. I look at the times for the hits. If they're hitting too fast or too often, I suspect them of fraud.

My method is kind of blunt and not slick and easy, but it get results as long as the logs aren't too large.

By the way, what is the tracking software you are using that has a fraudulent clicks report?