Stoping competitors

What is stopping competitors clicking multiple times.

[puppetmaster]

Do PPC programs stop competitors or others from clicking multiple times? Do you get charged every time they click on you ad?

[jeremy goodrich]

Of course you don't get charged every time somebody clicks two or more times in a row on your ad ;)

Every PPC program out there (at least the major ones) have sophisticated fraud prevention technologies that help protect their advertisers in an automated way.

Alternatively, get yourself some click tracking software that will log all your referrals by source, and monitor your ROI from your PPC efforts for you. There are a few softwares out there that do this, and are available as a service or download software.

It's crucial that you monitor your costs for PPC traffic, and what the dollar value of that traffic is in terms of sales, because if you don't monitor it, then you only know 'generally' if it's working or not.

[hobbnet]

I have been told by google reps that they don't have "sophistacted fraud prevention technologies". Meaning, they told me multiple clicks by the same person are counted.

[puppetmaster]

Do you get charged if the click every 30 min, hour, 4 times a day, ect, ect. The problem is that our competiors steel our ideas all the time. I'm just afraid that they will try to run up our cost. If they click twice a day or once a day it could end up a lot of money to us.

Is this something you just have do deal with when using PPC programs.?

Thanks

[jeremy goodrich]

That doesn't sound quite right, I mean, if they *did* count multiple clicks from the same person, surely there must be an 'upper limit'?

If not, then somebody could simply click, over & over, on your add to charge you serious $$$ in a single day.

Overture offers 'fraud prevention technologies' so does FindWhat, so I really, really doubt Google lacks that.

Though, if you are right, all the more reason to get some tracking software that will calculate your ROI for you & make it easy to spot repetitive or fraudulent click patterns.

<added>
See here: [adwords.google.com...]

They do have fraud prevention methods in place.
</added>

[hobbnet]

Taken from Google's FAQ:

As a result, we're able to filter out clicks you don't want and ensure they don't show up on your reports or bills.

Ha, I wish they could filter out the clicks I don't want. Google, I don't want any clicks that don't turn into a lead, please filter them out! =P

[maques]

jeremy seems to know his stuff so hopefully will be able to help... needless to say anyone else who can contribute, please feel free to chime in - over the past few days my ctr has skyrocketed... somewhere in the neighborhood of $300/day.... at the same time i've noticed my main competitor is agressively marketing... how can i determine from my raw server log if he/they are clicking on my ad? is that even possible? oh, btw, my server log lists dns names(?), not the ip addresses. any and all suggestions would be appreciated.

[jeremy goodrich]

Check for the same entry, over & over, the same user agent in combination with IP address or dns entry - or, if they aren't all the same dns entry, then similar dns entries that trace back to the same source.

Use Arin.net to look up the addys or samspade.org to reverse look up stuff / also, contact Google support if you suspect something is going on.

If you use something that also tracks user sessions on your site, a sign that something fishy *may* be going on is lots of clicks that only result in one session on your home page before leaving.

[martinibuster]

This hasn't been mentioned yet, so I'll go ahead. There is a big disincentive to clicking on a competitor's ad, and it's the fact that Google will move your ad higher and higher the more clicks you get in relation to the other advertisers. Remember to dial down those CPC's.

Anybody who clicks on their competitor's ads are basically harming themselves.

Another thing nobody has mentioned is, have you checked if those clicks are coming from content-targetted ads? AdWords may have signed on a relevant publisher.

In general, clicks stay roughly steady but I have seen them go through spikes and any number of things can trigger them (magazine articles about similar products, end of month, etc.)

[maques]

thank you both for your comments. i'm vaguely aware of the risidual effect of clicking on competitions' ads but since i'm already in the top position, i don't know that it would effect my competitors adversely. also the hit i take on my wallet far outweighs my ranking (IF they are in fact clicking on my ad)...

my content clicks are negligible so it's all search results. what is a reasonable ctr? is there such a thing? or does it vary too greatly? mine at the moment is just around 4.5% on about 5,500 impressions (today). how does that measure up?

- max

[martinibuster]

CTR depends on too many variables to make an accurate assessment of 4.5%. It could be good or too much depending on things such as brand, copy, relevance/irrelevance of natural results for your particular keywords phrase, plus the brand and copy of your competitors PLUS the number of competitors you have bidding on the terms.

Is this a two word keyword phrase?

Try adding your keyword phrases in this manner:

[keyword keyword]
"keyword keyword"

instead of in this way:
keyword keyword

What this does is exclude words you may not want like "topless" "free" or "pirate," that sort of thing.

It's possible you are receiving clicks for non-relevant search terms that your copy is not accounting for.
Ferret them out by:

• using the Google and Overture keyword tools
  
• conducting searches on ALL the search engines and studying the results for non-relevant listings
  
• see if there are any non-relevant competitors, not just in adwords results, but in Yahoo/Overture and Looksmart

Then do a negative keyword for those terms.

These are some of the things you can do to assure yourself that you are attracting the most qualified visitors to your website.

In the most general and broadest opinion, 4.5% seems within the bounds of normal results, but there are too many variables unknown to me to say so definitively. AdWords CTRs are generally several orders higher than the CTRs of normal banner ads.

[maques]

thank you... i will do some work on this!

[spud01]

I've come across today in our campaign summary below our Ad the following:

(2 Deleted Creatives)
0 Clicks

What does that mean?

[Chndru]

big disincentive to clicking on a competitor's ad

Valid point, martini...but, the those who degrade themselves to the act of clicking on competitor's ads rarely think :(

[hobbnet]

I've come across today in our campaign summary below our Ad the following:
(2 Deleted Creatives)
0 Clicks

It means you deleted two of your ads in an adgroup and those two ads you deleted received zero clicks when they ran for the time period you have selected.

[too much information]

I had some funny business going on recently where my cost per day nearly doubled after a few new competators started advertising. I couldn't identify which one it was, but I would see 5 clicks to my home page in a 10min period, and no hits on any interior pages.

What I did was ban their ip's to a 'warning' page. Basically the warning page says:

If you are seeing this message, your IP has been banned due to improper behavior on this web site such as fraudlent clicks on paid listings hacking, or other suspicious activity. A copy of the log file has been forwarded to the webmaster of this site as well as the abuse center of your ISP. All suspected fraudlent or illegal activity WILL be reported to the proper authorities.

The way I see it, if they are up to something, this should let them know that I'm watching them. If not, there is an option to send an e-mail to tell me whatever their excuse is.

The fact is you won't be able to stop all of the bad clicks, but you should do what you can to limit them.

[anallawalla]

(2 Deleted Creatives)

When you edit a creative, the previous version is treated as a "deleted" ad. Had me worried when I first saw that description.