I would take a wild guess and say:
Any 2 clicks with the same:
- ip address
- accessed url
- user agent
- referrer?
- all within 1 minute of each other? Maybe 5 minutes?
I would like to know under what circumstances a click does not get charged to my account. And when I have to pay.
I'm guessing there is no industry standard description, this might be a SEMPO question...
I'm wondering how Adwords/Google would detect a bot using proxies doing randomly-timed clicks.
I doubt if it's that easy to generate a fully natural-looking pattern of clicks with a bot, no matter how clever the programming may be. Google has a great deal of experience in looking for artificial patterns in linking, keyword distribution, etc. on the search side of the busines, and it's reasonable to assume that such experience has been put to work on the AdWords side.
Also, as someone pointed out in the AdSense forum, any increase in the number of clicks would have to be accompanied by a significant increase in "background traffic" to prevent a suspicious-looking jump in the clickthrough rate, and the sudden increase in overall traffic would raise a red flag.
I do think that Google's fraud-detection technology is a lot more advanced than just looking for multiple clicks from the same IP address. :-)
I tend to agree that Google would most likely have the technology to detect advanced clicks patterns and identify fraudulent behaviour. But if fraudulent clicks are not displayed to us, or some standard agreed on, then we only have their word to go on.
No matter how much I like Google, how do I trust that they are not charging me for dodgy clicks if they do not explicitly show me what they charge for and what they do not.
Let alone the same question put to Overture, Espotting/Findwhat etc..
-High conversion on clicks from google search
-Very low conversion from clicks thru content sites (from users of adsense)
Also, on certain terms (example video games) content advertising gets you 100s of clicks and almost no sale! Which leads me to suspect that there is a lot of fraud going on in Adsense.
I am almost 90-100% sure that google's "technology" for detecting fraudulent clicks is not very sophisticated. Despite their exprience with detecting link farms and search spamming, I am not convinced tha the same 'technology' is applicable here.
In fact, adsense is brand new and judging by Adwords very poor availability (It goes down every day). I have my doubts on AdSense
As an advertiser I would definitely turn of content/adsense clicks. I have done that with mine anyways....
Plus...what good would ip address tracking do if the perp is masking identity thru 3rd party server?
I recently installed a tracking system for my website to monitor my ppc campaigns.
My usual click through for AdWords is less than 1%, so I was somewhat suprised when I saw 50 clicks on one keyword costing me £12. That's a 12% CTR, which is huge for me!
I checked with my tracking system and these clicks certainly seem like fraud. They all come in a very short period of time (secs and minutes), plus they clicks did not move on from the index page. They just clicked and left. Plus a large number of the clicks came from content sites.
I am 100% convinced that someone has done this to try and cost me money. I have sent Google an email about it, but probably won't hear from them for days. Does anyone else have this problem and if so what did you do? How can I get my money back?
Cheers,
Tim
-High conversion on clicks from google search
-Very low conversion from clicks thru content sites (from users of adsense)Also, on certain terms (example video games) content advertising gets you 100s of clicks and almost no sale! Which leads me to suspect that there is a lot of fraud going on in Adsense.
It's more likely that you're just getting lots of clicks from kids who aren't in a position to buy anything unless Mom or Dad says "okay" and supplies the required credit card.
It just stands to reason that some topics are less suited to content ads (or PPC ads, period) than others. Ditto for some audiences. IMHO, an editorial review of a product or service geared to grown-ups is likely to yield high-quality leads; a forum page for kids and teen-agers is more likely to attrack clicks from curiosity-seekers.
The problem with AdSense is that, as an advertiser, you have no control over where your ads appear. This probably doesn't matter a great deal if you're selling European barge cruises or torque wrenches, because your ads are likely to reach qualified target audiences. But it could be a real problem if, because of your subject matter, your ads are going to turn up on the community pages of young-game-addicts-without-credit-cards.com.
For what it's worth, I see a lot of the same advertisers on my travel-planning site month after month, so I have to assume that they're happy with the results they're getting. And some advertisers have found that content ads provide incremental revenues that they'd never be able to get otherwise:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Bottom line:
1) As an advertiser, you need to test and see what works for you.
2) If Google wants to retain content advertisers in categories that are yielding less than optimum results, it will need to offer more controls to advertisers.
BUT - regarding weather or not you trust google. Let me ask this. If you buy an ad in a magazine which is supposed to print 50,000 copies, how do you *know* that they are not printing 1000?
Like Google, you just have thier word on it. At some point in business you have to trust your suppliers or find other suppliers.
I agree that adsense is not as valuable traffic. ( i am sure that ansense publisher will be along any sec to tell me I am wrong). But I don't thinke they are as valuable.
It really depends on where the traffic is coming from. If someone has just read a review of the QUEEN MARY 2 and is eager to book a cabin, a click from that prospect is worth more than a click from someone who's heard about the ship and clicks an ad on a Google SERP to learn if he can afford the fare. It's hard to beat a prospect like the one who recently e-mailed me: "I just finished reading your review on your [Ship Name] cruise. My friend and I just booked it today. Your review helped make the final decision. It was just what I was looking for."
Also, unless you're an affiliate business that's making money on the spread, or unless you're willing to limit your market to a narrow slice of the Web population, you need to reach beyond search pages--just as successful retail businesses in the brick-and-mortar world don't limit themselves to The Yellow Pages when they're planning their advertising budgets.
You beat your own record! : )
And I should have said 'for our business' it is not a s valuable. We sell services and no matter how we track it, we get *no* conversions from content pages.
We still participate (for brand building purposes) but it is at a *much* lower max cpc.
And I should have said 'for our business' it is not a s valuable. We sell services and no matter how we track it, we get *no* conversions from content pages.
In that case, you have good reason to be skeptical. :-)
We still participate (for brand building purposes) but it is at a *much* lower max cpc.
Hmmm....Maybe that's one reason Google won't allow separate bids for search and content ads. AdWords and AdSense ads are supposed to be direct-response ads, and branding ads don't make much money for Google or for publishers!
BUT - regarding weather or not you trust google. Let me ask this. If you buy an ad in a magazine which is supposed to print 50,000 copies, how do you *know* that they are not printing 1000?
Fair point, however, if I did find out I would be asking for my money back.
Which brings me to a further point: since Internet advertising is the most measurable type of advertising available we can avoid inherent problems (like your example) found in offline advertising.
Furthermore, I see many threads here at WW describing unconfirmed fraudulent activity. I think its essential that there is a due process, and evolving guidelines on what constitutes fraudulent activity - otherwise we are at the mercy of a search engines financial targets or their morals, which ever comes first.
What buenavista mentioned earlier bears repeating:
Fraudulent clicks generate the same revenue as legitimate ones
Again, I could be wrong, maybe a search engine out there is willing to define fraudulent activity in specific terms.
