What % of clicks do you put down to competitors clicking on your ads.
That is why you should use lots of tracking, choose your top dollar keywords wisely, and take part in niche keywords that are less popular, yet will bring traffic at a fraction of the cost with less competition.
KG
And if you're in a market where there are thousands of clicks per day, I'm sure a few clicks by your competitor aren't going to damage your budget too much...
If I'm just curious about the competition, I do a right click, copy the shortcut and parse out just the URL and open in a new window.
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BTW, that's more than rumors about the "armies", I was hit in waves until I learned some. And the armies are coming here now. Read up on "get paid to read ads" programs available in the US and other western countries. Great source of easy, though small, income for retirees, etc.
patient2all
much of it is benign, just checking to see what they are up to, what their ad leads to. most everyone has done it at one point or another.
...but some of it is plain out fraud - especially when you see high $$$ keywords, where someone knows they can give a few clicks a week and waste a lot of your money.
The first step is to find out if, and how much, it is biting into your bottom line. You need to know if the problem is worth spending your time on - you'll never be able to stop it entirely. Is your conversion rate on-par with industry averages? What's the average number of clicks to that ad by the same IP - it might be something people compare on alot - in which case you should be prepared for some in-session repeats.
Ask some of your contacts in the industry (if you know them well enough) what average conversion rates are. If they're telling you 3% and you're getting 0.5% then either your site needs a makeover, they're giving you BS or you've got some issues. You have to decide yourself based on the evidence.
What can you do?
Invest in some software
A good few log analysis software and some specialist programs (I'm not going to name them here) offer click fraud detection. The way they do it (mainly) is by recording IP addresses and monitoring repeat clicks by those IP's. If a certain IP resolves to your competitor, and you find that they're clicking repeatedly, there's a good chance you've got a bad fish nibbling on
your bait.
Detect it yourself
This is tedious, but certainly possible, depending on your access to your logs/webserver. You have to correlate IP addresses to adwords ads and then do a lookup on those IP's.
Watch individual keywords
Another good thing to check is if the repeat clicks usually focus on the same keywords. I've had one competitor (who's particularly miffed about a number 1 spot) clicking on my ad for a particular keyphrase for a while now.
He's number 2 and he's not happy about it. What he doesn't understand is that the more he clicks, the higher my CTR goes and the more I can lower my CPC. I would estimate that I'm paying 1/4 of what he's paying per click, and I'm in the first position.
Why don't I do something? Because it's not biting into my bottom line - it's a great high-volume keyphrase and I know the revenue difference between the first and second position and I'm still making a killing. Mostly because of the high CTR (obviously the high CTR isn't just due to him).
What can you do if it becomes too much?
Carefully and lucidly document the evidence, send it to Google and consult a good lawyer. Those are the only things you should do. Do not send Google or your competitor angry emails.
The PPC armies of the third world
If you suspect that you're the target of one of these campaigns, go to Google immediately. Present your evidence and hope that they go with it. In my opinion this problem is overestimated - at least in the industries I play around in.
much of it is benign, just checking to see what they are up to, what their ad leads to. most everyone has done it at one point or another.
I stated the same in a thread and the insults haven't stopped yet!
[webmasterworld.com...]
If competitors clicking on my ad means that my conversion rate goes up by $0.10 then I can't say I'm too bothered. If I'm paying thousands, a few more bucks doesn't make a difference to me. I agree with the post regarding staying away from the "money terms". If everyone above me is offering double digits per click I stay away from that keyword as you can be sure fraud clickers will be coming soon ...
Although the CTR was very high the conversation rate was, well, bar humbug. ZERO.
I have completely pulled out. Fraud or not. Product that we are selling just doesn't appeal online as a Xmas gift (under Xmas keywords, because other keywords are converting very well), I'm not sure.
Be careful out there if you are bidding under Xmas keywords is all I would say on that.
If competitors clicking on my ad means that my conversion rate goes up by $0.10 then I can't say I'm too bothered. If I'm paying thousands, a few more bucks doesn't make a difference to me.
Spot on, internetheaven. Same as a 1-800 number in the yellow pages, IMHO. A competitor calling that 800 number does happen, but doesn't necessarily make that 800 number any less valuable.
