adwords fraud clicks from competitors?

[oneoddsock]

Just wondered how I should go about reporting this to google and what action are they likely to take?

A way to help prevent this becoming to much of an issue would be to allow the negatives keyword list to include IP addresses. I could then spot an offender add them to the list and prevent further abuse?

Thanks,

oos

[bostonseo]

I recently read a report about competitor click fraud; it mostly focused on Overture. The conclusion, competitor click fraud is the highest source of click fraud.

[oneoddsock]

well, I received a reply from AdWords Support which was a standard reply asking me to report suspicious clicks via the webform.

which would be useful information except that's actually what I had done in the first place.

The reply I received said it would take 3-4 weeks for then to respond. So I submitted another report - with more apache log entries showing the fraudulent clicks and I guess I'll wait..

google mailed me to ask for my views on their handling of the matter (what handling) and I asked they could include IP addresses in the negative keywords section to stop ads being shown to certain IPs. If that were possible it would fix the issue from my point of view :)

oos

[edited by: mona at 2:36 pm (utc) on Feb. 15, 2006]

[venrooy]

"and I asked they could include IP addresses in the negative keywords section to stop ads being shown to certain IPs."

Although that would work to solve the click abuse problem, it would create another problem. It could be used to prevent competitors from seeing an ad - Thus the competitor may think that his ad is #1 in the search when actually he just doesn't see all of the ads. It would cause confusion for sure.

Maybe if there was a way to show the ads, but preventing certain IPs a click thru.

[briggidere]

venrooy,

you said "It would cause confusion for sure"

is that not what google try to do anyway to keep you guessing?

[venrooy]

"is that not what google try to do anyway to keep you guessing?"

It is true - sometimes the secrecy of their formulas is enough to get under my skin. But we shouldn't let them take away one of the few clues we have.