Kanoodle click fraud

[siebenburgen]

i am new on the forum, even if i use to read a lot since i began PPC campaigns a few month ago.

i've been trying Goclick, Kanoodle and Google.

Goclick brought me 100% ROI (related to net margin after all the cost,PPC included), Google 600%, and Kanoodle 300%.

lately, Google is up to 800% (after increasing my bid and ejecting traffic from Google partners).

Goclick is down to 10% since i promote a different site, but same products.

Kanoodle is down to -99%.

i suffer losses from click fraud of Kanoodle for a week and just wrote to them after receiving so many GHOST clicks. $50 is burning out daily by Ghosts, clicks counted by Kanoodle but none of my counters!
its really shameful and after the end of my last deposit, i move out to Findwhat to try it even if the click fraud is reported very high by most of its customers.
i ask for a refund that is highly justified.

will the click fraud ever stop hiting advertisers in PPC marketing world? Overture and Google pure search clicks are fabulous, but all the rest produces 0% ROI, all the findwhat, kanoodle, brainfox, mamma are just living on fake traffic from Paid-to-Read programs and their newbies always more numerous!

[TheGuyAboveYou]

This about sums it up. The supply of newbies is endless since your business is world wide online.
Not all clicks are created equal. Kanoodle is complete garbage. If you go to google and the word is $5.00 per click and then go to Kanoodle and it is 10 cents per click then, gee, I wonder why. This should raise a huge flag.

So false clicks from "click farms" will not go away.

[webpundit]

I've been facing the same problem. Costs have remained even while sales have dropped down to less than 10% of what they have been for the past year that I've had my Kanoodle campaign up.

Is this a new phase of Kanoodle click-through fraud and a harbinger of what's to come in the coming months? Or just an anomaly for this month?

Have any others had similar experiences this month?

[bigjohnt]

Kanoodle has on many occasions refunded sums based on a claim of click fraud. It is rampant. One client is US based, and serves only Us. In a highly competitive category we were getting literally hundreds of clicks per day from Uraguay, Paraguay, China, Rumania, Brazil, Argentina and Chile all at around the same time of day (night for US)
Despite pleas they could not filter, just refund after I request. Not an acutal refund, mind you, just more useless traffic. They keep the ash, and give you more of the same darn clicks. (I really like this act. "Hey, your junk is no good, I want my money back. Sure! Here, have some more junk!" In-store credit only I guess.

I have dropped them for that particular client. A "real" click may be worth $5. A thousands fraud clicks aren't worth a cent. (Though I have used them to boost raw numbers, when a client did not listen to reason regarding conversion rates, versus raw visitors. They were great to get an instant 5-10,000 visitors a week. But no conversions, to prove my point.

[blaze]

Interesting!

I used to be the only advocate around here for Kanoodle.

But yes, in the last week click-conversions have dropped to zero from like 300-400% they used to be.

So, I guess I'll just shut the door and turn off the lights on the way out..

[webpundit]

So you guys don't think this is a temporary thing? Kanoodle has gone to the dogs, so to speak?

Blaze, just like you, our conversions on Kanoodle were pretty nice too until September. Right now I'm left wondering about 2 things:

-Our course of action to get back this month's ad spending on all that junk traffic.
-Whether to give Kanoodle a second chance and see how it fares for another month.

This is so reminiscent of what happened with LookSmart once MSN dropped them, that it's spooky.

[blaze]

Well, I'm going to wait a few months and try again. They were actually pretty good when they were good.

I've sent a few emails to their customer support reps, but I just get 'tweak your campaign' emails. I think not. I use the same campaigns across all PPC engines because I certainly can not afford to spend time tweaking individual engines.

I can't really even afford to spend time posting here! But alas, I do.

[christopher]

This very scary indeed. I recently signed up with Kanoodle's free $5.00 account, although I've been unable to track my stats lately, I've had no enquiries about my services, and have no desire to make my directory PPC and scare people away.

They even sorted my keywords for me, so I assumed that they were pros. I thought Kanoodle had good Public Relations?

[edited by: seth_wilde at 9:49 pm (utc) on Sep. 24, 2004]

[Leosghost]

Kanoodle are absolute junk ...they claimed to have sent me so much traffic ..my logs said not one ...
Thankfully I had received their services as afreebee via another company..

[edited by: seth_wilde at 9:51 pm (utc) on Sep. 24, 2004]

[siebenburgen]

hey,

seems like Kanoodle is really what i thought it is.
my ROI is still 0.

my campaign on Google Adwords skyrocketed and i am very satisfied with their service. as an eu citizen, my only prob with them is billing in EUR instead of $ and also 19% VAT. totat its 40% surplus i must pay per click compared with a US advertiser.
i got the solution, i invest in a Delaware LLC with bank account atm card next month ;)

typing my site on Google, i found out that Goclick.com put my website for promotion on directories not very catholic, peni. enlargement, generic viagra... keywords that dont match with mine and this explains the low ROI.

concerning Kanoodle. they are so small, that no one has ever tried to sue them for a few $100s lost in a vast marketing campaign over 10 or 15 PPC search engines.
its time to do it i think. it will force all the others to revise their business practices and moral code.

[KanoodleDood]

Hello Seibenburgen,

We're very sorry to hear you’ve had issues with Kanoodle in the past. I would love to talk to you directly to discuss your experience and investigate your account.

Please note that within the past two weeks, we've recently removed some search partners from our keyword distribution network which we determined to be poor performers for our advertisers. We've also added quality content partners such as CBS MarketWatch, MSNBC.com and USA Today. We are striving to provide advertisers with the best possible experience: from ROI to customer service to user reports.

We've also made a lot of new additions to the team here - all of which are helping to give advertisers control and flexibility over their advertising campaigns with us. We would love to get a second chance with you - please email me so we can discuss this offline.

[webpundit]

It's good to here from a Kanoodle rep (I hope). However, that still does not answer any of the questions asked here. If you've removed keyword partners, the click-through's should be going down and not up for people like me who do not participate in the Network Placement program. I've talked to our customer rep at Kanoodle already and the best he could give me was "I don't know". I can understand it being difficult to come up with concrete answers in a fluid world like that of the Internet. But if you can't do that, perhaps you can refund the money of various mismanaged account owners?

[siebenburgen]

they use PR ppl all around the web to stop honest advertisers from flooding the internet with their bad experiences.

this thread is correct and justified, and no one will shut my mouth with a refund, bc i asked it already, but i would have to talk 1 month to get it, and even after that, i wont feel better.

Google partners flood advertisers with fraudulent clicks. so i had to disable the option in all my campaigns.

the prob with Kanoodle, is that they dont have any search engine like Yahoo (Overture) or Google. so they rely on Paid-to-Read programs that are itself hidden behind second tier search engines.

there is no direct link between Kanoodle and the scammers, but the problem for the advertiser remains the same.

listen, u the KanoodleDood, i get with Kanoodle 10 times more clicks on one keyword than i get on Google. how is possible? i let ppl make their own opinion.

the PPC business should be MUCH SMALLER in click volume, the junk click increasing and increasing every month.

[edited by: seth_wilde at 9:48 pm (utc) on Sep. 24, 2004]

[christopher]

Sort the affiliates out! Sack em - they are NOT good for business....

If anyone ever takes over kanoodle, they've got their work cut out to restore confidence.

[KanoodleDood]

Thanks for your feedback again, Seibenburgen.

Unfortunately we are all burdened with click fraud in this industry and Kanoodle is doing
everything we can to minimize this issue. Our customer service team is always here to help. Reaching out to our team is the most efficient way to resolve fraudulent clicks in our account. If however, you are not satisfied with our response, please feel free to contact me personally at [e-mail]. I am not a PR person here, instead I handle sales for our contextual advertising listings.

You can also contact our Customer Care team at [e-mail].

Thanks again and have a great weekend.

[christopher]

We don't want to listen to a 'salesperson'. Get the Managing Director/Owner in here instead.

You know since my PPC funds were at 0 from yesterday - I had 3, count them, 3 mails from you guys TODAY. I think that counts as spam, since I didn't request any mailings from you.

What do you say about that? Aggresive sales tactics or what. What's next - telesales every day.

[Leosghost]

Funny ..I was getting mails from them too all the time telling me what a huge amount of traffic they were sending me ..and how much more they could send if I gave them more money ...next they'll be emailing us from Nigeria ...as christopher said daily and sometimes multiple emails per day asking to pay for even more non delivered traffic is spam ( and maybe even given that they don't deliver the traffic which is paid for ..illegal )

[edited by: seth_wilde at 4:17 pm (utc) on Sep. 27, 2004]

[Drackox]

I see both sides to this topic. Kanoodle actually tries to reduce click fraud, however, because they have so many publishing partners, it is very hard. They recently removed a long time partner from their system, which is Seek99. You may see alot of Seek99 traffic in your logs. They were providing up to 40% of Kanoodle fraud clicks which is not good. Kanoodle is reviewing all their partners for quality now.

I hope to see their engine improve, because they had a good start, then it took a quick "U turn"

Keep an eye on them, who knows, they may actually become quite decent over time.

[blaze]

Actually .. kanoodle was pretty good. They just suddenly got completely crappy. It seemed rather sudden and it's bit too much of a coincidence that three of us are all reporting the same thing.

In the end, all the sales pitches or nay saying are meaningless to me. The fact is, it's no longer converting so I can't justify spending any time with it.

Truly nothing personal.. I'm sure you're all good folks.

[christopher]

Yep, that's the key, it's just not converting - and any window to other sites just has to give some kind of big result.

Whether it's:

Targeted Visitors
Converting
Brand Building

or just plain old Advertising exposure/page impressions, it must deliver. For if the resource delivers, then it satisfies.

Don't forget that sites like Kanoodle, Google etc don't have to 'make you money' as it's the space or reach that you are buying, but they must provide an effective means of allowing people to find you.

but when something popular doesn't do that - you must question why. I hate all this "Ours is not to reason why, but to do or die". You can't worship or follow something great, if it don't solve your problem.....

Kanoodle, yep nice image. PR potential etc etc - just one little factor that kind of matters to people - REAL visitors.

Any company that employs people to click on links, which who know that the clickers have no intention of buying anything, must be treated with absolute comtempt, and avoided like the black death. It is fraud and a form of theft, legalised theft.

[webpundit]

So far I've heard the Kanoodle guys only harping on how they are trying to minimize click-fraud by being very selective about their network partners. But what about customers like me who do not use their network program. I have my listings only set to Keyword Target but I'm still seeing a steep rise in costs and a precipitous drop in conversions.

Anybody else here who does not participate in their NPP but still has these click-through fraud problems?

[christopher]

Well I won't join any partner schemes, and I haven't seen any reference to Kanoodle in any of my logs, so I can only assume that these visits are false...

How can a once repected PPC operator get so crap so soon. That's no way to run a business, people want to feel confident and that their cash is safe.

[asianguy]

My Kanoodle traffic is crap based on experience

[ClickHere]

Long time reader, first time poster....

As a Kanoodle publisher I thought I would chime in with what I see from my end. First, they did recently drop Seek99 and about 100 other publishers. You would think that would cut down on the worthless clicks, but that doesn't seem to be the case for everybody. More importantly to me, Kanoodle used to have a blanket 1 cent bid which was crowding out some of my other advertisers. That bid is now gone, resulting in more revenue for me overall, though less from Kanoodle. I am hopeful that Kanoodle decided to bite the bullet and retrench a little to improve their reputation. I think quantity follows quality for both advertisers and publishers.

[christopher]

From what I've heard on this forum and have experienced from Kanoodle, is they don't deliver results, and they constantly spam anyone that signed up to the free $5.00 worth of clicks!

I had about 8 emails from them within a week, asking me to add more to my account. No way am I doing that.

They can just get stuffed lol.

[yuetlee122]

ClickHere, you wrote "As a Kanoodle publisher I thought I would chime in with what I see from my end"

As a publisher, I am also considering on using kanoodle, to put ads on my site. If you don't mind, i just have couple of questions...

How was the sign-up process? Did it take long to get approved? And paid?

Any other thoughts about kanoodle?

Thanks.

[siebenburgen]

Google Adsense. forget about Kanoodle. their bids are so low, u wont get anything and not sure u get paid on time.

[airpal]

Thank god somebody finally mentioned this. How did you go about getting a refund from Kanoodle for their 70% hitbot traffic? I would like to know, as I prefer not to resort to anything legal or charge-back related, and just want to end any relationship with the company. Also, do you know if they will refund you the amount left in your budget if you decide to close the campaign? Thanks.

[ClickHere]

yuetlee122, Kanoodle does not allow you to completely sign up online. They will send you a contract to sign by s-mail. It's not too painful, but it does take a few days to send things back and forth. As far as payment, this is one of my disappointments with them. As far as I can tell, you have to request a check from them. They do not automatically send out checks every month.

[siebenburgen]

airpal,
u must send them your logs for a refund.
this is what they told me.