Lots of referrals from www.com

Should I be concerned?

[jdancing]

I noticed www.com showing up in my logs a lot lately. I visited the site to see what they are and discovered that they allow sites to put a www.com search box on their sites and split the pay-per-click profits 50-50. I did a few searches and it seems that the results mirror Overture fairly closely.

My concern is that this type of set up makes click fraud fairly easy. One could put a text box on your site and have your friends do some searches on some high dollar keywords. Has anyone else seen this site in their logs. Is this a concern?

[jdancing]

If you can't beat em join 'em.

I am considering puting some www.com search boxes on my site like:

Search for "online casinos" here
Search for "search engine optimization" here
Search for "travel" here

Then split profits on some of those high dollar Overture ppcs.

[jdancing]

Update:

Since I have not received any responses I assume I am the only one getting bombarded with hits from www.com. I believe these to be bogus hits.

I have found my LookSmart and Overture clicks have tripled since WWW.COM started appearing in my Logs about a week ago.(sales have stayed the same) I had enough today after Looksmart paused my account until I add more money.

I have sent LookSmart and WWW.COM emails asking that my site be removed from the WWW.COM search results. I don't know what else I can do.

[akande]

www.com actually is an afiliate of sites such as overture, search123 and others.

www.com seems to receive quite a large amount of visitors but as with many other ppc partners they can send false visitors so you should keep a detailed log of your visitors.

[Tropical Island]

Is it just me or is the PPC business really getting sleasy these days?

[akande]

well I don't think its you and many would agree.

[hannamyluv]

these days

Was there a time when it wasn't? I always thought it always had carry over from the SEO sleeziness. ;)

[stephen]

It might be a way to help out webmaster world...

All us lovers of webmaster, could click on a few sites before going to the forums we really want to visit...

1) Money for webmaster world

2) The pay per click people would realize that this
www.com thing was a farce and bring to an end

3) But my Guess is Webmaster has the Integrity to
avoid it.

Having said that, it sure might be a way to holler the "king is naked"

Perhaps some Charity could be created by a few of the folks who frequent these pages... and we could all donate to
charity... search for online casino's and support orphanage

Orphanages

Boy's homes

Girls homes

Shelter's for Rape victims

And make the thing blatant...

When they shut it down, start another charity...

Someone could have some fun with this one....

I personally do not recommend such action, but it makes
you wonder sometimes....

[sctsai]

A lot of sites do that with the overture search in a box.

So I don't see anything wrong with that.

[hkopel]

I had a problem with something similar, with an ad I had at LookSmart. I was advertising a sexual harassment training video and b/c the word "sex" was in it, you can imagine the hits. I was able to show LookSmart that 98% of my hits were coming through this one main url and they backed me up and fixed the problem.

Helene
(www.gneil.com)