Examining our 'test' click-through-traffic reports we noticed that during the quite hours (UK time 2 - 4 am in the morning) we were getting traffic. We thought this strange as how many 'sad cases' can there be on-line in the UK at this ungodly hour!.
Clicks like this will become the invoiced value to customers when in the 2nd week of April we go live.
When we examined our server stats we found that the clicks we in fact as a result of MSN, Google & Yahoo bots indexing our site and following the 'test' URL.
The URL link to the customer site was a simple href which went first to a click-count (asp) script adding a click count to the customer account then forwarding to the customer url.
A bot hit like this is not 'true' traffic to the customer and hence should not be charged for. We have now changed the href link to a javascript onclick="etc.etc. link. The bot is then unable to follow this link & hence no click count takes place.
But....we wonder whether Google Adsense, Overture & espotting etc have the same checks in place? especially when sponsored links are resold to partner sites.
I would also like to add that we enjoy a very good relationship with Google, Overture & Espotting and our customer are very happy with the system that we manage for them.
Food for thought...
Best Regards
But....we wonder whether Google Adsense, Overture & espotting etc have the same checks in place?
Absolutely they do. It's basic CPC fraud checking 101 stuff to filter bots and a whole lot more.
JAG
JAG
