Persistent Clicking on my Ad's-Competitors

[fiu88]

How can I put a stop to this and get a refund from G....I have 1 competitor clicking approx. 10 times a day or roughly 10% of my clicks!

Thanks for any input...

[fiu88]

It might be evcentually considered illegal somehow....but you'd have to go to the Supreme Court tp prove it...Not worth it at all....\
G should step up , admit what is clear and evident, and issue an immediate refund....

UPDATE

This also has forced me to open up all old logs ( when I didnt use click detective) to find all cases of similar activity... I spend about 35 /year with G...If 10% is competitors repetitively clicking, its only right that I get my money back.... If I have to , i will enlist the services of an expert whose gone throught the process of obtaining refunds before....If it gets to that, if I'm forced to actually do that, I'll be really upset.....

They still have not really admitted anything yet.,,,,I even asked for parameters they use to determine faud. clicks...still no answer on anything...only auto-repsonders and the famous Canned answers.....

I know the Adwords guy is on here and reads...I will make my refund attempt experience very truthful and very public....

You need to be accountable to a certain extent when running a blind trust based business such as PPC.......
I hope G does the right thing ( I'm also going through this with Overture who seem much more responsive)

[victor]

If you think that wouldn't constitute fraud I strongly disagree. In fact, I'm surprised if there haven't been lawsuits filed already, and if there haven't there will be soon.

You put a link on my desktop, and then sue me for fraud when I take the invitation to click it?

I think the counter-claim for entrapment may also run all the way to the Supreme Court, but I'm much more confident of winning that, and exemplary damages too.

[bears5122]

In the end, your competitor will always be able to argue that he was offered the link and clicked it. As for Google's definition of fraud, they would be laughed out of court.

Google will need to be the ones held responsible, and it is certainly disturbing to see something as simple as this being overlooked. Of course, click fraudsters will be a step ahead of the game, but basic competitor clicking should be caught easily.

A wise moderator on this board once told me that click fraud is something you just have to live with. You need to make it part of your business and ROI model.

[Macro]

I don't take Victor's arguments that it's not fraud purely because it's not easily proven as fraud. Intent can - and is often - proven in court. If my competitor had an Adwords account himself it almost doesn't need proving that he knows how the system works. Once that is taken as undeniable it's a lot easier to claim his intent was to deplete my ad budget.

What I will agree with Victor on is that Small Claims Courts (at least here in the UK) are a joke. Most judges won't know an IP from a click from a server, and if your case needs to start by teaching a geriatric technophobe what the internet is - then you've lost. OTOH, one sometimes gets lucky. If you turn up in court for the hearing but your competitor doesn't the chances are you'll win the case because the arrogant small time guys who sit in these courts (they are not really "learned judges") feel very slighted if someone doesn't recognise their importance by dropping everything in the world and attending in person. If the defendant just send a written defence and don't attend in person I'll stake my next year's Adsense earnings that you will win the case.

[victor]

I think the solution here is very straight-forward.

Never, ever present someone with a junk link.

A junk link being, in this case, a link that they are not permitted to click.

Junk links are a form of spam: I don't want them; they cost me download time, they take up space in my browser that could be used for real links (the owners of those links probably have a real complaint against the junk link purveyor).

They are a a form of spam......Any link in my browser that is not one I am allowed to click is spam. No question.

So the real question is: how can Adwords prevent all of you continuing to spam your competitors in this way?

Perhaps there should be a law against it.

[Macro]

>>Junk links are a form of spam: I don't want them; they cost me download time,

That's the price you pay for coming to read the article that I spent a lot of time and money putting together. If you come to read that article again and again I won't charge you for bandwidth on my server or for reading the information I have on my page but I'll serve you whatever ads I want.

You have the option to click on them or not click on them. If you are coming to my article purely to repeat click on my advertiser you are damaging my business as well as his. What gives you that right?

I don't see your argument about putting ads on your desktop. I didn't. I put ads on my site which you consciously and deliberately navigated to. Time and time again.

I'm sorry but "your" actions in that case still suggest intent to damage another business. And, there are laws already to protect against malicious acts, sabotage, and a variety of other offences.

I believe your counterclaim for entrapment may cost you dearly in compensation for frivolous litigation.

[fiu88]

Still no response from Google.....
Yahoo Finance here I come........

[fiu88]

Another week has gone by...and nothing... I guess they're extremely involved in looking onto the repeated same cookied user ip's I have records of clicking...every day....

Maybe with earnings coming out...they're in a compay wide " Quiet Period"?

[fiu88]

I think I may have received a credit....It shows on the Billing Summary page on its own line as
" jan xx Adjustment ---> $#*$!.xx

There is no other indication of whatthis adjustment may be...overdelivery credits are usually indicated as such....so I dont think thats the case...