Where's the 90 million dollar line?

google, 90M, 90 million, click fraud

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Cuz I'm in it.

Just to give you a little backround so you know I'm not blowing steam. I run 16 seperate PPC campaigns on close to 50 websites.

That's almost 800 different accounts in slave years. On average they have 3-10 thousand keywords each.

I spend 15+ hours per week analyzing logs, emailing the same companies about the same sh**, and playing email tag while these companies give and take funds on my companies credit cards like its monopoly money...legally.

Just in case your not privy to PPC/CPC/CPV/CPA or the rest, here's a perfect example...

(Remember, this is 1 account out of 800+)

BrainFox sent us a wonderful 800 non-US click-throughs on this peticular account. Useless to us, despite the fact I had the appropriate filters on. I busted them ,after a tedious log analysis, for 98% of my billables, during a 10 hr. period. (btw: 0 conversions)

They admitted fault (after emailing them my very detailed log file analysis),and credited my account 100%. Cool.

I posted a new campaign and had it on pause (6000 Keywords) and they activated it when the redeposited the funds.

The next day their logs showed 8000 click throughs, mine (with is cookie based), showed 1407.

Sorry to run on here, but I'm sick of answering these questions for corporate.

Last year Click Fraud (tracked click fraud...mind you) was at 16%. I have several very detailed reports showing it statistically at 30% right now, and feedback from merchants and other reports report that a majority speculate 45% and higher.

I have 6 accounts (90 campaigns) that show higher fraud traffic than genuine traffic...and a couple above 75%

GOOGLE, Overture/Yahoo, LookSmart, Miva, Lycos, SearchFeed, Search123, Kanoodle, Mamma, Turbo10, Xappa, and a dozen of you other 2-3 tier sites, learn to police your traffic better.

90 million is a grain of sand to google. It's a BONE.

Someone needs to do something. Maybe I'll start something...

[1Lit]

Sorry to hear about your pains.

Agree with you. PPC fraud is becoming unbearable. It's a neverending task to go through logs, prove fraud and then arrange for refunds.

Whey don't these tier-2 and tier-3 search engines just realise that, if choose the North America and Western Europe-only option, we ONLY want traffic from those parts of the world? Why have the option if a large percentage of the traffic you send us is from the other side of the world and converts at 0%?

[Tazzam]

Well I've been finding alot out about that, for instance;

Mive: No filter
EnHance: Filter via a phone call
Lycos: Country filter and manually entered IP blocking

And a few others. I'm just wondering if there is a better venue for conversions

[webdudek]

Tazzam

EnHance: Filter via a phone call

what kind of filter?
I asked Enhance by email if I can run a campaign for US traffic only and the answer was no.
Is it possible after all?

[Tazzam]

Yes, call EnHance directly, not email.

I actually had them put a permanent filter on mine today because I got over 100 non-US CF's and showed proof. Now, any new campaigns I open automatically have this on it.

Good Luck.

[edited by: seth_wilde at 10:56 pm (utc) on Mar. 20, 2006]

[Tazzam]

PS. They said no because the only filter the have for the US also includes Canada.

Guess who I get my crap CF's from?

[nadmedia]

Hey, why can't all the smart people at WebmasterWorld start a legitimate PPC program that works. We are webmasters and we know what works and doesn't, right? I would rather give my money to someone who is sharing the same interest. Instead of getting screwed by someone whose best interested is not to deliver quality, but instead piss off the webmaster whom has to show proof of their neglect (click fraud), lets collectively create our own PPC program knowing that all involve hate click fraud.

Our main interested would not lie with the ability to turn a click into a dollar but rather turn a click into a conversion. Focus changes to what we do best.

Currently PPC programs don't care about conversions as much as we do. They care more about charging our credit cards 3 times a day, and in some cases for clicks you have not even received yet, go figure!

So who's in?

[TypicalSurfer]

If GOOG can make that issue go away for 90 mil you'll hear the corks popping everywhere.

[gregbo]

Hey, why can't all the smart people at WebmasterWorld start a legitimate PPC program that works.

For one thing, you have to get enough sites to sign up with "good enough" traffic that the conversions cancel out the undetectable click fraud (or other "invalid clicks") and still leave a profit. That would be very difficult with most of the market locked up by G, Y!, IACI, MSN, etc.

[nadmedia]

We build the program AND we become the publishers. Instead of having - Advertiser - PPC Program - Publisher, you have - Advertiser - PPC Program combined w/ Publisher. No more middle man! Our advertisers will not have to pay for bad clicks because we control the clicks. If we put this thing together advertisers would line up knowing our best interest is in conversions and not making a buck from a click. As far as publishing goes, we could syndicate on relative trusted sites. As far as profits go we take percentage of sales or conversions, not clicks.

[webdudek]

Tazzam,
The phone call worked.
Thanks!

[Tazzam]

Great. I get good conversion from them.

[webdudek]

I started a new campaign with miva UK, I thought they might be differnet than miva US.
They are much worse. Conversion is almost zero.

[Tazzam]

I've only had success with Enhance and 7Search, and only after I got them to put a US-filter on it and sent them my non-us click every day.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

I posted all of my PPC campaigns over here: [forums.#*$!.com...]

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

I posted all of my PPC campaigns over here: [forums.#*$!.com...]
(omit info between forums and #*$!)