Tracking clicks from non ppc-partner sites?

why are we seeing clicks coming from parked domains that don't show ads?

[EngineWorks Inc]

Hi all,

We're able to track our traffic coming from our PPC campaigns by using some tracking info in the destination URLs.

However, we're seeing a significant portion of clicks being referred by totally non-existent websites, some of which don't even show ads at all...

for example 2007calendar.com/frames.shtml was one referrer, as are various non-resolving IP addresses and other parked domains (some of which DO show ads, but many of them don't).

For domains that DON'T show ads, or don't resolve at all, why would we see traffic coming from those pages?

Anyone have any insight or ideas?

[justageek]

What is the engine that is sending the traffic? Yahoo!, MS, Google or other? That may help explain it as it gives a clue as to who the down stream partner is and whether they are on the level.

JAG

[EngineWorks Inc]

We did some investigating, and it does look like the clicks are coming from engines that did (either now or in the past) have accounts running in their "content network" or "content match" services or whatever they choose to call their website targeting ad services.

So my guess is that at some time, these non-resolving domains had parked content on them, usually generated through these kinds of ads, and that someone (either a spider or a person) did actually click through on that page (which now simply doesn't exist anymore for whatever reason).

Thoughts on this theory?

[justageek]

I've seen that happen very often although I'm not entirely sure why. I think the down stream partners cache the advertisements for a certain amount of time so these phantom clicks just happen for sometimes days or longer than they should. The good news is that it usually only happens with lower down on the food chain search engines and usually not Google, MSN or Yahoo!

JAG