Amount of Fraud in PPC

Should the SEs be held legally liable?

[MovingOnUp]

After trying yet another PPC SE, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that Google and Overture are the ONLY legitimate PPC SEs out there. With Google and Overture, I get a fairly consistent percent of people who take various actions (going to a second page, adding an item to a cart, checking out, etc.). With the dozens of other PPC SE I've tried, those percents are less than 1/10th as much. Why is it that I can pay up to $0.75 per click on some keywords at Google and Overture and have a great ROI, yet those same keywords on other PPC SEs can't turn a postive ROI at $0.05, $0.03, or even $0.01 per click? What's a guy to think? At least 90% of the clicks appear to be fraudulent.

Examining the traffic, it appears that all of these other PPC SEs all have huge networks of no-name sites generating their traffic. Some of these no-name sites generate more traffic for certain keywords than Google (YEAH, RIGHT!). Yet nobody buys.

These PPC SEs that enable these fraudulent traffic generators have to be held liable. I'm sure I'm not the only webmaster who has spent thousands of dollars trying to find legitimate PPC SEs. If things continue like this, this industry is going to see some major lawsuits and government regulation.

[siebenburgen]

u r absolutely right. the only legimitate traffic is coming from the owners of search engines/portals like Yahoo or Google.

[Drackox]

The main problem in the industry is "anti-fraud" systems.

Many PPC companies are now working hard on developing these systems to increase traffic quality.

The following are companies that help develope and contribute to the anti-fraud community:

Overture
Google
7Search
FindWhat
ePilot
LookSmart
GoClick

These companies actually work with their systems as well as work with other search engines to help improve anti-fraud.

Because there are so many PPC systems out there, this may take alot more time then it took this industry to grow.

[edited by: jatar_k at 6:18 am (utc) on Oct. 17, 2006]

[MovingOnUp]

I just realized something else. Even Google's CONTENT network (AdSense, basically) produces considerably better quality traffic for me than any of the second tier PPC SEs. From my stats, conversions with traffic from Google's content network is usually about half as good as Google search traffic. Most second tier PPC SEs produce traffic that converts at about a TENTH the rate of Google.

Why can't others keep out fraudulent clicks ANYWHERE near as well as Google or Overture?

[Essex_boy]

Why can't others keep out fraudulent clicks ANYWHERE near as well as Google or Overture? - Because it would cost them money

[powerstar]

Why can't others keep out fraudulent clicks ANYWHERE near as well as Google or Overture? - Because it would cost them money. and they make money

[Mrlinux]

First of all Sorry for my english but I think that google is the worst PPC that have the internet why?
is because google adsense many many many people that work with google adsense use proxies to clicks on the ad`s, so i think that 90% of the users that enter`s to your site with adword will be Useless.

I`m sure that 90% of the publisher that works with adsense use proxies for earning some cents.

[jim2003]

Hello,

One issue with some of the second tier ppc engines is that they are not capable of geocodeing. If the only traffic you can convert is US traffic some engines will be entirely useless. It is worth checking with each engine on what % of domestic vs. international traffic they get. Most of the sites don't highlight this breakdown. Most wont tell you if you ask either. That is usually a red flag for me. The international traffic isn't fraudently per se, but it may be useless for you.

Regards,

[MovingOnUp]

Very good point, and probably a factor. For me, non-US traffic is totally useless at this time.

Still, every factor I measure shows similar proportions. If 10% of clicks from Google result in conversions, 1% of clicks from second-tier PPC SEs result in conversion. If 50% of clicks from Google result in browsing beyond the landing page, 5% of clicks from second-tier PPC SEs do. I would expect this statistic to be closer even for foreign traffic.

It's pretty obviously fraud when some of the no-name "affiliates" of these second-tier PPC SEs generate more clicks for some keywords than Google.

The second tier PPC SEs could (and should) control the fraud much better.

I agree with those who say it all comes down to money. I'm sure they get a steady supply of customers paying the $25 to $50 minimum deposit to try them out. I'm sure they get a few larger customers who don't track results and think they're getting a steal. But they're going to continue to miss out on the bulk of the PPC SE money as the professionals and those who have the ability to track aren't going to continually dump money into nonperforming PPC SEs. Plus, I think they risk some major liability against class action lawsuits by being party to the fraud.

[bostonseo]

Exactly what MovingOnUp said.

I've tried them all in a number of industries; on some I made a couple of $$$...most the $100 I put in lost just about everything.

The traffic terrible in my opinion. Always beware of a salesperson that points out that their clicks are 1/10 as expensive as Google/Overture. Why? because 0 sales x 1/10 the price will always be 0.