False/Rogue Clicks

84th in Serps

[jamsy]

Setup a new campaign with ONE keyword (rest sent on spreadsheet) the other day and forgot to amend the price from the minimum 5p to 80p (to get first spot).

Didnt receive any enquiries after day two and logged in to campaign to see what was happening. I noticed the new words hadn't been approved and the mistake of the ONE keyword listing at 5p made us appear 84th in the SERPS.

Then i saw the account balance was 55p less, resulting in 11 clicks for that keyword. So in essence people are going to the 8th page of results to find my client - i don't think so somehow.

The client gets a good ROI on PPC and although knowing that a bit of false clicking goes on it has never been financially beneficial to them to check this out and complain, since our hourly charges are high ;) and they get a good return anyhow.

Not trying to teach anyone how to suck eggs since we all know it goes on, but this bidding mistake just highlights how much false clicking must go on and still we wont look into it since i don't think it can ever be stopped but it may be a note of caution for you all with a lower ROI.

[TomWaits]

When we see alleged fraud, we either call them on it, or more frequently we just lower the bid, and then if that doesn't work, we simply delete the keyword. Kanoodle & ah-ha are two that I can think of where we've had to just concede that it won't stop and that some affiliate is playing games with our funds. We accept that it's the cost of doing business if we still want whatever reach the second tier PPC's have. We've got little other recourse because it takes less time to just cut the losses instead of asking a disinterested rep every time.

Heck, we had a not unsubstantial amount of alleged fraud for one day on Overture when they shut down to institute their new minimums and whatever other magic they were working, and when it stopped after that one day, I didn't call them on it. The less we get Overture looking at individual accounts the better. I live in fear every day that they're going to bring the hammer down on the thousands of terms we've spent years building up, because they've become so arbitrary and confusing.

[jehai1]

they could be using this program on you, and i think you should be using it on your competitors.
by the way, if you get blocked, try it and start it again in a few hours. it starts working again then.
<snip>

[edited by: Mike_Mackin at 5:54 pm (utc) on Feb. 27, 2003]

[Yidaki]

<snip>

They should get sued for this! What a dirty world!

[No urls please]

[edited by: Mike_Mackin at 5:55 pm (utc) on Feb. 27, 2003]

[TomWaits]

A moderator should delete that URL. That's not cool.

[daroz]

Interesting side note about that program...

It's a Java applet that someone was kind enough to include the source for. It looks like they hard-coded a few domain names to exclude from the Rogue Clicking.

Careful what you download -- I'm also not enitrely sure the compiled version was the same as the source.