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Sorry for all the questions. Just getting really frustrated with the Overture campaign. I have an almost identical campaign in Google that gets four times the amount of conversions as in Overture.
Best way to check is if your other online campaigns have performed well/ received equally high amount of traffic for the same days in question on Overture. If you find any discrepancy, then you could probably report the relevant keywords and d ates toOverture and they will surely try to do a check.
i have had a number of refunds (ranging from $1000 upwards ) for possible fraudlent clicks.
It also depends upon how much money has been blow. If its a significant number, then you might be just lucky!
Once you have identified which terms are causing your increase (and it's probably some specific terms, not overall activity), look in your server's log files for those same periods or use whatever log analysis tools you are using to find entries that match searches for those terms in the referrer. If you are using a "tracking code" to identify your PPC referrers as suggested by the engines, your job should be as easy as filtering the logs for those codes, which should match up with what you are seeing in your reports.
If there is any obvious fraudulent activity, you should see patterns that will confirm your suspicions. This is the data you will need in order to convince Yahoo/Overture to consider giving you a refund, so keep it nice and tidy. Their first line of defense against rebates is "we already credited you for those clicks with our excellent click fraud detection program" ... ahem ...
Of course, fraudsters are a bit more sophisticated than they used to be, so patterns may not emerge cleanly. You may need to look at IP addresses within range of each other, time and geographic position relationships, and other stuff like that to find a pattern.
Good luck to you. ;)
