yahoo click fraud

[doctor gerlis]

I am used to low levels of click fraud and have fraud detection software which detects it fairly well. It shows me that some people click 10-20 times a day.

Recently I had a surge in click activity on one word only on Overture on one specific day which evaded my software and the levels were very high -70 clicks + per day-this was repeated a few days later and now has happened on another single word. So far only standard replies from Yahoo even though it happened over a week ago.

This is really worrying as it seems that this is a new class and level of fraud-has anyone else seen this and does anyone have any suggestions?

[briggidere]

we got out of advertising with them for most of our accounts due to poor quality and fraudulant clicks.

i can only see it getting worse before it gets any better.

standard responses, we do not see any fraudulant activity.. yeah right.....

[doctor gerlis]

Brigiddere

I am surpised since my inpression up to now is that they were better quality clicks than G but this has shaken me - do you think G have the same problems? I do not see it quite so flagrantly.

[beren]

I still see fraud on Google, but not as much as I did a couple years ago. They have cleaned up some, and not got worse in any of my markets.

Yahoo, on the other hand, keeps getting worse and worse. For overall quality AdWords gives better clicks than YSM.

[doctor gerlis]

Even today I see 50 clicks one one word and 40 clicks on another -way higher than the 5-10 expected-and still no reply from Y! What is going on?

[briggidere]

are your ads in the top 3 spots by any chance?

[doctor gerlis]

Briggidiere

Yes they are - if I lower the cpc it reduces the fraud -my concern is that the fraudster is picking one word at a time and I have 66 other words in the top 3 spots so I have to watch it every day-what is the significance of yr question?

Is it robots? They are certainly evading the click fraud software VERY effectively

[briggidere]

the question was to determine the position of you ads in respect of fraud.

it is usually only the top 3 positions that get this sort of activity, but it has been known to happen further down the ranks too.

I am not sure if it would be robots as it is not a huge amount of clicks and it would be quite possible for a person to do that themselves.

i wouldn't expect a response too soon either, and wouldn't bet on getting any money back for the clicks. do you have a dedicated rep you can call to speak to them about it? if you do, i'd give them a call to see if they can do anything.

briggidere

[doctor gerlis]

Briggidere

Thanks-no I do not have a rep.

At least G do reply and I do get credits on my account for "click quality" from time to time. The companies always ask for details such as date etc of clicks and I have been v specific-I know exactly when and where the fraud is occurring -they surely can identify it in 5 seconds if they want to?

[Tropical Island]

Another trick that some of their partners use is to feature a search term on the home page.

This greatly increases the impressions for that term causing abnormally high clicks.

This issue has been discussed over the years and they (Overture) do not consider this fraud:-) Even Yahoo has done this in the past - not sure if they still do.

[doctor gerlis]

briggidere

good thought

will disable content clicks and see if it helps-