Are bots paying your bills...?

[Christian_SEO]

I just had an interesting thing happen that I just HAD to share... I hope it's not too geeky for some of you.

I have a Blog at Nielsentech.blogger.com.

On this blog I have some AdSense ads.

My AdSense code is running on about small 4 sites, so I don't really know where the clicks are coming from, but I get a couple almost every day.

Well, about a week ago I added what I call a "Blog bell" link. The idea is that when someone visits the Blog, they can "ring" the bell by clicking the link and let me know they stopped by.

I just get an email that says "Ding-ding, someone rang the Blog Bell!". I know, it's pretty pointless.... since the ringer cannot send me any information about themself.

Except that I do know one thing, and that is the IP address of the sender.

Well, the bell just rang, and just who rang it...?

crawl22-public.alexa.com

So, this got me thinking, If a crawler can follow a link that triggers a script, couldn't that same crawler follow the links in the adsense ads, and other PPC links?

Sure, the bigger sites would filter for this, on both ends, I would hope...but it made me start to wonder how much of this is going on by accident, or intentionally...

Thanks,
Christian

[Dan0]

Doesn't sound likely. The Adsense ads are generated by Javascript. No URLs are present in the source code. I don't know of any spiders that will read anything generated by Javascript.

[Christian_SEO]

I agree that it's not likely for links that are in JavaScript, but I would not put it past someone to be able to build a bot that could do that...

But I think we can agree that it is not only possible, but likely there is some of this going on with the PPC text links that out there...?

Thanks,
Christian

[chopsticks]

Yes, unfortunately there has been continuing waves of PPC fraud.

I know FOR A FACT that people have written "PPC Click" apps that run across a distributed network and click on their competitors ads. (Raising operating costs for their competition)

I also know FOR A FACT that some people have taken extreme steps to build entire "PPC Click shops" in places like India.

By that I mean that someone had a website and was approved to be a parter/associate of PPC sites (Overture, LookSmart, FindWhat, Ah-Ha, Business.com, etc.)....

then they hired people in various distributed locations around the world to click on the links on their own page!

Thus, a veritable army of "Click for Profit" (not "pay per click") temp jobs have sprouted up. Students, work-at-home individuals, internet cafe owners, etc. can get a "kickback" from the company or individual that is getting paid a percentage of the PPC fee.

Obviously the highest risk keywords are those that have the highest keyword bid. (i.e. if one has a $.15 bid with LookSmart it's probably NOT going to attract as much fraud as if one had a $8.77 bid with Overture).

And, equally obvious is the fact that the PPC engines are CLAIMING to do what they can to stop the fraud. However, I'm not 100% convinced that the PPC engines don't "keep one eye shut" to some questionable activity unless their client is making a stink. (i.e. if their internal mechanisms warn them that they "might be" fraud,... yet the customer keeps stuffing more funds into the account with no complaints.. should they attempt to fix what "might" be broken?)

[Christian_SEO]

I have a comment and a question:

I think we are only seeing the tip of an iceberg that is growing larger by the hour... and I agree with you on the larger bid price keywords, but the SMART ones should know that will attract attention sooner and spread the clicks around a range of bids.

It's going to be very interesting to see how this plays out, but it makes me wonder, "Should I be thrilled to death at a 4-5% CTR at Google?", or are we being massivily ripped off?

My question? Oh yeah, are any of those shops hiring...? Maybe I could go undercover and expose some click fraud rings...?

Thanks,
Christian

[chopsticks]

I'm fairly sure you could find a job undercover (or build your own portal site that's pulling in "feeds" that would get you a PPC commission).

As far as the PPC click-through rate that you're personally getting:

I'd recommend you attempt to quantify (with correct statistic programs OR coding your own tracking system [cookies]) that a visitor who clicked through to your site DID SOMETHING.

i.e. if you have a visitor clicking through to your page but NOT clicking anything else.... then, perhaps, it's a worthless visitor (or a script). Of course it could be that your page is just weak and that the real human visitor isn't interested in the way you presented the information (but strangely enough was interested enough to click on your PPC link).

If you do your metrics & measurements based on results ONCE THE VISITOR IS ON YOUR SITE --- you'll be able to avoid overspending.

Google AdWords are better than most PPC programs in that you get to select which countries (and which langauges) your ad is displayed on. Other PPC programs don't offer that.

However, Google AdWords doesn't currently given enough data via it's own backend system (you have to utilize your own metrics & measurements).

[Christian_SEO]

I understand what you are saying. We first caught on when we found "visitors" that were only requesting a single page, and NOT the graphics on the page!

I'm sorry, but there are not THAT many people surfing with their graphics turned off...!

[urbanlady]

Google looks for fraud. In fact they accused me of fraudulent clicks in AdSense when someone downloaded my whole site using Teleport. This happens from time to time with my photography site www digitalphotoartistry.com. It just part of the cost of doing business and as long as I don't find that they are putting all my content on a site of theirs I don't particularly worry about it.

Anyway the support people at Teleport where great and told me that they thought their spyder could follow Google's Ad Sense links. They wanted to talk to Google so I put them in contact with one another. I would think Google would be very good at filtering out spyders since they are in the search engine business and probably know most of the spyders running around the net.

I think most ad networks audit their clicks to filter out potential fraud. Many also audit page views since a robot can also do that.
Google lets in many small sites so they shouldn't expect the site to keep these people out.

Regards,

Nancy Kramer
Webmaster http://www.americandreamcars.com
Free Color Picture Ads for Collector Cars
One of the Ten Best Places To Buy or Sell a Collector Car on the Web

[Christian_SEO]

Thanks Nancy, you have provided some very good information that would confirm that I was thinking, that JavaScript links CAN be followed if the bot's got what it takes to do so.

Thanks,
Chrisitian