How can I prevent somebody from maliciously, repeatedly clicking on a pay per click?

[dougadela]

What can I do protect myself from somebody who engages in the act of repeatedly clicking on a pay per click? Is there a cookie that can be placed in my web site that would help me identify the perpetrator. I called my host, earthlink which uses Urchin, but they say that you cannot tell from the stats. I have also written Overture, but no response from them yet. Please help. Thanks, Doug

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Doug! :hi:

You cannot prevent it. It's the 'cost of doing business' via PPC and any ppc engine. They all have fraud. All you can do is document the best you can and tell Overture about it.

[french dread]

Google says to have a anti fraudulent clicks feature. I presume other PPC actors have such systems too. Though I dont know how much clicks trigger that system

[icwcorp]

I know Overture has a feature that prevents you for being repeatly charged for a click. I think it only charge you once for each click per user within a 24 hour period. I could be wrong. I assume they log the persons IP or use cookies or a combination of sorts.

Unless you're a big baller than you're probably paying less than a $1 per click. Any fraud you encounter will be minimal.

[searchrank]

I would assume if Overture did try to prevent someone for being billed for fraudulent clicks it would have to be by logging a person's IP address as people can refuse cookies. However, what about those that hide their IP address (I believe this is possible)? Also, is Overture (and other PPCs) really that concerned about it?

Bottom line is that I think it is impossible to prevent all fraudulent clicks. Best way IMO to keep them at a minimum is to try to stay away from being #1 for high $ PPC keywords and don't bid rediculously large amounts that would attract those who would just sit there and click repeatedly on your listing.

[bigDugan]

If all of the clicks are coming from a static IP address or static subnet, and you can just block that IP address or subnet on your server. This would prevent them from "hitting" your server, but still wouldn't prevent the nickel-clicking zombies from draining your ppc coffers by "clicking on" your ppc links. The ppc engines should offer each customer custom ppc link firewalls. This would allow you the abliltiy to "block" an IP address, Subnet, or Domain from hitting your links. Maybe they do, I don't know. I haven't used ppc in years.

[Papadoc]

Overture claims anti-fraud technologies and I've seen them work. However, they don't release the methods that they use as they state that doing so would only give a heads up to the guys that would try to subvert them. However, I would suspect that they use a combination method that includes IP tracking.

I do know of cases though where it hasn't worked properly. In those cases, the site owner did their own log research and submitted the reports along with the raw logs to Overture for their analysis. They did determine that a competitor was the perpetrator in each case. Overture's response was unknown except for refunding the overage to the victim. Hopefully they did more and at least learned from it but it is probably still worth watching.

And don't bid on keyword "mesothelioma"!!!

[arnaudfischer]

You should check www.mygeek.com. MyGeek allows advertisers to block specific IPs:

===========
Competitor Block
(Want to Block your competitor from clicking on your listing? Just enter their IP below. Click Here for help on how to get the correct IP)
=============

[bigDugan]

That will help. But provides little defense against a nickel-clicker that forces unsuspecting web-surfers to 'click' on your ppc link from a 'host page' using the REFRESH Meta tag. Thereby generating 'hits' from a different ip address (web-surfer) each time. :thebomb:

[dvduval]

This may be a little bit too much, but spend your money elsewhere and stop using pay-per-click. That's what I did over a year ago and I've never looked back.

[bigDugan]

I don't use PPCs any more either. Although there are people who have success with them-- what may work for one person, may not work for another. :scattered

[Cygnus]

For some reason Overture traffic simply didn't convert as well as Google Adwords traffic. Compound that we obvious fraud that Overture dragged its feet on fixing (was coming from our top competitor), and it simply made sense to focus only on Adwords for PPC traffic.

Cygnus

[polarmate]

:hi: Cygnus!! Welcome to the IHY forums!!

We used to get our best conversions through Overture till they signed up with Gator. Since then, the # of clicks has gone up and the sales generated have remained about the same - which means that ROI has dropped. One of the main reasons we're staying with Overture is that we happened to add a ton of new ads just the day before they upped the minimum bid and in the process our new ads got grandfathered at the lower bid. So its still cheaper than AdWords for those keywords.

There is no doubt, however, that AdWords is now givng us better ROI.

I am watching Sprinks now as that was our #3. I wonder if the ROI will improve now that Google will handle the ads. We're also wondering what happens to our 21 cent campaigns on ContentSprinks.

:hi: David! Good to see you again! I think it would depend largely on the type of market you are in and the number of affiliates you have out there. PPC is our lifeline for sales. We're at #4 for our mainkeyword phrase and that brings in a lot of traffic however conversions are better on the PPC ads. Our affiliates are also doing a super job with driving sales.