fraudulent clicks today

[RoySpencer]

I suppose I should be flattered that somebody has noticed us enough to make a script to produce fraudulent clicks on one of our pages. We're running over 70% CTR today, and the number of clicks we've had (150) is way more than the number of cents we've earned from them. This suggests to us that Adsense has detected the activity, and stopped any $$ transactions associated with those clicks. I also sent an e-mail to Adsense to let them know that we know it's happening. Anybody else have this happen?

[AndyJ]

Roy,

Any of us that use AdWords or any other PPC has to pay for a certain percentage of fraudulent clicks. I factor it in as a cost of doing business. Fortunately on AdWords, it can actually increase your position if it happens on a small scale.

I have had 2 occasions in the past to report a gross fraud such as yours. After supplying the AdWords team with the required information, they did in fact resolve the problem and issue a refund within about 4 weeks.

Fraud reporting on the other PPC's is a joke.

[RoySpencer]

Andy:
what do you mean by "Fortunately on AdWords, it can actually increase your position if it happens on a small scale"...just curious.

[AndyJ]

Roy,

Clicking on your ad boosts the click throuh rate. A higher CTR equals a higher position for less cost in many cases.

[byronm]

Originally posted by AndyJ
Fraud reporting on the other PPC's is a joke.

I beg to differ :)

Fraud on Google will hit an all time hi with the market saturation they are going for. I have MANY resources of people making THOUSANDS off fraud from google and i've reported these to them and they were somewhat amazed by this. You would think with the $$ and talent google has they could catch this. HOWEVER with as many sites they support and servers they run they can't give the personal detail and attention that smaller PPC's can

So while some "Small PPC's" may downright be frauds, we are happy to report we have a 0 tolerance for both our publisher and advertiser network and we work with everyone to make sure the program works best for all.

Google is in for some rough times, especially now that they will have money grubbing investors to watch out for :)

[AndyJ]

ByronM,

I was at a meeting yesterday that was specifically focused on PPC. Quite honestly, I left there amazed at the technology the Big Boys like Google and OVerture are using to detect click fraud. It made me feel immeasurably better.

However, they went into detail about the second tier PPC services. An eye opening detail was the second tier services, for the most part, are *reluctant* to institute fraud detection schemes because it subtracts from their click through numbers and market effectiveness reports. Let me put it simply, if they factored OUT the fraudulent clicks, their overall numbers would be considerably weaker.

[ihelpyou]

There is no doubt at all that fraud and detection and affiliates and such have a huge conflict of interest.

The Googles and Overtures of the world don't have as big of a problem as they are already "big" themselves. It's in their interests to have good fraud detection. But all the rest? Oh no. Andy makes a great point!

[JuniorHarris]

fraudulent clicks today

LOL!~

The title made me laugh, thinking this only happened today!~ Whew, what a relief!

NOT

I'm not even convinced the so called big boys even have as good a handle as they want you to believe. There are some pretty creative hacks out there auto generating everything from UA, referrals, and possibly IP addresses as well. The key to remember, is not to spend more then you can afford to give away. For me that's zero dinero!~;)

[byronm]

As an owner of a PPC who is notifying google of people cheating there system i *KNOW* that no matter what technology you implement it comes down to how well you personally manage your clients. Google is known to run thin on support - which with 2.5 billion from an IPO i hope would fix.

I'm glad technology has your faith towards google thinking the way you do as i have some technology that i've come across that would probably scare the pants off you.

I'm not going to post links or site names as it would just open up the cause for more people to attempt it.

The truely bad thing about Google is you are having to believe what you see and hear in meetings. NO one outside of google knows "there secret" and they're even working on patenting the idea of what they do. No one knows how publisher are or aren't credited for clicks, no one knows what percentage of revenue they get or any of that stuff. No one is allowed to even share or disclose this information if they somehow come up with that.

Is that what you call a reliable way to run your business?

Sure there *ARE* smaller PPC's that don't care about fraud, however most of these come and go like any other business doomed to fail.

However your generalization that second tier PPC's generally don't care or turn a blind eye generally upsets me as i see MORE of that and to a MUCH MORE EXTREME and even LEGALLY PROTECTED manner through the most insanely obtrusive terms of service that google has over there network. Litterally it is illegal for you to understand what you are getting or providing through google. Atleast with the smaller PPC's thare are reliable you usually see your rate, know your revenue and see your clicks and can monitor and track your advertising like any normaly company needs to do.

Google literally has many publishers "by the balls" for lack of better terms :)

[RoySpencer]

Google responded to us (with what was probably a form letter) thanking us for alerting them to the fraudulent activity, but that they monitor CTR activity and have ways of detecting fraud (I'm paraphrasing).

[byronm]

Originally posted by RoySpencer
Google responded to us (with what was probably a form letter) thanking us for alerting them to the fraudulent activity, but that they monitor CTR activity and have ways of detecting fraud (I'm paraphrasing).

Yes, i get that letter as well as sites i usually catch with fraud on our network are usually also running Adsense and i generally report them.

For example one gaming site i shutdown today was showing useragents for Windows 95 and Windows 98 and about 75% of the click through traffic was for Internet Explorer 4.01 which hasn't been used for YEARS.

No to mention not a single click from IE 6 agent or a single Windows XP user agent or Alexa bar or any other spyware agents that we see. Google's analysis and trending should have caught this rather large discrepency as well (and very may well later on hehe)

I ran nmap on the hosts that showed up as user agents and none of them matched the user agent that was sent to us.

The easiest cheat that we see being used is a Javascript clicking agent that loads the ads in a hidden iframe and then clicks on the first link (usually most expensive one). This is invoked by showing the ad to someone who visits the page so a visit just triggers the entire process.

There is also a program called "CaCa" which does something very similar as well as points the system to use a vast list of proxy severs and even has options to redial your isp (for dhcp addresses) so it looks more random.

What we do for fraud checking

1. User Agent Ident - When the server load is low/moderate we ident every host by identing there os through TCPIP ident as well as try and match to the user agent we receive from them to verify what we are getting from the click matches what we get from the user agent directly (this passes up the javascript clickers who fake agents.
2. Spelling - If we identify a client who runs a search and doesn't have about a 15% spelling mistake error - FRAUD
3. All Capitals - If we identify a client running search and every keyword is Capitalized InCorrectly In Every Instance - FRAUD
4. Always 2 or 3 odd matched keywords - Dictionary Cheater - FRAUD
5. Site getting high click throughs but has only recently been registered or has an alexa ranking of higher than 500k - FRAUD
6. We re-process our logs through NMAP to try and find and test proxy servers - these are added to a list that will receive only House Ads
7. No redundant click throughs - every click is a unique IP address - FRAUD - Sites with consistent traffic generally have duplication of ip addresses.
8. Every search is from a different IP address and none of them match - Example if someone is only searching for "car muffler" once and gone - usually fraud. It is most consistent to search for "mazda 626 muffler" and then "mazda muffler" and "cheap mazda m 626 mufflers" or something like that (atleast for a %'age of searches). If Every query is a once and done deal then there isn't any human interaction and thus 99% likely fraud.
9. No search for porn? - FRAUD. We know from statistics that on PPC searches if there isn't a ratio of really wacked out porn searches it isn't human beings.

We can go on and on, but this is the detail we spend on our clicks and we automatically credit our advertisers back for this stuff. Google also wouldn't disclose any of there processes or events that trigger fraud alerts. We will be disclosing our fraud rules on our website very shortly. We are upgrading our backend and our development staff is hard at work adding many rules and ideas.

Our biggest fraud checker coming up is a trigger that catches a subset of these rules and then presents the clicker with an image and imbeded text that unless they can read what is in it they wouldn't know they had to click or inferr anything to get to the result page. A sort of "Honey Pot" for automated clickers.

[AndyJ]

ByronM,

From a business standpoint, I spend money to make money. If a guy on the corner holding a sign advertising my business is cost effective, I will do it. My experience has shown conversion to sales is better on Google and Overture by far than any of the second tier alternatives. I know I am paying for fraudulent clicks to a certain extent but I am also making a profit even with the fraudulent clicks factored in. I feel the lower conversions on the second tier services are because they do not have market share in the more desirable venues AND a much higher per centage of the clicks are fraudulent. It is simply not cost effective to spend my money there.

The amount of a PPC bid is NOT based on just being the highest bidder. I have the figures available that show what a new client is worth to me. Out of that amount, I determine what I am willing to spend to acquire that client. It is simple math.

If a new client is worth $200, I may decide I am willing to pay 25% or $50 to acquire that client, this is my CPA (Cost per Acquisition). Now for the tricky part.

(These are real figures) One of my client's websites averages 25% conversion to sales lead. Out of those leads, 30% will buy the product in 30 days. So, out of 5000 visitors (clicks), 1250 will turn into business leads and 375 of them will subsequently purchase the product. 7.5 % of the 5000 clicks will generate revenue for my client. So , that $50 CPA has to cover not only the buyer but the other 13 or 14 out of a hundred who don't buy. Multiply $50 by 7.5% and I get $3.75. That is my target bid. I can spend that much per click and still make $150 per sale profit.

Google and Overture don't have me 'by the balls' and I am NOT making generalizations about the second tier engines. I have researched the market, tried various services and I spend my money on what works -- all of it based on facts; not generalizations and opinions.

The bottom line is what it is.

[byronm]

Originally posted by AndyJ


Google and Overture don't have me 'by the balls' and I am NOT making generalizations about the second tier engines. I have researched the market, tried various services and I spend my money on what works -- all of it based on facts; not generalizations and opinions.

The bottom line is what it is.

This is the Adsense forum right? For publishers? The "by the balls" comment was geared toward the publishers and publishers commiting fraud or inciting fraud. Not the advertisers.

My advertisers don't really know (or care) what goes on behind the scenes as long as they make the conversions that they are bidding for.

But you would be pissed if you paid a middle man to hold your signs on the street corner and they were there only for 5 minutes and then through your ads into the garbage and billed you for the entire amount wouldn't you?

Advertising is always a game of chance and risk, understandable. However i'm just trying to bring out that secondary PPC's aren't any worse at fraud protection than the "primary" ones and that through carefull analysis and personal services the secondary PPC's can do alot better job then what alot of people in these forums care to give credit for.

[byronm]

Oh, and i'm not here to point fingers or say anyone is doing anything WRONG :)

I'm just here to share the thoughts of the little guy that tries hehe

We value our clients and our publishers, but we make sure that both understand they need each other to survive and to excell in this industry there has to be some give or take on both sides.

Some clicks could be web spiders indexing sites and following links, some clicks could be an ad to close to the scroll bar and clicked by accident. We aren't going to raise a red flag for these however being a small PPC engine we can afford the personal service and attention to have quick resolution of disputes and to provide a quality of service that the bigger ones just can't do.

If we get bigger we will make sure we staff to keep ourselves in touch with the clients as we fill this is the biggest mistake of the big boys and that is what is leaving us the window of opportinity that we see as the reason for our existance and the reason we do so well :)

[AndyJ]

Originally posted by byronm
Oh, and i'm not here to point fingers or say anyone is doing anything WRONG :)


ByronM,

You did manage to point several fingers directly at Google and cast some serious aspersions. Your comments read like you are running them down while touting all the while how good you are. Not the best business move IMHO.

The point I am making is that I don't care if Brin et al meet every morning in Moutain View,CA wearing pointy hats with moons and stars on them and throw chicken bones in a bubbling cauldron.

What they are doing works for me -- and for my clients. I will keep looking for more things that work too.

The bottom line is what it is.

[Webmaster T]

I think there is some truth to the opinion that second tier PPC providers do seem to have more fraudulent clicks, especially on a % of clicks basis. For one thing it is easier to spot because there are fewer clicks so fraud almost jumps out and grabs your attention. Are Google and Overture doing as much as they could/should. IMO, no, itemized clicks would provide transparent and easy detection of fraud. Google can provide this info to AdSense partners why shouldn't they provide the same transparency to those paying for the service. It seems they are withholding that info for reasons which I don't wish to speculate on.

I have 1 client using PPC and I have reluctantly become involved with it. Presently we figure he is paying me $25 to get a $50 dollar refund. AndyJ IMO, has the right attitude, treat fraud as a cost of doing business and don't stress over it. I have told the client that if the ROI isn't there drop the bid that is almost sure to get less fraudulent clicks because it is harder for perpetrators to hide in the volume and $ are less likely to attract their attention.

[Papadoc]

The biggest concern that I have on this is with regard to abuse through AOL. If you have a largely consumer base, it makes sense that a much higher percentage of your users will be AOL and I would think, harder to track abuse.

Now I am sure that most PPCs also factor in the ISP and therefore, could easily set a flag for location. A national site based out of Atlanta that somehow got 70% CTR from the same ISP out of GA would certainly scream FRAUD. Not so with AOL as they all come out of VA and each page click may show up as the same or a different IP. As we all know, it is impossible to track these users geographically and you have to completely discount geographic location with AOL users.

We also know that Google sets a cookie that doesn't scream GOOGLE, and so someone would have to know what to look for. But it can be found. I realize that this post is speculative, but I've also learned that where there is a buck to be made, some greedly little sucker will figure out ways to try and capitalize, but...

Say you have a publisher that did a little research and found out that your CPC rate is pretty high... maybe a few dollars per click, sets up several computers with different OS, different resolutions, different browser versions... but nothing too odd like IE 4.02. He uses standard setups like 800 or 1024, 98, 2000, and XP, and running some version of 5.5 or greater, and so on. Sometimes he could use the AOL browser, sometimes the IE browser.

Then he logs on with AOL to click on a few ads, then cleans out the history, cookies, and files, then logs on to do it again, many times each day with each computer. As long as he keeps his CTR to a reasonable number like maybe under 10%, isn't he likely to get away with it?

The reason why I ask is that I think this is what is happening to a couple of clients from two different perspectives, one an advertiser and the other a publisher.

We believe this is happening to the publisher because he's got a few pages that don't rank high yet and it is presently buried about 3 clicks deep. But 90% of the traffic on this one page is from AOL vs a max of 42% on any other page and doesn't have a referrer. We set up an AdSense channel to track these two pages and he's also looking at about a 90% CTR which is rediculous. Sure, the guy is racking up a buttload of numbers in his AdSense account now, but the concern of course is that G is going to see this and call FRAUD on him. I suspect a competitor publisher is trying to do damage.

The other client is an advertiser. His specialty can cost him $15-30 per click depending upon the exact keyword and what everyone else is bidding. Now, even at a 1/2% conversion, he would still make nice money on it at this rate, but his CTR is at about 8% on the most expensive keyword while it had been running at about 1% last year. And of course the AOL clients coming through are at near zero conversion. We figured about $7,000 worth of useless AOL hits in a month. BTW, the ads are very explicit and the same as what they were when his CTR was at 1%. We tried setting cookies to identify repeat visitors, but to no avail. If this is a publisher out to make money, we cannot point to logs and say 'this user has been back to this page only 10 times today. Assuming the same user, this person is deleting cookies between sessions.

We are about to try and make this case to G, but wonder if there is any way that we can point to anything besides our CTR to make this case. He has certainly not been contacted by G either. Does anyone have any idea as to whay G might be using that could help track AOL users?

[byronm]

Originally posted by AndyJ
ByronM,

You did manage to point several fingers directly at Google and cast some serious aspersions. Your comments read like you are running them down while touting all the while how good you are. Not the best business move IMHO.

The point I am making is that I don't care if Brin et al meet every morning in Moutain View,CA wearing pointy hats with moons and stars on them and throw chicken bones in a bubbling cauldron.

What they are doing works for me -- and for my clients. I will keep looking for more things that work too.

The bottom line is what it is.

I think people are totally mis-interpreting my statements. I am saying that there are faults on both networks and yes, you just have to deal with it. However if you think for one second you don't have to wear your Foil hat working with google or overture your lying to yourself.

I'm not here to say the sky is falling, i'm simply stating that networks work for you as much as you work for them. If you don't have trust in a situation going into it your most certainly not going to attack it with an open mind and learn to work with it.

Your statement is the blind leading the blind and i don't agree with it. And yes, i stand by my statements that google is using insane terms of services and same with Yahoo to restrict, prohibit and most importantly CONTROL what you can or can't do.

Google and Yahoo's market share is getting so insanely big that it ins't good for the internet as a whole as withn the next few years if you can't "Pay to Play" then what the internet thrived on for the past decade will cease to exist.

Google and Yahoo are the reason i'm building Mozdex and the reason i'm going to fold my PPC into mozdex. We are working with academia to make searching a "FACT" based process based on procedures and algorithims. Our company is being built as the freedom of information, freedom of technology and the right to use. Everything that Google and Yahoo are striving to CRUSH competition through patents, corporate buyouts and consolidations.

If you feel that your safe in that method then best of luck to you my friend.

Accustations or not, i'm pointing out the obvious issues that google has as being a large network with very restrictive policies and yahoo quickly following that path as well.

Advertising is advertising and you win some and you loose some, i'm not disputing that. Just standing up for the companies that do work hard for there clients and putting a foot down at the broad generalizations and acceptance that only the overtures and googles of the world are the only solutions when NO ONE HAS ANY INSIGHT INTO THEM.

Trust is a two way street.. i find it remarkebly interesting to see how everyone trusts google when things are good and raises red flags when things are bad but has NO knowledge of why they are good and bad. sure, you can have faith in google working and many do, however us smaller networks have that same faith and there is no reason to generalize good or bad based on names but based on how well the program works for you and how well you work to make it succeed.

[byronm]

Originally posted by Papadoc
The biggest concern that I have on this is with regard to abuse through AOL. If you have a largely consumer base, it makes sense that a much higher percentage of your users will be AOL and I would think, harder to track abuse.


This is a well known cheat - Luckily you can do geotargeting on these users and see that if your getting xyz clicks from the same area day after day after day in some sort of timed/systematic fashion you can cancel them.

Most aol users have dns that shows the network they're dialing into so they would have to do lots of long distance calling to break that check.

[PeterS]

myway.com has been reported time after time for click fraud and yet they are still connected.

Look at this ---->
Refer URL
http://www.mywebsearch.com/jsp/GGmain.jsp?searchfor=Sexual
Health&st=dns&ptnrS=ZSzeb029&nr=Hea&tpr=ps0
http://ki.mysearch.myway.com/jsp/GGmain.jsp?searchfor=Sexual Health&st=bar&ptnrS=KI&nr=Hea&tpr=null0
http://kd.mysearch.myway.com/jsp/GGmain.jsp?searchfor=Sexual Health&st=bar&ptnrS=KD&nr=Hea&tpr=null0
http://mysearch.myway.com/jsp/GGmain.jsp?searchfor=Sexual Health&st=site&ptnrS=&nr=Hea&tpr=null0
http://ms101.mysearch.com/jsp/GGmain.jsp?searchfor=Sexual Health&st=&ptnrS=&nr=Hea&tpr=null0
http://ki.mysearch.myway.com/jsp/GGmain.jsp?searchfor=Sexual Health&st=bar&ptnrS=KI&nr=Hea&tpr=ps0
http://www.mywebsearch.com/jsp/GGmain.jsp?searchfor=Sexual
Health&st=bar&ptnrS=ZSzeb029&nr=Hea&tpr=ps0
http://www.mywebsearch.com/jsp/GGmain.jsp?searchfor=Sexual
Health&st=bar&ptnrS=ZSzeb029&nr=Hea&tpr=null0
http://kf.mysearch.myway.com/jsp/GGmain.jsp?searchfor=Sexual Health&st=bar&ptnrS=KF&nr=Hea&tpr=null0

Thousand more!

Here the myway gang has target "Sexual Health" and gets thousand for it. But . . . You cant contact them either . . .

Domain: myway.com
Submitted: 2004/05/06 09:48:33

Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.

Errors in Registrant Information:
Name:INCORRECT
Address:INCORRECT
Phone:INCORRECT
Email:INCORRECT
Description:
All of their information is erroneous and owner is activity involved in a fraudulent search engine scam, scamming the public and infecting machines. There is no way to contact them, the telephone, loops backs to the same message over and over.

domain@staff.myway.com on Thu, 6 May 2004 12:20:51 -0400
The recipient name is not recognized
The MTS-ID of the original message is: c=us;a=
;p=ctc?bulldog;l=MARS0405061620KLPM0C84
MSEXCH:IMS:CTC_Bulldog:BULLDOG:MARS 0 (000C05A6) Unknown Recipient

Errors in Administrative Contact Information:
Name:INCORRECT
Address:INCORRECT
Phone:INCORRECT
Email:INCORRECT
Description:
All information is erroneous

Explanation:
All of their information is erroneous and owner is activity involved in a fraudulent search engine scam, scamming the public and infecting machines. There is no way to contact them, the telephone, loops backs to the same message over and over.

[Papadoc]

Originally posted by byronm
This is a well known cheat - Luckily you can do geotargeting on these users and see that if your getting xyz clicks from the same area day after day after day in some sort of timed/systematic fashion you can cancel them.

Most aol users have dns that shows the network they're dialing into so they would have to do lots of long distance calling to break that check.

A bit more info if you don't mind. The info that I am seeing all points to VA if I am not mistaken. Is there another way to come up with this?

Thanks

[PeterS]

It is not just dns, but the ip addresses of the perps and they can run through proxies too. But, always the guy who pays them knows who they are and where they are and just how many clicks were involved.

Myway.com is part of Iwon and Excite . . . This rabbit whole is deep, and I used to think e-mail spam was bad!

I did report them to ICANN for their BS Domain Info. :-)


ATB,

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums PeterS! :hi:

Yes, myway is a well known crook. Always has been, always will be.

It's a shame there are not internet police that daily follow and handcuff these type fraudsters. Just think how many millions of crooks are on the internet? myway are scum. They are just as bad as scumware people. They are one of the worse of the worse.

[Papadoc]

Originally posted by PeterS
It is not just dns, but the ip addresses of the perps and they can run through proxies too. But, always the guy who pays them knows who they are and where they are and just how many clicks were involved.

I would like to think so but I've also seen an awful lot of advertisers that have to take their logs to G to show that it is coming from a certain source in order to get refunded. Not that I blame G. They have a huge distribution and sites that launch millions of clicks a month and advertisers that spend every day what mine did in a month. They cannot watch it all and their rules have to be slack enough or everything gets red-flagged. A local site with much local traffic or one that gets a big write up in local media is going to see many AOLers coming through the same dialup.

So DNS cannot be the answer to it all and I have a hard time believing that G knows it all. As far as I can determine, IP is a moot point with AOL because you could have a single request being shared on multiple IP addresses and no one user has access to any given IP address at any time, except perhaps AOL broadband.

I was just hoping to see if there was something else we could point to.

[WebSavvy]

Originally posted by byronm
This is a well known cheat - Luckily you can do geotargeting on these users and see that if your getting xyz clicks from the same area day after day after day in some sort of timed/systematic fashion you can cancel them.

Most aol users have dns that shows the network they're dialing into so they would have to do lots of long distance calling to break that check.
Using geo-targeting for AOL is not always accurate. For example, I am an AOL user and have been for 8 years. I physically live in Illinois, USA. I dial in through the local network located here, but my IP address range shows that I am in AU, when this is not correct.

Then, adding further complication, AOL generates a new IP address with every page I view and within the same session.

So, if I view 40 threads in here in 1 hr. I will have shown 40 different IP addresses used in here in that time span, with the IP location being AU.

[RoySpencer]

Wow..and all we had was 1 day with fradulent clicks...I didn't mean to open Pandora's Box.

[WebSavvy]

It's a good thread Roy. PPC fraud is just one of those things that come with the Internet landscape. It's by having discussions like this that we learn from one another, to help prevent the problems.

There are ways to detect it, but not to stop it. Having good detection saves your clients money, and puts the scammers out of work.

Automated clicking is very easy to detect. Even when some of the new software comes out there's still ways you can do things to make it harder for them.

If an ad company offered a mixed package for advertising, such ads for X-clicks, ads for flat monthly rate, and ads for X-impressions, it'd stop a lot of the PPC fraud because the "clicker" wouldn't know what ad package the advertiser chose.

However, when you're going to run an "affiliate" program for your ads, to pay others for clicks sent from your ads on their sites, it's unavoidable that there will be fraud involved.

Things in the virtual world aren't so different from the brick and mortar world. No matter what world it is, there's always going to be someone, somewhere, who wants something for nothing.

[Quadrille]

Not that I blame G. They have a huge distribution and sites that launch millions of clicks a month and advertisers that spend every day what mine did in a month. They cannot watch it all and their rules have to be slack enough or everything gets red-flagged ... and I have a hard time believing that G knows it all.

Quite agree. As a machine-focussed company, Google must always depend on user feedback to know where to tweak next, with Adsense just as much as Search. However good their defenses, there will always be a new scam just around the corner, that will slip under the radar - until identified by users, then managed by Google with a software upgrade.

I buy and sell on eBaY, which has exactly the same problem; millions of honest transactions, but it's the few scams that make the headlines - and people still have not learned that eBay has to be told before it can act; software just is never enough for detecting new scams, and the cost of human monitoring everything would be frightening.

Google, unlike most of its competitors (and unlike eBaY) has always taken feedback seriously - they're a lot more Open Source than they'd have you believe ;)

[JFS]

I am glad to see that this subject of click fraud with Google is being addressed finally. My experience is somewhat different from what some of you have reported:
Last August (2003) we signed up for Conversion Ruler. This opened our eyes to a huge click fraud problem from both Overture and Google. (Interestingly, the secondary search engines did not appear to have much of a problem.) We collected statistics and sent them to both Overture and Google. Overture responded immediately and refunded us many thousands of dollars. (And whether related or not, Overture had a larger number of administrative updated downtimes in the month of September. At the end of this time, the fraudulent clicks were gone and have never come back.)

Now Google was an entirely different story. To this date they still have not refunded us the thousands that they owe us in fraud. Instead they would kind of retaliate. (Sending obscure keywords that were rarely used to the front of content ads at high costs, etc.) My perusing of forums at the time showed that few were talking about click fraud on Google, and those that did alluded to retaliation that they feared, or had experienced. Google did refund about $300 for a couple of 5 cent keywords. Although the fraud did abate for a while, it is back again, with about 50% of the clicks on our most important (and expensive) keywords fraudulent. Granted, the rate we pay is probably much less because of the higher click through rate. Which does make one wonder if it is worth it to dispute, or to just figure it as a cost of doing business?

I was just curious how others received refunds from Google. (yes, we sent them statistics showing that the Conversion Ruler stats correlated well with our weblogs). And did you receive lower rankings and/or retaliation as a result of your fraud request?

[pcarlow]

Recently I decided to cancel all my Google AdWords campaigns. Unfortunatley my most profitable keyword began receiving fraudulent clicks from one of my competitors. I emailed Google with some numbers and they just emailed me a form a letter back saying "thanks, but we have stuff to catch this" of course in more words.

It's ashame because I was actually starting to show a nice profit but I wasn't going to stand by and watch all the money I had made the past couple of months get clicked out the window.

[AndyJ]

Originally posted by pcarlow
Recently I decided to cancel all my Google AdWords campaigns. Unfortunatley my most profitable keyword began receiving fraudulent clicks from one of my competitors. I emailed Google with some numbers and they just emailed me a form a letter back saying "thanks, but we have stuff to catch this" of course in more words.

Pcarlow,

I have initiated several fraudulent click reports with Google. They always send an email requesting specific info. To wit (direct quote):

"1) The keyword(s) associated with invalid clicks.
2) The related URL(s) of ad(s) receiving invalid clicks.
3) Suspicious IP address(es) (this information may be found via web logs).
4) The date(s) and time (s) of each invalid click activity.
5) A paragraph describing the trends in logs and/or reports that led you to believe the click activity is fraudulent."

If you have the info to back up yor claim, the move forward with a thorough investigation. I would think they get plenty of vague assertions DAILY that "my competitor is clicking my ads". Be prepared to back up your claim if you want them to investigate.

[pcarlow]

Thanks, that's good advice. Unfortunately there's not much I can prove. I was sending traffic directly to an affiliate url so I do not have the server logs.

[AndyJ]

Originally posted by pcarlow
Thanks, that's good advice. Unfortunately there's not much I can prove. I was sending traffic directly to an affiliate url so I do not have the server logs.

Pcarlow,

Glad we got that cleared up -- your post made it sound like Google summarily dismissed your complaint with little regard.

[pcarlow]

Originally posted by AndyJ
your post made it sound like Google summarily dismissed your complaint with little regard.

Well, they did sorta. But it's not really their fault. There's nothing they or I can do about it if I can't back it up with hard facts. It's just the nature of the beast.

I would of felt better I had I received some form of personal communication, but on the other hand, I completely understand why Google doesn't and can't hire people to answer ever single email by hand.

I was just using this post to vent some and I guess Google deserves the clarification you provided.

[AndyJ]

Originally posted by pcarlow

I was just using this post to vent some and I guess Google deserves the clarification you provided.

Well said Pcarlow. Stick around long enough and they will send you a toll free support number.

[Papadoc]

Originally posted by pcarlow
Unfortunately there's not much I can prove. I was sending traffic directly to an affiliate url so I do not have the server logs.
I would suspect if they have a $5K per day advertiser that complains of significant fraud, and there is a risk of losing that client, they will initiate their own investigation to the best of their ability, whatever that is.

However, considering the volume of advertisers they have and the penchant for some people to complain and let someone else figure out if there is any validity to their claim, I'm surprised that G even goes this far. Many people will automatically claim fraud, just to see if it can get them refunded something, others because they are not getting the sales they expected, or they just don't understand the process. I would also suspect that they have their share of people who make this claim every week or every month without the first shred of evidence, just a hunch.

I have no way of knowing stats, but would be surprised if they didn't send that email out 1000 times per day and only get 1 or 2 back with real info. Not that there isn't more fraud than that, just that there are few people who have a valid claim and are willing to put the time and effort into proving it.