Paying for clicks that do not exist?

[webgurl]

This is not click fraud, this is Googles reporting of clicks I am questioning.

A new site I have has two counters on it. One is from my logs, the other is a third party I added myself and gives exact URL referrers.

Adwords says 14 clicks. My stats show only 1 referrer from my Adwords ad.

This does concern me as the 'little people' of the world, trying to get legitimate traffic from Adwords are happy to pay, if they are 'real' clicks. BUT, do these clicks really exist?

I have read all about Google law suites etc regarding click fraud and have in the past asked Google if they can produce evidence of the clicks in a situation where I was receiving too many clicks due to Fun Web Products. I got a refund. They would not tell me how they calculated the refund when asked.

I often think I am throwing my money away, well, making the Google share holders richer!

[dburdon]

Webgurl,

I'd tend to agree with your statement. I monitor a number of client sites. On at least one the adwords reported clicks exceed the the total number of clicks the site receives. This is even thought the site definitely recieves organic traffic from other engines. I've been thinking of publishing a study.

At this stage its only a few clicks here and there. Worth no more than £1 or £2 per day. But there's some inaccuracy somewhere.

[iwebgeek]

I've noticed the same kind of thing with Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing).

Just several clicks here and there that don't jibe with my Google Analytics logs.

[RFA]

When you check for referrer, make sure you includes google syndication. Clicks can come directly from search on Google and from content search from other syndicated website. Also, depending on your stat software, it will not always report all the referrers but the main ones which often left you with guessing where the rest comes from... just a thought...

Regards,

[spenland]

I've noticed similar problems with my logs as well. I believe part of the problem lies with the fact that your server may not register a hit until a user has loaded the page, while Google will count a click even if the user hits the back button immediately. I've noticed this to be especially true if you are using popular keywords.

I would recommend disabling all the Content Match for your keywords as well, as those sites are rampant with click fraud and click bots.

[iwebgeek]

Thanks to this post, I was spurred to look at my reports closely and I found a large difference in clicks. Yahoo (Overture) reported 44 clicks but Google Analytics only reported about 16 referrals. And yes I'm including any sites that Yahoo syndicates PPC's to.

I've contacted customer service with Yahoo. I'll see what they have to say.

[Cyclops]

I have noticed the same problem, I have each term in its own ad group with a tracking system in place for each term.
Now I have noticed that Google are billing me for more clicks than my tracking tells me are coming through, it adds up to about $3/5 per day
I had assumed it was because of the time difference and Google doesn't report live but it happens every day and there was still a discrepancy when I checked the weekly figures

I questioned Google about this a few weeks ago but never received a response.

Another way for Google to boost its revenue, it's bad enough that they they won't admit click fraud exists.

[TheGarty]

What we need is a third party go-between company that keeps the buggers honest...

I know of those crappy whosclickingwho etc.. but i question how good thier stats are aswell.

Does anyone know of any better software to track this?

[isharli]

I have had the same experience with Google - I thought it was my mistake, but I have repeatedly been charged for a higher number of clicks than what my tracking software says.

Very frustrating for the small business....

And there appears to be no recourse!

[SemAdvance]

Something many of you seem to be missing is a click does not mean the visitor made it to your site.

There are many people who will click a link or ad and if it takes too long for the site to load will close the window. Others will hit the back button before the page loads and others still will receive time out messages.

There are a great many people on dial up who will also experience the same issues and will leave your page before it loads fully if you are image heavy.

Since the page never fully loaded you are charged for the click but you never received any hits...

The industry average for this occurance is said to be between 20 & 30 %

Hope this helps clear up what many feel is fraud....it is not.

[fivetone]

Google's Adwords reports don't even match up with their own Analytics reports. Many, many posters in the Google groups have complained of this.

[digantsavalia]

Possibilities:

1) Google doesnt report in real time.
2) Visitors closed the window before your server received the hit.
3) Your server was down.

If not either of these - must be thing to chase up with Google. Best luck.

[cabolet]

If it is true that 20% to 30% of click we pay for are not real visitors, I would expect that Google have to give a refund for that and change the click software asap. It might not be click fraud, but I think it is not legal to charge money for a service you not deliver. The click software can easily check if the page fully is shown. Google and other search engines might not like to do that as then 20% to 30%of their revenues will blown away.
I think its time to tell Google to make a more transparent payment system in where a customer really sees what he get for his money otherwise someday the company will face a huge claim of millions of customers who want there money back!

[digantsavalia]

Possibilities:

1) Google doesnt report in real time.
2) Visitors closed the window before your server received the hit.
3) Your server was down.

If not either of these - must be something to chase up with Google. Best luck.

[digantsavalia]

One more thing: check your adwords account to see if Google has paid you back for any fraud clicks. If yes, that would be your answer! :-)

[DrTandem1]

Google noted in its IPO filing with the SEC that click fraud is their biggest vulnerability. I doubt that Google is misreporting clicks to your site. I agree with the opinion that the clicks are not being allowed to actually get to your site.

Most likely, I think this is mostly due to click fraud on average. I'm sure contributing factors are paths being down, servers being slow and pages that have huge file sizes that a visitor just uses their browser's Back button before the page loads.

At present, Google has no motivation to correct this. To them, every click is revenue. With their stock price down and investors seeing that Google is in trouble, they want every penny from every account.

They count on the fact that most advertisers won't compare their web logs to their AdSense tally. If they do, most will assume they have missed something in their calculations such as the reasons posted by others here.

[PumaSpirit]

How they (Google, etc.) can get away with doing business like that, without disclosure, beats me.
Aren't there laws against that? lol

Personally, I have always felt that ppc's are rip-offs because as a webmaster or SEO we have little no control whatsoever and they can obviously just bill us without being accountable.

Who goes to a store to buy the box, trusting the merchant that the content is what (s)he says it is and that it really has the value you are asked to pay for it?

I have been sitting on the fence about ppc's since they were "invented", observing and listening and by what I hear it seems I'll be there for a while and unless things change where WE make some money via better quality results, disclosure and accountability I'll probably stay there forever. :) Does anybody have success stories to tell about ppc?

May I ask, what kind of software ya'll use to track these clicks? I appreciate your help. Thanks

[eddster]

We've seen this too. It seems that the only reason there's not more attention drawn to this, is that most people don't have accurate logs of activity on/to their website.

[dburdon]

I suggest an experiment.
In Google Adwords campaign settings:

1. Unclick the "search network" button
2. Unclick the "content network" button
3. Monitor your Google Adwords reported clicks against your log files/analytics package for a week.
4. Look for variations between Google sourced clicks and Google Adwords sourced clicks.

[eddster]

We use a tracking variable on the link in the advert. Either way, this will be utilised, surely(?) and show up in the database. Still we see a discrepancy. Let me know if I'm wrong in this assumption!

[TrafficProducer]

they want every penny from every account.

Yes! this is so true.

Once Shareholders got there hands on Google it was the beginning of the end...

The money grabbing so and so's...

But what about advertisers? Don't they even need they every penny from every click?

Most advertisers do not have the budget of Google and are struggling to justify using PPC when a number of these click have little chance of resulting in sales.

It is said that some advertisers, those with bigger budgets, can allow for click fraud... Well at this time they may be able to.

How to advertise websites. Methods of internet advertising and promotion. Here are some advertising methods that you may have considered to promote websites.

[SemAdvance]

Well actually the problem is not just Googles I have had the same response from many forms of advertising where I pay for traffic to be sent to websites. Rentalist, Ask.com, adbrite.com, aol.com, Overture.com Yahoo SEM, all will tell you the same thing...

All clicks will not equal a fully qualified visitor.

So most often the discrepencies occur due to the websites fault and not the advertiser.

Are your pages to W3C standards??

Shared or dedicated server?
Shared? 6 sites or 600 sites on the server??

Website images optimized for the web??

Load time over 5 seconds??? those clicks are leaving no time for you!!!!!

Did you test your website load time on different broadband and dial up connections?? Nope most don't.

there are many more questions you need to ask yourself before claimning click fraud.

Check yourself before checking the advertiser.

As someone who manages over 25 client campaigns in various high target keyword industries... I see very little fraud... compared to website, server, and connectivity issues that stop clicks from becoming uniques.

My 1.5 cents

[pemburung]

Cabolet, and others. While I can't comment on actual click fraud, surely the agreement with Google is for them to place your link prominently on a relevant query page. If the link looks good to someone, and they click on it, Google has done its job, and deserves to be paid. Just because perhaps your website is slow to load, the first part shows the searcher that the site is not what they want (is your description inaccurate?), the searcher changes their mind, or any other outside behavior not Google's responsibility, doesn't mean they haven't kept up their part of the bargain. You got someone to click on the link to your site - that's the deal. After that, it's up to you to land them, due to good technology, good landing page, or whatever.