If your promotion strategy includes pay-per-click, listen up. You need to be aware of a few guerilla tactics that are gaining popularity - and as a result may end up hurting legitimate businesses.

If you've been even slightly in touch with the pay-per-click industry recently, you probably already know about this article, which sheds some light on what appears to be an industry based on a form of fraud where people are paid to click on online advertisements.

"A growing number of housewives, college graduates, and even working professionals across metropolitan cities are rushing to click paid Internet ads to make $100 to $200 (up to Rs 9,000) per month," the Times of India claims.

The notion behind this guerilla tactic is simple: you pay people to click on your competitors' advertisements. Since your competitors have to pay money every time an ad is clicked, you are essentially forcing them to pay for false leads.

"We are exposed to the risk of fraudulent clicks on our ads," Google admitted under the requirements of its recent IPO. "We have regularly paid refunds related to fraudulent clicks and expect to do so in the future. If we are unable to stop this fraudulent activity, these refunds may increase. If we find new evidence of past fraudulent clicks we may have to issue refunds retroactively of amounts previously paid to our Google Network members."

Mairu, an Indian member of Security Forum X admitted in a recent discussion click fraud is "happpening in India bigtime, and the people who click inadvertently don't know why they are clicking or if there is something fundamentally flawed with the fact that one can get money clicking an ad."

Even though Google maintains that it "Google closely monitors all clicks on Google AdWords ads to ensure that there is no abuse of the program," fraudulent clicks still occur in AdWords and other pay-per-click programs.

One click fraud victim reported at thread at WebmasterWorld that his Looksmart budget was reached an unusually short amount of time. Upon checking his server logs, he noticed a sudden spike in visitors coming from just a few different IP addresses - all of which happened to be in China. Apparently, he said, these visitors had clicked on the same search results repeatedly "every few minutes, all day long, for many days straight." He was billed for some of these clicks despite Looksmart's efforts to prevent charging customers for fraudulent clicks.

According to Andy Jones, a member of the Best Practices Search Engine Forums, fraudulent clicks are just another aspect of the business. "Any of us that use AdWords or any other PPC has to pay for a certain percentage of fraudulent clicks," he said in a forum discussion. "I factor it in as a cost of doing business."

If you suspect you've been the victim of click fraud, you should contact your Google representative, advises JimGuide Patrcik Hartman, a search engine optimization expert.

Click fraud victims should report the fraud immediately in order to get refunds, experts suggest, although there have been mixed views on how well Google cooperates with its click fraud victims. Some people rave about how quickly their problems were resolved, although there have been complaints that it takes continued effort to obtain refund checks from Google. "If you don't have a rep," he says, "try calling back their customer service number and demand to speak with someone that is in more of a management position than the tier1 person that you will initially talk to."

A member of Jimworld reported that Google ignored his claims of AdWords click fraud, which he says cost him thousands of dollars. After dealing with what he calls "incompetent customer service" he was forced to wait months with no response from Google. It was only after following up with a phone call and finally getting in touch with a manager that he received any compensation. Even after speaking with Google, he did not receive full compensation for the click fraud for months and was told that "the click fraud investigations team was severely backlogged."

'Infosys,' the site administrator for Security Forum X, notes, "I found that the use of Google Search to find all the scammers seeking to cheat Google Ads (and similar Pay For Click companies) to be kind of amusing and ironic. It's odd that Google doesn't do anything to block out solicitations to conspire against Google 'Pay for Click' advertisers. But then again Google makes money everytime some housewife in India, or Pakistan, or Russia or Brazil clicks on one of their ads. And every bogus click helps bolster Googles stats on 'how effective' Google Clicks are for advertisers."

Despite the frustration and loss of money click fraud costs its victims, there is hope. In this discussion flood6 offers a possible solution: "Pull the ads from 'partner sites' and only allow the ads to be displayed in the search engine result pages and on larger established sites where they would be less likely to engage in paying clickers."

Looking to the future, 'infosys' predicts, "Eventually the advertisers whose limited budgets are being syphoned off will do a Return on Investment study and figure out that they spent a lot of money and got nothing more in return than a huge traffic flow from countries where the average monthly household income is about $100 per month or less... "

When PPC disaster strikes, there are also some helpful online tools readily available.

Who's Clicking Who? is a tracking tool which tracks pay-per-click search engines to detect and (hopefully) defer click fraud. One helpful aspect of Who's Click Who? is that it can detect proxy server abuse - users coming from AOL, Prodigy and other services with multiple IP addresses. In the past, detecting individual users who share IP addresses has proven a tricky problem since most server logs can't detect it.

Claiming to be "your best friend in the battle against fraud on your pay-per-click campaigns," Click Auditor, another useful click fraud tool, lists suspicious IP addresses (IP's that click your ads repeatedly), geographic activity, unusual clicks, and competitor tracking.

Return of Investment tracker KeywordMax is also capable of detecting pay-per-click fraud and provides email alerts of suspicious behavior.

If anyone has any other tools that you'd like to add to the list, feel free to post them here!

You can get more helpful hints and tips by reading this article by Garrett or reading one of the many discussions we've had here on WebProWorld:

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=21418
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=18960

Have you been a victim of click fraud? If not, what have you done to prevent it?

Thanks for bringing this up, Brittany. This is definitely a major problem that must be dealt with by the PPC search engines. I'm sure they're now aware of it.

I would like to caution anyone who is thinking of going to the website mentioned in that India Times article. If you load the site mentioned it will attempt to load the nastiest of nasty scumware on your PC--so be warned--do not visit the website mentioned in the India Times article or you will get infected with scumware.

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The way I which I nipped this in the bud is to NOT show my AdWords on AdSense sites. I think the temptation for some AdSense users is too great.

I also believe doing this sends a message to Google that AdSense needs some sort of fraud monitoring and could force them to take action.

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hello,
These kind of things have become very regular in india, infact in Mumbai (Bombay) in the trains everyday i see couple ads here and there saying Earn money from home and all..

so when you call them to find out what it is..90% of people will give you this ad clicking job..

i don't know why people do these kind of things..

Deep

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Deep Ganatra
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Can I just reiterate that for those who didn't notice this warning...?

I didn't click the link myself but I'll be sure to avoid doing that!

Thanks for the tip, Dave! :)


$$$

check this out..

http://www.webspawner.com/users/jrsjrs/index.html

India rocks lol

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Deep Ganatra
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From what I read after reading Brittany's post, it isn't just about AdSense ads. Clicking on the ads in the serps will still have the effect of damaging the competition. AdSense fraud (boosting the affiliate earnings) does occur but the article was about scuppering the competition.

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PhilC
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hmmm... this will stop me of trying AdWords or any other PPC program. Now, back to good old SEO :)

No it's not just about Adsense ads. However, this where we were being hit with by far the most fraudulent clicks. IMO, it's logical that this is the area most prone, as not only can you hurt competetors, you can be paid to do it!

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I have for sure noticed how I have had a lot of fraudaulent clicks on my ads for "ringtones" and similar ads on Adwords. This was not a problem a few months ago but it has increased rapidly. On our last Adwords campaign we had thousands of visitors coming in to the site and leaving within 30 seconds. I can compare this to the visits from the organic search where it was a very different behaviour with around 50% leaving whithin 30 sec and the other 50% staying longer time.
I have of course discussed this with Google and I get really stupid answers from them were they try to convince me that they have such advanced clickfraud techniques... I just wonder how that system will detect the masses in India sitting and clicking the Ads, waiting the stipulated time and then go on to click the next site, wait etc. You can easily simulate a "normal" surfer behaviour with some planning. The problem really is that it is the smaller advertisers that get hit the worst by this. Since the budget is for a limited amount of clicks, if you are unlucky and get struck by the click mafia then the budget is gone quickly and no sales.
I would strongly recommend that we that are affected by this join together with a lawsuit or similar against Google. Now is the time to do it and we can surely present sufficiant evidence of manipulation of the Adsense/Adwords system. Both from our logs and from the now existing articles and proof of hiring people to do this. Since Google is aware of the situation but doesnt act to prevent it but instead makes a financial gain on it, they could be held responsible for our losses. I think also that there could be good reasons to try to get Googles Adsense program suspended until the fraud has been investigated by a the appropiate US goverment agency. Has anyone ever filed a fraud complaint in court against them? Maybe its time to do that.

A way to minimize this problem is to simply use the AdWords geo-targeting facility and limit which countries your ads appear in.

Instead of selecting the default 'All Countries' option ensure you only select countries you want to deal with. This way you can specifically exclude countries such as India, Pakistan, Brazil, & China for example. (No offence intended to people of these countries - they've just ones that were mentioned).

Of course this isn't foolproof. I can think of a couple of ways for someone in an excluded country to see ads, but probably the Indian housewife won't. (So I won't state what they are!).

The question here is “who is paying for these fraudulent clicks?”. The people who are paying for these fraudulent clicks should also be included in the lawsuit. There is no point in blaming the housewives in India. It is very easy to take your frustration out on these innocent people. It is obvious that other people are making them the pawn of their fraud. The source of the problem has to be attacked. The fraud is being launched right from your backyard. You have to find these people to eliminate this fraud. Is it possible that the PPC host companies are paying for these clicks as they benefit from these clicks? Could it be that one PPC host company is paying these people to click on other PPC company’s ads so that people will stop giving their business to the other company or is it the competition?

Please dont missunderstand me. I am targeting Google in my accusation. They are the ones running the system and also gaining at least a part of the fraudalent money. If the actual clicking is done in the US, Sweden or China doesnt really matter. Its really easy to use proxys or other technology to click on US sites from another country. I sit in Barcelona but surf daily from a proxy in California so I get the relavent Adwords when I check them. I target at least 20 countries with my ringtones and I can see the differences in clicks. It is the US that is targeted for clickfraud, europe doesnt have the same problem, very much depending on the languages I guess. Its harder to find cheap labour that understands 5 different languages.
Its no problem for a third world country "webmaster" to set up a free or cheap hosted site in the US, get Adsense on it and then start to send the traffic from his country to it. If there was an investigation on how much money this actually turns over, I think we all would be surprised.
And hey, no hard feelings towards any country or people therin, this is a global problem. Because of its big population and relativly high technology standard, India will be in the middle of this discussion.
I understand that I sound a bit hostile in my postings but after reading Googles responses to my complains to them, one can only be depressed. If thats the people thats trying to keep the standard on the internet high (no evil...), then we dont have a bright future on the internet.

Google is one target, but Overture and a few smaller PPC engines are also big targets. The bids on those engines can get very high in some industries. I've had very little to do with PPC but in the few times that I've been involved, I've not yet seen any of them run 'cleanly'.

In the past I've seen small auto-clicking programs operating successfully, but with the new industry operating in countries where pay is very low, the PPC system itself must be under threat. Google has the best chance of beating the threat because of the quality of programmers they have, and I have no doubt that they are taking steps to deal with it (they would be very foolish not to). It remains to be seen whether they are able to deal with it, as it's got to be darned difficult to differentiate between a real person who genuinely clicks and a real person who fraudulently clicks.

Proxy IPs shouldn't present a problem if an engine wants to deal with them, so the best thing for advertisers to do is limit the countries to which the ads are served - as somebody suggested above.

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PhilC
SEO articles, information and seo forums

Ah finally, a way to seperate SEM from the "pay-per-click" and "paid placement" tag.

Man, I get tied of companies saying SEOs tweak code and SEMs handle pay-per-click.

With this new problem maybe companies will finally figure out that Search engine marketing is about *marketing* on the internet.

People would really get a shock if they learned to write an article or two about their special area and posted them on PR8 sites. Not to mention what would happen with a little offline PR as well.

Here's a link to get you started:
http://www.webmasterbrain.com/prog/

Not only people.. but there is software to do this, undetected.

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Interesting I just got an answer from Google on my complaints regarding the results on my Adwords campaign, I just quote some parts of the long mail:

First they say this:
"
We understand your concern regarding the possibility of fraudulent clicks occurring to your ads. As you know, our system automatically distinguishes between clicks generated through normal use by users and clicks generated by unethical users and automated robots, enabling us to filter out fraudulent clicks. Advertisers are not charged for these clicks.

Also, when fraudulent clicks occur within our AdSense program, your account is automatically credited for any invalid clicks that may have occurred.
"

And in the next paragraph where they say they can investigate the problem:
"
The verification and research process is very time consuming, and we greatly appreciate your patience while our click investigation team reviews your account. Please allow at least 3-4 weeks for them to respond.
If you have any other additional information, please be sure to let us know so that we can include this in our review.
"
Does this make sense? They have a fraud detection system but it isnt better then any automated control system, easy to bypass if you put your mind to it.
Instead to get straight on this I will have to involve myself in a lengthy process were they check the logs manually and I recheck them etc. etc. I dont have time with this. I want to buy ads that I can trust get displayed to the right targeted customers that I pay dearly for. They seem to forget that I am a paying Adwords customer with a business to run.

If they have to check my logs manually to determine what I know, clickfraud. Then how are they going to handle the amount of sites to check when the "not so aware" webmaster starts getting serious with them about this.I dont think they have a clue of what size this problem can evolve into.
The reason that Overture and the others are not as affected as Google is because of Adsense. Adsense is a very tempting way to earn some money from a website. Since you get a percentage of the bidvalue you can earn a bit of money, of course the poorer the country the more tempting is this income.
I dont want to go on a crusade against Google, which is a great piece of technology, but I dont think they are taking this really serious and it hurts peoples business that already has a hard time in the competition.
On the SEOChat we have actually speculated of the delay for new sites to get into the serps (some call it sandbox, wich it isnt)is due to the fact that Google wants the new sites to spend some money on Adwords. It cant be explained in a logical way, but I dont want to put fire on that discussion, its just that to many things with Google dont add up and I am not the only one seeing it.

Let us start a revolution as marketers and webmasters and start demanding more for our business. Especially in the area of search engines.

This forum is a good place to get organized. I think a class action suit is a great idea. Next, ISP's for blocking legitimate email.

This was a double posting, must have done something wrong...

Over a year and half we developed a tracking system for fraudulent clicks. This tracks all duplication time and date stamps. We submit it the SE on receipt of thier bills, and we get credit for 99% of the reporting. By proving your point of fraud the SE will credit you back. We have implemented this tool on 10 sites all with success.

Why is Google taking so much of this heat? It seems to me they're doing their best to refund fraundulant click monies to us. Google just isn't the bad guy here. The people engaging in click fraud are the bad guys here. Why no cry for their heads? If we're all going to "join together" and do something, doesn't it make more sense to identify and punish the companies that are engaing in click fraud?

Hmmmmmnnnn. Maybe that would be a lot of work. Probably wouldn't be able to prove anything in court, either. We might be able to ruin their reputations, but I doubt we'd get much of a settlement.

Y'all are right. Google is easy to identify and they have nice deep pockets. Let's get 'em.

:-/

Agree! No use taking action against Google, you agree to terms and condition when you sign-up for AdWords. I bet that have this possiblity fully covered.

Google is as as much a victim of click fraud as anyone else. I bet it costs them more $$$ that any one AdWords user.

Work with Google on the problem, not against.

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Fane - is the system you developed just for your own use inhouse or is it a solution you're marketing? I looked at your website and couldn't see any mention of it.

This is very interesting. I got a little lost reading some of these posts, but I was using Overture. Early this month, my account depleated in a matter of 24 hours. I found this strange, because it never happen in any of the other months.

I did start targeting new keywords, and chalked it off, that they were highly used. However, I just ran their keyword tool, and it appears to be less active than other keywords I already had in place.

Unfortunately, I did not know about click-fraud. I had considered the possability of this several times, wondering if the system was really secure. My server logs do not keep a record this far back, but I think I am going to monitor them much more carefully each day.

I never liked that my ads where placed under a special category for the sponsored ads. It makes it much more aparent to competitiors, rather than looking to see if the link is a straight URL.

Very nice article. I'm glad I came across this post.

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For the really small and cautious ... Am I wrong in thinking that if I have a very small limit set on my daily clicks, that it would take months of fraudulent clicking to cause me any harm?

I have 4 campaigns, one has a $3/day, the other 3 have about $1/day. I can't afford any more than that (can't even really afford that much). My sales have increased a bit since I began my adwords, and I have removed 'content' ads on 3 of the 4 (image ads require content ads).

Even with their 'optimizing' my views, I can't see my ads spiking ... although it certainly could come to wasted clicks, sooner or later they'd have to tire of clicking on my links ... so few and far between.

And I think it could certainly be found out who is writing the checks to pay for the clicking housewives. There is always a trail. Anyone see "Catch Me If You Can"? ;)

I just wanted to give you guys a follow up. Several people contacted me with their own experiences after reading my article and I'd like to share a few of those responses with you now.

Perhaps some of you have had similar experiences or can at least offer advice to these members. If nothing else, it is some very eye-opening insight...

One member wrote to tell me that his company no longer uses PPC after their monthly clicks grew to over 10,000 clicks per month.

Another member wrote to share this story:

While that appears to be a different type of fraud, it still serves as a warning that things like this can and do happen.

I would say there is a more likley a 3rd option. Google are wearing the cost. As they were open and honest. Google, IMO, is in for the long haul and a very prudent business. They are not in the business of penny pinching and penalizing it's customers for things beyond their control.

When I first started using AdSense I honestlythought it was not possible for me to click the ads and give myself credit. So, I would click the ads, check out the site for things like, link exchanges, blocking competitors, price comparisons etc. This went on for about a week. Google then e-mailed me to say that they were investigating Click Fraud on my Adsense program. I emailed them straight back and told them what I was doing. 24 hours later I got a thank you email asking me to not do this, but take the URL from the status bar. Now, while not BIG $$ (only about $100.00) they still paid me this money.

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Dave
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I think that the 3rd option is very unlikely. I just can't imagine Google, or any other company, crediting/refunding the advertisers for the fraudulent clicks and still paying the commissions on them.

To stand the cost themselves they must have worked out, or estimated, actual amounts of money to refund the advertisers. If they did that, then they could very simply reduce the commissions accordingly. To me, it doesn't make sense to refund advertisers and still pay the full commissions. As it would be so simple to reduce the commissions, I see no reason for them not to do it except that they decided to turn a blind eye.

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PhilC
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You don't have to imagine. As I said, it happened to me.[/quote]

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No it didn't happen to you. You clicked a number of times on the ads on your site; Google charged the advertisers for the clicks and paid you the commissions. That's all that happened. That is not Google standing the cost themselves. That's Google charging their advertisers for a few clicks that they knew were not genuine, which is what this is about - except that the figures are very large by comparison to yours.

For Google to have stood the cost of your clicks (your 3rd option) they would have had to refund the advertisers for your clicks, and still pay you. You don't know that they refunded the advertisers - it's safe to assume that they didn't.

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PhilC
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Did they?


Considering it was the sites that were suffering from the false clicks (according to Google) complaining I think it's safe to assume they did.

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Dave
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Yes.

You can think that if you like, but I'm sorry Dave, there's no reason to suppose that Google refunded the money for your clicks to the advertisers concerned, and still paid you the commission for them - and the same goes for the story above. It makes no sense at all. Google simply isn't going to pay out many thousands of dollars when they don't have to, and when the payments aren't even expected. They are not that nice. But if you think they are, it's alright.

Incidentally, did Google tell you that the advertisers were complaining? (I'm not suggesting that they didn't tell you). Google will certainly have a monitoring system to check for same IPs clicking from same sites, so they wouldn't need any complaints from advertisers to spot what might be dodgy clicks.

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PhilC
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What a great talent you must have Phil!

No, I meant what I actually said. That is, the sites that were using Adwords (not mine) being displayed on sites using Adsense (mine) were the ones that complained.

err yes, that is right and that is why they complained.

Anyway, as you have answered "yes" to "did they?", which was questioning your statement "Google charged the advertisers for the clicks and paid you the commissions" There is little point in continuing. You have made up your mind and do not wish to have facts cloud the issue.

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Dave
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You replied as I was editing my post. Your sentence wasn't written very clearly but I did eventually understand what you meant and I changed my post.

Thank you :)

I certainly have made up my mind, but if any facts are available, please tell them to us. The only relevant facts that you have told us about is that Google paid you for your clicks. Like me, you've no idea whether or not Google refunded the advertisers for your clicks. We both have to rely on what our common sense tells us is the most likely thing to have happened. I choose to believe that Google does not pay many thousands of dollars in commissions, out of their own pocket, when they don't have to, especially when the payments are not expected. You choose to believe something else - that's fine.

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PhilC
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Yes Phil and Goodbye Phil.

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Dave
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Goodbye Dave :)

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PhilC
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I have only been online since December 2003. I used Overture my first month and although it resulted in a few sales the cost was greater than the profit. I had considered finetuning the approach and getting rid of broader based keywords but decided to go the linking approach.

It has been lots of work but I feel it's definately paying off. I'm being found for terms I never would have considered based on my page content and although the more major keywords I would like to be found under still are in the 100-300 range they are improving as well. (Just a few months ago the rankings were non-existent.)

I also find that the visitors that are generated by my link partners to be "more qualified" than the ones I get from the search engines. Maybe this is only because I sell a specialized physical product but I've decided that PPC will have to wait.

Marsha

Thank you, Brittany, for an insighful review of the looming PPC click fraud problem. Great story and research.

We've developed a score-based system -- we call it Click Inflation Index -- for combatting click fraud. An executive overview of the system was recently published on WebProNews: http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/...lickFraud.html

We hope that forum readers find it useful.

Sincerely,

The Clicklab Team