Google and click fraud

[johnbremner]

Can anyone give me some insights into what is happening here?

I spend about £1000 a month on Google Adwords.

I decided to investigate click fraud and added a tracking code. This pops up a message when it detects fraudulent clicks after click 4 (when someone is clicking on my Adwords advert and then closing the window (or not) and clicking again immediately and repeatedly).

I fould it was happening in a lot of the content ads, but not on the search engine ads (suggesting webmasters were generating income for themselves.) I log the IPs and the individual computers used.

Anyway, I then decided to come off of the content ads, so saw my cost per day drop to about half.

Two days later, I noticed that my Adwords ads started to experience a much greater click-through ratio, bringing my cost back up to what it was before. The same ads went from a click-through of 2.4% approx. to a click through of 8% approx. My cost per day is now back to what it was before I came off Content ads.

No extra sales have resulted, so it started me thinking, and I looked at the server logs again. Most of the clicks seem to be coming from Google (but not through the Adwords ads on Google). How can there be clicks from Google that don't come from Google adwords (it just says 'Google', with lots of different IP addresses.)

The code is fine and everytime I check from whatever computer, I can trace Adwords clicks. So these are not adwords clicks and yet I am getting charged for them.

And how come if I delete a high click ad, my click through ratio soon (after about 36 hours delay) starts to go up for the remaining ads.... until my cost is back to the same.

John Bremner
PS: The website in question is www.waterfall-d-mannose.com

And who is doing these clicks?

[brian.mark]

It could be your daily spending cap that is causing what you're talking about. The more money we allow Google to use, the more clicks we get and the higher our click rate. By eliminating a bunch of clicks from the content side, you're giving them more money for the AdWords side. Eliminating a large cost ad will also give them more money for the other ads.

It's hard to explain why you're not seeing more sales though.

Brian.

[janeth]

You may want to play with the site a little. The green text is a little hard to read.

[DMC_34]

Im my expereice content search is full of fraud. Turn off content search and visitors will go down but ROI should go up.

[brian.mark]

Our area of business doesn't see the same as most. We actually have a higher conversion rate on contextual than search, which is already much higher than most industries.

I like the easy ones. :-)

Brian.

[DMC_34]

Our area of business doesn't see the same as most. We actually have a higher conversion rate on contextual than search, which is already much higher than most industries.

Ours is very much the opposite. SE's PPC's convert at a much higher rate than content hits from Adsense. We also turned it off for another reason with content search on we had a harder time staying in the bonus - (top left). I am not totally sure how content search impression factor into the CTR but I was told by our Adword rep it was. We turned it off and our cost went down to 11k a day in November 2004 with a conversion rate of 9.4%

[johnbremner]

Thanks for the input so far.

Okay, I can see that coming off the Adwords Content ads and just being on Search would give me more Search exposure, but I already had a top position on Search, (and that hasn't changed) so that still doesn't explain why the click-through ratio increased suddenly. I mean, this was for ads that I had monitored carefully and had a steady clickthrough of around 2.4% for a month or so. Then I start spending less on Google, and my reported Search Adwords clickthrough ratio rapidly climbs to the point where I'm spending the same - and it's not to do with my daily budget allocation, because I've never reached that in any case.

If I didn't know better I'd think it was somebody's job in Google to ensure that my costs are kept up - in some way. But I know Google are a very ethical company, and would never do somthing just becasue it doubled their advertising revenue.

The thing I really don't understand about this is that my ads have a tag that I can monitor so that I know where the clicks are coming from. But a lot of the clicks coming from Google don't appear to be coming from the search result Adwords - there's no search been made - because I also monitor the search words - nothing in there - so how can the ads be accessed outwith Adwords? Surely you couldn't do that unless you somehow had access from inside Google... Or am I just being paranoid?

John

[DMC_34]

Okay, I can see that coming off the Adwords Content ads and just being on Search would give me more Search exposure, but I already had a top position on Search, (and that hasn't changed) so that still doesn't explain why the click-through ratio increased suddenly.

Maybe there has been an onslaught of bladder infections? :) just kidding

[frontman]

The bottom line is click fraud period! We changed our ad to just search.....average is hitting our max per day..we are very happy. Just for the heck of it on Friday we changed it to content...by midday it showed that the impressions had already hit 156k..just off content not search..normal is 2k per day on just search....so the number of clicks was 10x as much as the search hit count was by midday........now..come on....not buying it. The search clicks was right at the normal ratio that we have seen over the past three months....the content click number was ridiculous and hard to believe..we are reviewing our logs today. something has to change...but why..G is making the big bucks and we are all still using it. Once again...the boys at G prove that their ideas are just pure Genius!

Needless to say we have changed it back to search only...content search on G is full of fraud!

[DMC_34]

Content search on G is full of fraud!

There are so many Adsense sites popping up and get rich schemes with Adsense. In the end who do you think is cutting the check, people who run content search. Forget content search

[brian.mark]

It's not always full of click fraud. For one of my ad groups, the content network was showing a high 20's conversion rate while the search conversion rate was just under 10. What was really nice is the CPC was lower on the content network and it gave us about 5 times the clicks in about double the number of impressions. Basically, the results were a ton better on that one.

A very similar group, but a different brand, was quite the opposite. I think it's something that you really need to test to see what it does for you. I've put it in a different campaign and have a low budget set for it now and that seems to really be working. I can control which ones stay on the content network and which ones don't that way.

Brian.

[DMC_34]

It's not always full of click fraud.

Maybe not for you but that is truly rare in my experience and others I know in our type of business. We spend close 50k a day in Overture, Adwords, MSN Featured Ads in November. Of which 25-30k a day goes to Google Adwords. When we run content search we spend an extra 5-10k with very little noticable difference in sales. We run WebTrends Enterprise analysis. Content search was a total waste for us. But maybe power tools = individuals where business greetings = corporate audience. Maybe that is the difference.

[brian.mark]

Maybe not for you but that is truly rare in my experience and others I know in our type of business. We spend close 50k a day in Overture, Adwords, MSN Featured Ads in November. Of which 25-30k a day goes to Google Adwords. When we run content search we spend an extra 5-10k with very little noticable difference in sales. We run WebTrends Enterprise analysis. Content search was a total waste for us. But maybe power tools = individuals where business greetings = corporate audience. Maybe that is the difference.

Actually, our PPC ads are for repair parts for those tools, not the tools themselves. Tools are such low margin that the only reason we sell them online is to get our volumes up so we can carry the parts at competitive prices. We'd need almost a 70% conversion rate to make PPC pay on most of the tools.

Click fraud varies depending on industry. Generalizing it as all click fraud doesn't do much good. If you don't test it out in each particular industry, you won't know what it is capable of doing. Maybe it is a bust... but maybe it's a goldmine in that industry. Obviously, there are going to be a lot of busts out there. But it's worth trying at least for a bit. Just make sure everythign is tracked closely.

Brian.

[DMC_34]

We'd need almost a 70% conversion rate to make PPC pay on most of the tools.

Brian.

Ouch

[scticket]

I dumped Google Adwords a year ago with the same concern, and noticed absolutely no difference in sales. I use overture also overpriced but I get far better leads and sales.

[brian.mark]

I dumped Google Adwords a year ago with the same concern, and noticed absolutely no difference in sales. I use overture also overpriced but I get far better leads and sales.

The only thing we can make money with PPC for power tools is the shopping engines. In order of profitability, it is Froogle (wonder why... LOL), Bizrate/Shopzilla, Shopping.com, Nextag, and Pricegrabber. We have tried out a few others and dropped them. Some just don't work in our market.

I'm really interested to see how Pricegrabber does once they're feeding MSN shopping with supplemental results.

Brian.