Yahoo approach to click fraud

[ncoddwell]

I have no luck with the partner network whatsoever...

[kgun]

CW,

the ability to block specific engine partners would be better.

Anyone with a good analytics programme that measures sources of conversions can see that the partner websites deliver at dubious levels.

In the particular case I've brought to attention of Yahoo I find it amazing that they refuse to analyse the log I've sent them. The client in question was one of my last that spent any money with Yahoo - £2,000 ($4,000) per month. Now its zero.

I have no luck with the partner network whatsoever...

IMO, the ability to block a specific engine partner is a sound and natural ability. It gives you some control of where your ad's are shown.

[dburdon]

That is not surprising, I am curious, what differential in conversion rates are you experiencing between a PPC from the yahoo site vis-a-vis their partner network?

CW,

I was previously down to 3 clients that were using Yahoo search marketing. The average cost per conversion on Yahoo was between 1.9 and 2.5 times the cost of Google.

When comparing like with like, similar ads, similar keywords it difficult to fathom out the difference between the two search marketing programmes. However, when I've taken a detailed look at the traffic delivered by the Yahoo programme a disproportionate amount appears to come from sources not recognised as genuine search engines.

Now Yahoo knows they have a problem with fraud from this type of traffic. And they've recently reduced the cost of partner engine clicks. But they are not explicit by who much and they don't allow you to excluded partner traffic - whereas Google does.