Yahoo approach to click fraud

[dburdon]

Yahoo's approach to suspected click fraud fails to inspire confidence. I have a client that has good organic rankings on Google and also spends large sums on Google Adwords - £10k ($20k) per month. The client recently suffered what appeared to be a click raid on the Yahoo search marketing pay per click service. The real time analytics showed searches from a non-UK based "partner" search engine repeatedly delivering clicks in a single evening for a highly obscure term. When I say obscure, the exact match data on Google shows 1 search per day for the term.

Now the chances of a tiny engine delivery 50 times more traffic than Google, are quite remote. But this is how Yahoo search marketing responded.

"We have completed our investigation of the unusual click activity you recently reported.

After carefully analysing the click trail for your account, our Loss Prevention Team has determined that there were no unqualified clicks.

You may be interested to know that we have a dedicated team of Loss Prevention specialists and a Click Protection System that vigilantly monitor click activity. We developed the Click Protection System to assist us in identifying click fraud and creating a better user experience for our advertisers. While the Advertiser Terms and Conditions agreement provides that you will be charged for all clicks on your listings, we realize that our customers are concerned about click fraud and maintaining customer satisfaction is a top priority. Therefore, even though we are not obligated to, we voluntarily designed the Click Protection System and enhance it.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can be of any further assistance."

Personally, I don't believe Yahoo have paid anything but lip service to my complaint. And at this stage I don't believe they have studied the analytics log that I sent them. Meanwhile the client, amongst many others, will be diverting even more of their spend to Google Adwords.

[kgun]

Yahoo's approach to suspected click fraud fails to inspire confidence. I have a client that has good organic rankings on Google and also spends large sums on Google Adwords - £10k ($20k) per month. The client recently suffered what appeared to be a click raid on the Yahoo search marketing pay per click service. The real time analytics showed searches from a non-UK based "partner" search engine repeatedly delivering clicks in a single evening for a highly obscure term. When I say obscure, the exact match data on Google shows 1 search per day for the term.

Now the chances of a tiny engine delivery 50 times more traffic than Google, are quite remote.

Personally, I don't believe Yahoo have paid anything but lip service to my complaint. And at this stage I don't believe they have studied the analytics log that I sent them. Meanwhile the client, amongst many others, will be diverting even more of their spend to Google Adwords.

My boldings.

David, I remember like an elephant. Here
http://www.webproworld.com/search-en...tml#post368844

SEO is not about science. SEO is not about art. SEO is a business discipline. Judge it like one. And by the way, never, never, never let the government interfere.

is what I am thinking of.

I am sure:
SEO companies that will succeed in the future online marketing business, have to use (proprietary) relatively advanced analytical methods and statistics. Your own reports and analysis should simply be better than Yahoo's.

Your own proofs will be important in disputes.

Example:

1. Recent WPW thread: http://www.webproworld.com/web-progr...tml#post370871
2. An expert with some great free downloads, robots.txt (sometimes all you need) etc: About The Project :: Browser Capabilities Project

Your own log analysis should be detailed.

It could of course have been a Bot "clicking".

[dburdon]

Kjell,

many thanks for reminding me of my previous pronouncements. There's nothing like a Scandinavian when it comes to keeping things simple. However, no, I certainly don't want the government to interfere in the process. The market - if it is efficient - should be self-regulating. However, Google with an 80%+ market share in the UK have a virtual monopoly position. Sadly Yahoo are trying to close the gap by using sub-standard partner search engines. These engines have every incentive to deliver less than genuine traffic. Yahoo, on the other hand, should be rigorously policing their behaviour. If I could buy Yahoo search marketing without their partner engines I would. But I can't.

[incrediblehelp]

I specifically dont use Google because of their downstream network and poor click fraud detecting.

[dburdon]

Jan,

a key difference between Google and Yahoo is that Google allows you to exclude partner search engines at the campaign level. Yahoo does not. The click raid problems I've witnessed with Yahoo have always come from their partner network. In my opinion Yahoo are too lax in dealing with these engines. In this particular case the engine is owned outside of UK.

[incrediblehelp]

I specifically dont use Google because of their downstream network and poor click fraud detecting.

WHOOPS. I meant to say Yahoo, not Google.

[kgun]

I found this

Could outsourcing search-advertising save Yahoo?

recent related WMW post while surfing today:

[Martinscholes]

Unless, of course, there's more to it than that?

Just suppose that the partner search engine is housed on wonky servers? Let's imagine that someone made one search for that search term. But that due to the servers and/or software being $£&*ing useless, that search term somehow becomes looped and keeps on being sent out.

Now, in a strict reading of that search request, yes, it WAS a genuine request for information at first, but that the subsequent 49 were accidental repeats.

Hmmm. I somehow can't see Yahoo saying: "Hey! You caught us! We rely on useless partner search engines with wonky servers and software to keep our service going. Sorry! How can we resolve the issue to your satisfaction?"

And whole sets of data requests could have been hit in the same way, thus that would be a very expensive problem for Yahoo to have to bite down on.

I worked at one time for a major Directory Enquiry provider in the UK. The servers were wonky and every-so-often the text service we provided would go mad and one poor sod or another would get the same text message transmitted to their phone every minute until the server was taken off line for maintenance or the terminal was turned off. And as it was a 24 hour operation, sometimes a computer could be on for several days.

And has anyone else noticed the weird crap happening with Yahoo mail?

I have several Yahoo accounts. One is very busy receiving and sending dozens of emails a day. The others are not used nearly as much. It's the heavy use account that keeps being hit by 48 hour closures because of 'suspicious activity.'

I think Yahoo have choked on their unlimited server capacity deal, so are blocking ANY account that shows heavy usage to get their overall server use down.

Closing busy mail accounts for 48 hours and pretending that they can't understand why 50 returns from a minor search engine for an obscure search term is v. unlikely does not auger well for the future of Yahoo, IMO.

[dburdon]

Martin,

an intelligent approach. I can see your point. In this particular case the suspect searches all came from a Yahoo partner search engine. I have a very good log of six hours of activity. 31 searches for the term were made via 18 different IP addresses. The term is so obscure that an exact match analysis on Google Adwords shows only 2 searches for the term over 5 days.

I have sent the data to Yahoo Search Marketing in an Excel file. I suspect they haven't even opened the file.

[kgun]

I have sent the data to Yahoo Search Marketing in an Excel file. I suspect they haven't even opened the file.

Use your money on Google.