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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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
Do We Need SEO Standards?

Originally Posted by dburdon

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: Want to Know the country origin of your website and network traffic?
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]

Originally Posted by 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]

Originally Posted by dburdon

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.

[Martinscholes]

Originally Posted by 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.

Ah! Now with that information, it is clearly fraud. But by whom? It might even be by the partner search engine.

I wonder if this is like a fraud my wife and I spotted in a branch of a discount supermarket?

It turned out that the staff were running a scam. They would key the last item of the preceding shopper as the first item on the following shopper in the queue.

As nothing in the shop was much over a £1.00 or so, nobody would notice. They were not using itemised till receipts, so nobody would have noticed. And if there's an extra 50p on the bill, how would you know?

How they were found out was that my wife was doing the shopping of an elderly friend, I was doing our shopping. The last item on her shopping was a bottle of brandy, about £8.00.

Now when an item for £8.00 suddenly appeared on my bill, we went back to the store to complain. The manager went white, and handed the money over without demurring. Odd in itself.

It turned out that they were able to keep a running tab with their till system, and all of the money that was extra was kept and shared out by some of the staff.

It's possible that someone at the partner search engine runs a similar scam with every -say- 10th search. But they hit a problem in that this time they chose to use a very obscure term. With someone on the case as sharp eyed as you.

The only reason I can think that Yahoo would not seem to properly investigate such a problem is if they asked the partner search engine who would lie and tell Yahoo everything was fine.

Either that or Yahoo do not care once they have your client's money.

Of course, the above might be a load of crap, but someone defrauded your client and the people who should have investigated could not be arsed to do it. It does make you suspicious, doesn't it?

[cw1865]

Originally Posted by dburdon

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.

It looks to me like the click frauders are teaming up communicating and collectively defrauding.

[dburdon]

Martin, CW,

taking an objective look at this could reveal that both Yahoo and the partner engine both enjoy a short term benefit from Yahoo's less than vigilant approach to spurious clicks. Long term Yahoo loses as its brand is associated with theft.

Kjell,

I agree with your point. I've withdrawn most of my client sites from the Yahoo programme. Mainly due to the inferiority of their conversion costs. Sadly, I'm unhappy to be so dependent on Google.

[cw1865]

You would even think that Yahoo would be suffering in the short term as well only because advertisers should be intuitively adding the cost of click fraud into their calculations.

During Yahoo's click fraud class action, I was actually an objector to the proposed settlement and the basis of my objection was that any settlement must include an option on the part of the advertiser to preclude advertising on Yahoo's partner sites. The settlement was approved over my objection of course (I'm in NJ and I wasn't about to fly out to the Federal court in California)

[Martinscholes]

Originally Posted by cw1865

It looks to me like the click frauders are teaming up communicating and collectively defrauding.

Could they have spoofed the IP records at the partner search engine? To make it look as if they were getting the hits from 18 different IPs?

[dburdon]

Originally Posted by Martinscholes

Could they have spoofed the IP records at the partner search engine? To make it look as if they were getting the hits from 18 different IPs?

Martin,

I guess I could investigate further. But I'm fairly convinced on the basis of keyword data only that the partner search engines of Yahoo are being allowed to indulge in click fraud. Yahoo themselves benefit from this activity. I have a good keyword log, right back to the page and search term used to access my client's site. The search term used rarely ever appears in the much larger Google Adwords sample despite a much larger budget. Yet the little Yahoo partner engine keeps generating traffic for this term.

[dburdon]

Originally Posted by cw1865