Invalid clicks have been a concern in online advertising for years upon end. As part of Google’s search marketing services, the company has formed a Click Quality Team to answer questions and address potential and existing concerns surrounding click fraud.
There has been a bit of controversy as of late concerning click fraud, specifically in the methodology employed by third party companies in calculating invalid clicks.
Shuman Ghosemajumder even claims that ClickForensics, a firm offering independent click analysis, may be inaccurately boosting click fraud figures by nearly forty percent.
It can be difficult when deciding whom to believe in the great click fraud argument, which is why Google has decided to form a Click Quality Team of its own.
The Inside AdWords blog has a very informative post from the CQT outlining some of the major concerns voiced by advertising partners in trying to differentiate valid clicks from those that could be fraudulent.
These common questions from advertisers bear particular mention:
Concern: I’ve seen huge fluctuations in my spend, traffic, or ROI.
Review your account to see if you’ve made recent changes to your daily budget, maximum CPCs, or ad distribution preferences. Making changes to any of these can increase your reach and change your conversion rate as new visitors may have different buying patterns.
Traffic on the Google content network can also fluctuate from day to day as your ads match new sites. To better control your spend on the content network, make sure that you implement content bids or set up a separate campaign that is targeted just to the content network.
If you’re not currently tracking your conversions, we recommend that you use a conversion tracking tool, such as Google conversion tracking or Google Analytics, in order to monitor your ROI.
Concern: I have multiple clicks coming from the same IP address.
There are several legitimate reasons that you may see multiple clicks from a single IP address in your web logs. For example, if a user refreshes their browser after clicking on your ad, this may appear as multiple ad clicks in your logs, however, you are only charged for one click. Also, some service providers, such as AOL, assign the same IP address to a large number of users, so multiple users visiting your page may appear as a single IP (or a few very similar IPs).
In order to determine if clicks from the same IP address are unique, you can use auto-tagging. Auto-tagging will show you if multiple clicks were the result of a user refreshing their browser or if they represent a new click on your ad.
Advertisers who suspect invalid clicks may be taking place can petition the Click Quality team directly, expecting a response in anywhere from 3-5 business days.
While the prevalence of click fraud throughout online advertising can be debated, it appears Google is at least doing its part to help advertisers differentiate between valid and invalid clicks.
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Joe is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest ebusiness news.