Click Fraud - Don’t be a Victim!
Some StatCounter members have recently shared with us their stories about they used StatCounter
to help identify and prevent Click Fraud. You can read about one case here.
As a result of this, we decided to put together this guide to Click Fraud and explain how StatCounter can help you too…
First let’s explain Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising…
PPC advertising is offered by many ad networks. With this type of advertising you pay each time your advert is clicked. The cost of PPC advertising can vary considerably from less than 10 cents to over $25 per click.
Advertisers often have a budget per month for PPC advertising.
For example, if you have a budget of $500 per month for PPC advertising and pay $1 per click, this means that in any month, you can pay for a maximum of 500 clicks on your adverts.
If you get 500 clicks on Day 1, then your budget is spent and your site will not receive any more advertising for the remainder of the month.
What is Click Fraud?
Click Fraud occurs when individuals or automated computers click on an advert without having any interest in the product/service advertised. Click Fraud is performed, instead, simply to generate a cost for the advertiser (without any chance of making a sale) and consume the advertiser’s budget.
Who would commit Click Fraud and who benefits?
Here are some examples of the people who might commit Click Fraud:
- The Competitor
It’s possible for your competitors to search for and click your adverts in order to use up your advertising budget.
If you have a budget for 500 clicks per month, for example, one of your competitors can “use up” any number of these clicks. Your competitor is hoping that this will mean less business for you and more for him. The end result is that you pay for 500 clicks per month, but only some of these are valid. The earlier case study we mentioned is a prime example of this kind of Click Fraud.
The Publisher
When you sign up with an advertising network, your adverts may be shown on numerous different websites. These websites are known as “publishers” as they “publish” adverts. These publisher websites are often paid more if they can secure more clicks on the adverts they display. This can entice some publishers to (dishonestly) click on the adverts they display on their sites or even employ third parties to click the ads on their behalf. They do this in order to boost the advertising revenue that they, the publishers, earn. The end result is that you are paying for adverts that are NOT going to bring you any sales - instead your hard earned cash is being fraudulently obtained by the publisher.
Disgruntled Employee
Unfortunately, some people who find themselves dissatisfied with their job/working conditions/salary look for ways to “get back” at their employer. One way they can do this is to continuously search for and click your adverts in order to use up your advertising budget. The end result of this is that you are again paying for advertising that can never bring you any sales. You may be paying for 500 clicks per month in the hopes of reaching 500 potential customers… but, taking out the fraudulent clicks, you may only be making contact with a much smaller number of potential clients.
Click Fraud - what YOU can do about it
If you use PPC advertising, it is vital that you monitor the visitors to your website and watch for indicators of suspicious click activity. Otherwise, you may be spending your hard earned cash on advertising that won’t be of any benefit to your business.
The first step in trying to identify Click Fraud is to understand the usual stats that you can expect from your visitors. Get to know the normal level of activity on your site by frequently reviewing your StatCounter stats and watching for patterns and trends. When you know what to expect in general from your stats, it becomes much easier to identify any unusual activity.
Here are some important points to watch if you are worried about Click Fraud, together with examples of how you can use your StatCounter stats to protect yourself from this cybercrime.
- Repeat Visits from Same IP Address
This is the FIRST thing to look for if you are trying to identify Click Fraud. Repeated visits from the same IP could be legitimate e.g. several visits from different people in the one organization… but they could also be indicative of suspicious activity e.g. a competitor repeatedly clicking your adverts.Use the Recent Visitor Activity information from your StatCounter stats to identify repeated instances of the same IP hitting your site.
When you review your Recent Visitor Activity, keep the following points in mind.
(1) Look at the Number of Entries for each visitor. This tells you the number of times that this IP appears in your detailed log file. If one visitor regularly takes up an unusually large portion of the slots in your log file, then this may be an indication of suspicious activity.
(2) Look at the number of Returning Visits. An unusually high number of returning visits may indicate suspicious clicks on your site.
(3) Look at the information about the IP Address of your visitors. Depending on their computer/internet set-up, you may be able to identify what corporation or organization your visitors are from. Repeated visits from a competitor may signify Click Fraud.
(4) Use the StatCounter Label IP Address function to label any IP addresses about which you become suspicious. This will help you to keep track of future activity from this same visitor on your site.
-
Time Spent on Site
Looking at the time visitors spend on your site can also help you
identify instances of Click Fraud. For example, automated bots designed to commit Click Fraud will generally only spend a very short time on your site. If you establish how long the average visitor spends on your site, then you can identify and monitor suspiciously short visits. Use your StatCounter Visit Length stat to track the time visitors spend on your site.
-
Country Breakdown
As we mentioned earlier, some unscrupulous publishers have outsourced the task of committing Click Fraud
to fraudulently increase their profits at your expense. Many of these third party Click Fraud operations are located in countries such as India, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, Romania and Russia. If you get an unexpected number of clicks from any of these countries, this could mean that you are a victim of Click Fraud. Use the StatCounter Recent Visitor Map to identify the geographical breakdown of your visitors.
Click Fraud - The Conclusions
No-one is immune to Click Fraud and, although the advertising networks can and do screen out some instances of this practice, they do not catch all illegal activity. It’s up to all of us who pay for PPC advertising to make sure that we don’t fall victim to this crime.
The methods employed to commit Click Fraud are becoming ever more sophisticated and it probably isn’t even possible to identify all instances of this activity, but using the suggestions in this article you should be able to better protect yourself from this fraudulent practice.
Please feel free to share any other ideas about how to detect and prevent Click Fraud in the comments section below!
UPDATE: How NOT to be a Victim of Click Fraud
Further to some questions posted in the comments below, we want to emphasize that it’s almost impossible to stop people fraudulently clicking your adverts… but it IS possible to minimize your financial loss because of this activity. See the case study we mention in the first paragraph of the article.
You only become a VICTIM of Click Fraud IF it ends up costing you money. If you can identify it and report it to your ad network you can claim a refund. This means that you don’t lose any cash because of this deceitful practice.
Also, if you can identify that a competitor is committing Click Fraud, then make direct contact with them. The possibility of legal action is usually enough to prevent them from engaging in Click Fraud at your expense in the future.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I think you never can stop clickfraude.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Click Fraud is dangerous for small advertisers with low everyday budget.
Google Adwords knows about this problem and periodically recalculate your ads expences. So, don’t worry - be happy)))
PS. Don’t place your spam urls in StatCounter Comments - read more about nofollow tag)
November 5th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Great article about “Click Fraud”, however, in your list of possible supspects you forgot to mention the group with the most $motive$ to commit click fraud, the Advertiser Networks themselves.
Seems like a no-brainer to me but they don’t make any money unless your ads are clicked…and while Statcounter is a fantastic tool to help detect a blatant attack by a competitor, IMO, I would’nt be so worried about the competitors as much as the random 1 pageview clicks that are a quick and easy way to eat up your budget. Let’s all be real and admit there is no concrete way to stop it.
STATCOUNTER ROCKS!!!!!
November 5th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
This is why i left google adsense because I was being click bomb to death. From what I was able to tell I was being click bomb by other publishers. I do think that there could be more done to help stop click fraud.
So then I went with another company and I can not be click bomb now.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Hi,
Great post i think your review the essencial of what click fraud is. A good way to detected potencial click fraud is using the visitor Path feature of Statcounter. (Works with some websites)
If a lot of activity is made in a website (viewing/query several pages) and the click happens that a good indication of not being a fraudelent click. isn’t it?
To finish this may not apply with all websites, for example with the above image since the visitors only view one or two pages at a time.
Keep the good work!
November 5th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Hi Again,
I’m posting some information about my case in light that you could help me out.
Comparing Statcounter stats and Google Adsense stats!
5th November 2008
STATCOUNTER
—————-
Site 1: 2 clicks
Site 2: 16 clicks (logged from 19:18:37 until now, sorry not enough money to purchase statcounter yet)
Site 3: 3 Clicks
Site 4: 1 click
Google Adsense
—————-
2 clicks (I use generic google adsense code, so no channel is specified)
Is this all click fraud, it doesn’t seems to me. It appears that someone is eating my earnings. Also i’m thinking in creating an online petion in order to make us (Publishers) pre acept the advertisers that adsense puts on our sites. What you think?
Thanks for your time.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Bula all,
This is all good reading, and a bit scary really. I just got scammed by a fraud on my google adwords. Someone got into my google adwords account that I was using to advertise my vacation rental house in Fiji and ran their own campaign at my expense. Has anyone else ever had this happen. Made me really gun shy about starting again. Google has suspended my account while it all gets sorted.
Vinaka
Grant
http://www.afijiholiday.com
November 6th, 2008 at 2:37 am
hi all,
this post will be a great help if you can monitor your stats every minute..
November 6th, 2008 at 2:51 am
Click Fraud can’t be stopped….especially if it’s a network of people ie. a forum, etc. that decide to take down someone together. They’re located all over the world.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Google Takes into account the IP Address, Mac Address, Cookies , CTR, Click Pattern etc when marking the click as valid or invalid. Yes, around 27% of clicks on adsense networks are Invalid but we can be rest assured that Masterminds at Google Plex will sort that out. its an operating expense and it should be considered that there will be click fraud when doing PPC.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:47 am
I had a someone clicking my ads, sometimes 30 times a day. Statcounter gave me IP & times. I was able to define the geographic region in my ad account and I create an ad just for him. I created a landing page, just for him! Then I watched,….. click,… he shows up on the landing page with a message just for him. I listed the dates, times and his city. That was the last time he ever clicked one of my ads. Ha ha ha
November 6th, 2008 at 6:20 am
How come that Romania is in that list ? What proof do you have when saying that ? Any recent reports including firms from Romania doing click fraud ?
StatCounter Team Response:
Hi Razvan,
While there are of course many reputable people and companies in Romania, it is our experience that there are a significant number of Click Fraud operations in Romania also. If you research some of the firms operating in this industry then you do find that many are based in Romania, India, Nigeria and the other locations we mention. We are not providing links as we are not prepared to support what these companies do. Our view re Romania is shared by others also for example in articles here and here.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:21 am
There are commercially available “click safe” software available which activates once on unique ip address / user clicks more than 3 ads on any publishers site. It can be used to show alternative ad networks, or turn off adsense, etc.
Not sure of the name of the product, there might be more than one, but it seems like a good idea overall.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Forgive me, but something didn’t quite connect the dots. I understand how to identify the fraudulent clickers, but how do I stop them from clicking?
Thanks,
Paul
StatCounter Team Response:
Hi Paul,
It’s almost impossible to stop people fraudulently clicking your adverts… but it IS possible to make sure you don’t lose money because of this activity. See the case study we mention in the first paragraph of the article.
You only become a VICTIM of Click Fraud IF it ends up costing you money. If you can identify it and report it to your ad network you can claim a refund. This means that you don’t lose any cash because of this deceitful practice.
Also, if you can identify that a competitor is committing Click Fraud, then make direct contact with them. The possibility of legal action is usually enough to prevent them from engaging in Click Fraud at your expense in the future.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:07 am
How to stop click fraud?
Paul Hastings your question “… but how do I stop them from clicking?”
got me thinking how sometimes forms require a user to verify a group of letters or numbers in a field so as to validate the form is submitted by a human and not a bot.
I wonder if there is a way to add a script to an ad script that might activate a type of verification method once the ad is clicked.
For example - I go in a site and I page through it and get to an ad I want to explore. I click it but a small box appears and asks if I really want to navigate away. Then it might say somewhere in the box click here to continue away.
Does this sound feasible? Too much hassle? Not user/ buyer friendly?
November 6th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Thanks for informing us of Click Fraud and ways of resolving this activity.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
“Many of these third party Click Fraud operations are located in countries such as India, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, Romania and Russia. ” - Tip: If you experiencing this issue, the best way to avoid this kind of click fraud is to limit your advertising system to display ads only in trusted countries - most advertising networks can be fine tuned by geographical regions.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
[...] bookmarks tagged repeated Click Fraud - Don’t be a Victim! saved by 4 others erin1209 bookmarked on 11/06/08 | [...]
November 6th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
[...] Click Fraud - Don’t be a Victim! [...]
November 6th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Another look at it is something I experienced a few months ago. I have been signed up with certain affiliate sites, and noticed I was diverting some amount of traffic to these affiliates, but nothing was being registered with the company ie daily clicks where displayed as 0. I made contact, and it was found out I was owed money after all.
November 6th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I will take the opportuinity of this post to send my message to Google accounts who disabled my Adsense account recently for invalid clicks without any explanation or warning. After they disabled my Adsense account it occured to me to check my Adwords accounts only to discover that I paid $ thousands for click fraud so I stopped all my ads. I lost 2 months revenue in Adsense and Google would not discuss or tell you why, because as they say, this would help people learn how Google detects click fraud. Let me tell you that any techniques based on IP address and cookies they are using are useless. These things can be reset every second these days and I can give you simple software that can do this. IN FEW WORDS, PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE. The solution for this would be pay per result advertising. No body is going to click on an ad who is not interested in the product and going to pay for it.
This reminds me of a small incedent years ago when I started Adsense on my site, I clicked on a Google ad I was honestly interested in it and followed the pages untill I bought the product and paid for it with my Master Card. Moments later I received an email from Google accounts telling me NOT to click on my own ads. That was a first warning and if it is repeated my account would be disabled. years passed by since then and my adsense account was making only few dollars a day. recently my account started making more, and of course Google keeps 2 months revenue unpaid at anytime. and this was the right time to disable the account.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Hi,
Useful article about click fraud and how statcounter is useful in finding the activities.
I’ve visited the site.
The admin posts that google returns the fund for the clickfraud activity.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
very interesting article relevant to my business. thanks a lot statcounter. very useful.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
I have a adsense site but no problems here! Try use clickfraud software protection…
November 6th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
My business has been killed by click fraud. I quite a lot of research on the issue and click fraud is big business that is perpetrated by well organised, very sophisticated and determined criminal organisations.
Google has long stopped repeated clicks from the same IP. More likely the clicks are coming from compromised computers (botnets - of which there are millions in the world) or click farms, etc.
To identify click fraud look for spikes in Click through rate and especially Cost Per thousand impressions (CPM). However, these are less useful as indicators as there is now large scale impression fraud (as I say, the people who do this are very sophisticated).
If you find your company being killed (as I did), Google (which profits from click fraud and therefore has no incentive to do anything about it) will do absolutely nothing to help you.
Pay per click is one of the biggest frauds the world has ever seen.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
One of the better overviews of PPC. Regardless of what the big three have to say about it, they’re only in it for them. They won’t curb it nearly as much as someone in your organization that actively monitors the traffic.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Thanks for the very informative post on Click Fraud…….I agree with some of the other comments in that pay per click advertising is not worth the effort…..it may have worked in the past but today its a waste of time and money………..
November 6th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
thanks for the wonderful information. But is ppc a better way to promote? You have to pay more to the consultant than you pay to google!
November 6th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
No umaianime, you are wrong. at the end of the day its all about ROI, you have to be really very competitive in order to justify the ppc spending. instead of running whole 100% of the ad budget it makes sense to give 10% of it to a professional company who will manage it for you.
As far as click fraud is concerned, we all know it is going to be there as after all no one can measure the “intention to click”.
As in our industry of dui and mesothelioma lawyers , keywords cost more than 90$ per click to google for 1 click and so you can imagine the click fraud in the lawyers industry. But what we have experienced is that once a competitor clicks our ads, yes we get charged for that but for any click(s) after that Google does a very smart job of validating them based on their behaviour
Remember, Google has recorded their mac address +ip address + cookies + ctr signature and their behaviour on clicking the Google adsense ads while browsing from day 1. So since we know that competitors are trying hard to deplete the budgets of competitors (remember some of our industry keywords are more than $90 per click), Google does a very smart job and does a behaviour analysis of those competitors and not credit invalid clicks to advertiser.
But think of it like this, if its costing us $600 (4 valid + 2 invalid clicks) to win a client that will get us 12,000$ , Does click fraud then really matters?
November 6th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Awesome information. Definitely good ways to help track click fraud. Plus it will get people checking their stat counters more… which is good for people advertising on statcounter.
Anyhow, I don’t know why you wouldn’t be checking your stat counter often, as statcounter.com rocks! Thanks for all the good work you do!
November 6th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Fantastic information you provide here StatCounter, the Impact Media case study is interesting. PPC has many benefits if used wisely and hopefully this post will help a lot of people see how click fraud can be avoided. Great stuff as always StatCounter.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Thanks for the information - but it does work both ways…!
When originally looking into Adsense, I noticed on quite a few websites you would click the link - then nothing..! So when I added the Adsense code onto my webpages (around 30 pages or so) the first thing I did was click on the links to check they were directing my browser to the advertised page.
Within just a few days or so I was banned from Adsense..! I guess it’s my own fault, but I just imagined Google would not count my own clicks on my own website.
Dogh..!
November 6th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Your view of Romania is very wrong… You and the ones that wrote the articles don’t even know where it is on the map and I bet you don’t even know it’s in EU.
I will never pay for your services. EVER.
StatCounter Team Response:
Hi there,
We’re terribly sorry to hear that you are upset, but it is our experience that a disproportionate amount of Click Fraud comes from Romania. In addition, we find that a disproportionate amount of credit card fraud originates from this country also. This is OUR view based on OUR experience - period.
As we mention in another comment, we are sure that there are many reputable people and businesses in Romania but these co-exist alongside many unscrupulous operations. (Similarly to Nigeria, India and the other countries we mention.)
Just to be clear, the author of this post is from Ireland (itself in the EU), has been TO Romania, and is very well acquainted with the various EU member states.
You may also be interested to review the 2008 Internet Fraud stats available here which include the following information:
Thanks for your comment.
November 7th, 2008 at 5:46 am
Gr8 artile, does shed good light on the subject.
November 7th, 2008 at 7:12 am
Thanks for the info and keep up the good work statcounter team.
November 7th, 2008 at 10:41 am
It wastes our valuable money. So we should choose best PPC program.
November 7th, 2008 at 11:20 am
I have multiple sites using Statcounter (paid version) and I emply a little trick to monitor this. On all pages that I use as landing pages from my PPC campaigns, I have created a unique Statcounter project and I include the code for that as well as the individual Statcounter project code.
That way, I have a seperate Statcounter project that monitors all my landing pages and makes it really easy to spot the click fraud. Thankfully I have not had major issues (using Yahoo and MSN) yet, but have noticed a few duplicate clicks.
Cheers
Ian
November 7th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Hello,
This is great Post and I am completely agrees with the study, Several time I traced out Fraud Click at my PPC Campaign through Visitor Log.
Statcould Log is greast tool not only to Track visitor log, but also we can understand the visitor mind that waht he looking for.. though visitor Log.
Thanks
November 7th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Very interestingand and useful article on click fraud. Relevant to my business. Thanks a lot Statcounter. No doubt I am better prepared today than yesterday.
November 7th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I like Ian, the CasinoMan’s idea… could be a way to easily detect fraud.
Of course, stopping it is another story!
November 7th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Thanks Mookie - i neglected to mention that I also employ a similar technique on my conversion pages so I can track the PPC clicks out to the merchants I deal with. I use a seperate project for that also.
Cheers
Ian
November 7th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
well, i believe Google makes a good effort to avoid click fraud. each ad has an ID or unique number. let say you search for something in Google; all paid ads shown will have this unique key, only for you based on the ip ur browsing from. you click an ad.
again, you search for the same keyword, you will get ads having the same ID that you got in ur previous search operation, since u are browsing from the same location. you also click the same ad that u’ve clicked in the previous search.
The second click wont be counted, since it came from the same ip, in a specific time frame.
However, malicious ppl still play around it by spoofing ip and other bad practices.
Fred,
November 7th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
The sad truth is most click fraud is 100% undetectable. It doesn’t JUST hurt the person paying for the ads, it often hurts those whose sites the ads are on, as they get banned from adsense quite often.
If someone with a vendetta is out against your site, there really is no hope, as they can anonymize and proxify their connection to your site. So the main lesson is, don’t earn yourself a vicious opponent if you use a PPC business model.
Or just don’t use a PPC model. I’ve found general affiliate programs that monetize better on the low-payout PPC sites, and for the high-payout PPC sites, there are some high-paying aff programs correspondingly usually. Only a few exceptions exist (such as for local doctors, or other high-paying PPC ads that don’t have an aff program). Usually pay-per-sale programs will be more generous anyways. I’ve found that I made more money from aff sales from many affs were making in their entire company’s profit margin.
Oh, and I gotta say, pointing these things out actually HURTS us more than helps. Most true click frauders spoof their IP and there is nothing you can do to detect it. For those that are detectable, anyone NOT detecting it, is probably so lazy this article will not change their behavior.
On the other hand, you have successfully pointed out to thousands of people who may not have known it, how they can run their competitors out of business. Congratulations.
Some subjects are really better left discussed only in small-specialty white-hat forums where black-hatters are not welcome. Not on mainstream blogs. I understand your intentions, but good as they are, I can only see bad results from discussing this in an open way and EXPLAINING how they can run their competitors out of business.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
An extremely interesting article. Thanks for sharing this with us.
I only hope that one day Statcounter (or other) will invent a means to block visits from unscrupulous visitors. This could be done by blocking particular IP addresses.
For example, If a person (or entity) visits your website with a known rogue IP address, you could set up a script that flags up a dialog box saying something like “Bugger Off!”
I’m a dreamer, I know…!
November 7th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Oh, and if you didn’t notice, many of the replying people’s “names” to this post are:
“Business Directory”, “free web hosting”, “online calling cards” “get your ex back now”, “CasinoMan” (one willing to delve into a widely considered immoral & illegal practice) etc. etc. So the vast majority are willing to spam their names for a buck… heck your first commenter was “Shop Playstation 3″
With an audience like that, don’t you think it’d do more harm than help to mention the benefits of click frauding?
November 7th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I had pay per click in yahoo travel and I had my budget spent in two days with clicks from India.
I don’t believe in pay per click, the idea I have is that 80% of the clicks are a lost of money. The other 20%, 1% gives real clients…..
November 8th, 2008 at 5:06 am
<>
Um, you did notice the form below requests website addresses, right?
November 8th, 2008 at 5:07 am
that was in regards to …
“Oh, and if you didn’t notice, many of the replying people’s “names” to this post are:
“Business Directory”, “free web hosting”, “online calling cards” “get your ex back now”, “CasinoMan” (one willing to delve into a widely considered immoral & illegal practice) etc. etc. So the vast majority are willing to spam their names for a buck… heck your first commenter was “Shop Playstation 3″
With an audience like that, don’t you think it’d do more harm than help to mention the benefits of click frauding?”
November 8th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Yes, I did notice. You can still link to your site, and seeing as how it is nofollow there is no need for anchor text. Changing your name to spam your product on comment threads is an obvious breach of ethics whether you want to admit it or not.
If you don’t see something wrong with all the comments on blogs having “names” like “free web hosting” and “Get Your Ex Back NOW” etc. etc. then you don’t understand what comments are meant to do.
They’re meant to allow REAL people to comment, not to spam their products.
What set me off on this was “Shop PlayStation 3″ who said
“PS. Don’t place your spam urls in StatCounter Comments - read more about nofollow tag)” Yet he himself for some reason put a spam-name instead of a real name.
Anywho, it’s a free world, statcounter is free to leave their comments full of people who might have names like “Get free money here” “buy my crap”, etc. etc. It’s spam all the same.
I wasn’t criticizing THAT part so much as how Statcounter was pointing out click fraud TO THAT GROUP OF PEOPLE who obviously would rather make a buck with a spammy names rather than contribute to a professional and courteous environment.
November 8th, 2008 at 5:57 am
And to make the leap for you just in case, people who are all about making a quick buck at the cost of a little integrity (such as whoring their names on comments out), would not be very adverse to click fraud I might think.
November 8th, 2008 at 10:00 am
good post, though I didn’t use the PPC. - -’
It’s still a good post, maybe it will be great when I start ppc in the future.
November 8th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Great article and very informative. When I used PPC I was always suspicious of people clicking unnecessarily. I can’t say I had much luck with it so have knocked it on the head now, but this type of fraud must be a real headache for those paying high CPC such as loan companies etc…
Joe
http://www.thefootballcode.com
November 8th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I’m using statcounter stats to exclude domains from my Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns
I have noticed that there’s a certain patter of domain ( say xxxlosangeles.com, xxxnewyork.com, xxxtucson.com xxxseattle.com, xxxboise.com etc) that were sending clicks to my ads, and none of them converted into a sale/lead…after some clicks I contact YSM about it and they cound’t do anything about it, so I am manually excluding any domain that has such pattern from the allowed domains in my YSM account
yes, I’m using my statcounter came from page for that
Fed
http://www.tutorialstream.com
November 8th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I used click counter to find out something similar I had people clicking my adsense ads like cray. I found out all the fraud was coming form India andblock that country, thus saving my Adsense account form getting closed due to click fraud . So it can happen in a number of ways people trying ot get you kicked out of adsense and people wasting your budget!
November 8th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
And now statcounter, you have actual spam (the b2cshoessale guy) commenting on this post. More proof that as I said your market audience here may involve quite a few people who might discover click fraud as a means to destroy their competition’s profits and drive them out.
With the comments above as proof, and most black-hatters do not bother to comment so keep in mind, if anything commenters are generally white-hat, we can safely say this article is explaining a hard-to-stop black-hat method to many black-hatters, and then explaining WHY it’s beneficial, and even posits the outsourcing possibility. Isn’t it best NOT to mention that to this crowd?
Good intentions, sure, but those pave the way to hell (on earth).
November 8th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Completely agree!!
In the beginning I don’t have any idea why 2 countries always visiting my site.
And finnaly, ban their IP.
Thanks SC..
November 8th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Make PPC useless..
One question, can google penalize adsense publisher since 1 IP click on the same page/website?
November 8th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
I found the article really interesting, probably more so to people who have not experienced click fraud before or who are just starting out. I developed my site from a hobby to quite a busy business today and to the point where we started using our own PPC and inevitably discovered click fraud - without Statcounter we wouldnt have been alerted so quickly. In our case the perpetrator was identified and Google informed which resulted in them being banned from using their network. Statcounter has been invaluable, especially when we were able to locate a nuisance hacker through his IP address - thanks Statcounter for doing a great job!
YourNextGift.com
November 9th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Thanks for the information. Very informative blog post. Fighting Click Fraud, seems like a near hopeless cause, and the most likely recoursesfor the advertiser is to cut the budget spreading the ad dollars over a longer time period. The advertiser may find alternative offline forms of advertisement or get more involved with sponsorship of other websites, where click through activity will not be used. Thanks again.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I have already used this system to identify odd visit ratios on clients sites but not only to help identify suspicious activity but also to help clients gain sales leads!
A year or so a client gaine d massive order from a hotel chain after noting they had looked at his products a number of times. A call to that chain resulted in an order!
With regards to click fraud or unwated visits do also remember that most servers allow you to block an ip address or specific IP range!
November 9th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Many good points raised. Having been a victim of click fraud it not only costs you more money than you really want to spend, but quite a lot of time and effort in gathering information to prove you have been scammed. My advice would be to spend the money you would allocate to PPC on a top quality SEO program instead. Within a few months you should start to reap the rewards of first or second page listings in Google and Yahoo. Patience is the essence, but having been through this process with three different sites it really is the best long term option.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Trying to track click fraud can be incredibly hard and time-consuming. Thank you for providing this easy to understand guide.
I can say good things about Google’s AdWords, they’re trying to prevent click fraud… But you really have to watch out for fraudulent publishers if you use systems like: Bidvertiser, Clicksor, AdOnion, etc. (No offense to these companies, that’s only my personal opinion).
November 10th, 2008 at 4:18 am
Nice Tips To track down click frauds.
Thx
Arvind
November 10th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Click fraud will be there for the forsee able future, until and unless Google/Yahoo/MSN give the advertiser an option to filter out the IP address or dont show the same Ad to same IP more than once in every 24 Hours. Since these tools are not there yet, i’m sure that the SEs are not interested in providing it to the people as it would hurt their spendings as well.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:16 am
I have a question - I would like to know how can you prevent someone else from simply clicking and using up your PPC credit. I understand that you can see the IP address, but where to from there? In other words, what can you do with an IP address? I welcome your feedback on this one to resolve my confusion.
Thansk in advance.
November 10th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Hi,
I must say this is an interesting, though badly thought out and researched blog post.
I say this because I am from India, and i do not know of any fraud click providers, and i have been in the internet/design business for long.
I normally do not trust blog posters in random UK provinces, who base their reporting on outdated sources from faraway countries like the US, written by people with dubious and strange names.
This is because the UK and Ireland is known to have a serious alcohol problem, and people often land up for work drunk. The US has a long history of fake writers, bad bankers and generally unscrupulous businesses, who will often take fake anything to promote their business.
Take the case of the credit crisis, the unscrupulous bankers in the US gave bad loans, and the Irish suddenly had no money in their banks, because they believed everything the Americans said.
Similarly, this post relies on an a post dated 2005, written by someone with an obviously fake name…. for sources see the comment by Razvan Marian Jr above
http://www.searchengineguide.com/senews/006021.html
PPC Internet advertising,like all other american driven business opportunities will have a lot of hype… use at your own risk.
November 10th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Please remember, with the implementation of 3g many people have an IP address that changes every time they connect to the net. It takes a few seconds to disconnect then reconnect on a different IP address.
Please do not succumb under the illusion that an IP address will reveal all.
November 10th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Now I know why I got so many 0 second visitors from an advertising network called AdEngage. I even get those through Google.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
what is ur problem tho?
that was in regards to …
“Oh, and if you didn’t notice, many of the replying people’s “names” to this post are:
“Business Directory”, “free web hosting”, “online calling cards” “get your ex back now”, “CasinoMan” (one willing to delve into a widely considered immoral & illegal practice) etc. etc. So the vast majority are willing to spam their names for a buck… heck your first commenter was “Shop Playstation 3″
With an audience like that, don’t you think it’d do more harm than help to mention the benefits of click frauding?”
November 10th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Tuesday 11.11.08 9.42am
(Statcounter installed Friday the 7.11.08)
Using StatCounter I have over the weekend not only identified fraudulant clicks on my Adwords account, in addition to this I have discovered (and been contacted by) an organisation that wanted me to attend a information evening but details could not be discussed over the phone.
When I said i’m not in the habbit of going to meeting where i’m not fully aware of the details, I was told that;
“dramatically improve my adwords responses and my positioning”
“we can make sure your competitor ads…aren’t a problem to you”
After the 9.30pm phone call took place I checked my stats and a irregular number of hits where coming from an Indian based IP within 1 second intervals.
Google has been contacted this morning.
Thanks StatCounter
November 11th, 2008 at 1:30 am
I’m wondering if SEO companies are also culprits here. I’ve always wondering how they actually work and wonder if they use click fraud as a strategy.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:10 am
I accept click fraud is happening in every part of the world not only in india, so change your view on india, its reaported that click fraud has been reported more in china not india.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:49 am
I see nothing in any of these posts that I did not all ready know. But then a lot of peoples may not of knew some of it.
But it does help some peoples from being click bomb. But on the other hand it is also helping the click bomber. Because after reading all of these posts the click bomber will begin looking for ways around what was said here. So it is like a two edge sword, one way or the other you may get burned.
I was in google adsense but I left because I was being click bomb all the time. Google may not be able to stop it but there is a lot that they can do to help stop it.
Where was I being click bomb from you may ask. It was from many different country. There are click bomber in every country. The worst country was the USA for click bombing me. We was able to trace most of it to certain places in the USA. Going by “alexa” 34.9% of the peoples that is coming to my websites is from India.
Most of the peoples click bombing me was others publishers. Why would others publishers click bomb you? In the good old days of googles adsense they was making a lot of money but now some of them are not. So some of them is saying it is because there is to many publishers.
November 11th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
uhh yeah there is not much that you can do with just the ip adress, but maybe you would contact the cybe police in your country, it is not a joke, more deparment police in the world has a cyber police.
November 11th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Roland you know you would block the ip range for India, so you would not get visitors from there if it bother you….
November 11th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
StatCounter is very useful for spotting fraudulent clicks. In fact I blocked one IP address earlier today (you can do this in AdWords). I had previously labeled the IP address as suspicious in my StatCounter stats and when I looked again this morning, I saw more activity including a “conversion” as shown by a visit to my client’s “thank you” page: the third in two weeks from that IP address. I then contacted my client to check this out and he confirmed that the details entered into his enquiry form were useless.
So I copied the IP address and pasted it in to the Tools>IP Exclusion area of my client’s AdWords account for all his campaigns. That IP address won’t see my client’s ads any more and so won’t be able to click on them.
The market my client operates in is highly competitive - we are paying over £20 for some clicks (and making money!) - so I have to watch out for Click fraud like a hawk. As well as StatCounter, there are some other free neat tools that can help you spot click fraud before you waste too much money.
One issue of course is IP addresses that are used by lots of different people. If you see frequent clicks from one IP address and get suspicious, first check that the browser, the screen size and the operating system are all the same before putting IP blocking in place.
November 12th, 2008 at 5:03 am
[...] now there is an article about competitor fraud. Read this Click fraud? Don’t be a victim blog post. This probably existed in the past as well, but when the economy gets tougher, may be [...]
November 12th, 2008 at 7:15 am
I guess keeping your details to yourself is one way of protecting yourself too.
November 12th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Very nice and informative article! I think anyone can be a victim of Click Fraud, but like what the article said, its about knowing your stats and stat counter provides a wonderful platform for this. Usually in my site, I use Stat Counter and my own hosting’s stat which gives me a more accurate and more balanced results. I have removed adsense, and other ppc network on my sites, I just retained one company, but I rely primarily on Project Wonderful to sell and buy ads because its not based on clicks but its buying an ad for one whole day, but its like ebay where you bid for your ad, the advantage for the ad buyer is that statistics of the sites are provided in real time, for the ad seller, the advantage is that buyers are bidding on their ad box and unlike google and all the other ad providers, they don’t have to wait for their check as you will get your ad profit in real time. I think this is a good alternative to any ppc campaigns….the publisher can relax and just worry on creating quality contents for his site while the advertiser is not pressured to pay per click as if he’s the highest bidder that day, his ad will appear the whole day…basically with Project Wonderful which had worked on my site, the ppc campaigns of adsense and adbrite and other ad network are a thing of the past….I am so happy with my experience with Project Wonderful that I can finally say goodbye to all adsense…
cause I don’t need them anymore!
November 13th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Statcounter is the real deal, I have used other counters before with less results and Statcounter I want to thank you for all the information and news about what is going on in this world wide web Business, When People get our easy to build web sites from http://www.webcitybuilder.com I let them know about statcounter. Being able to monitor what, where , and who visits your site makes it easier to do ppc campaigns.Like many others have said report the repeat return visits to get the money put back in to your PPC campaign . Keep up the great Job and everyone have great holidays. Thanks, WCB
November 13th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
A very cool post. I had been thinking aobut doing some PPC advert but this post and the comments have changed my mind. Thanks for sharing.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
I was thinking about to put some PPC ad in my page, but I will have to think again it now. thanks for the post.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:58 am
Thanks for the useful tips. I think click fraud occurs more than Google is possibly capable of catching. Definitely one of the biggest disadvantages to PPC campaigns.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Very nice post. but how to prevent clicks from where I dont need even after making Geo targeting perfectly ?
November 14th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Another good article Statcounter…
I must say PPC is already a hard art to master without worrying about fraudulent activity.
It has fallen massively in my priority for marketing as there are so many more cost-effective methods to get traffic, targeted or not.
Joe
November 14th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Click fraud is continuing to rise despite what the search engines have you believe. There are several tracking tools that help fight it but its best to let a third party handle it. Way too much of a time killer.
November 15th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
We signed up for this “professional” advertising service that was connected with the program Passport To Wealth. We were paying $507 per month for “professional” advertising. All we got was basically third world (s)hits.
In keeping with this article, we were smart enough to track their results. Needless to say it was a big fraud. Not only did we not get any sales from their “clicks” we receive no optin leads.
The link we included here shows exactly how our own amateur “free advertising” results compared to their “professional advertising” results. Our point, and the point of this article is: BUYERS BEWARE OUT THERE!
Admin
The Roc Group
November 16th, 2008 at 1:50 am
Wrote about this topic in a blog entry today before I saw this. One thing that might be worth checking the referrer. There are some sites that basically say on their main pages that they are running short on funds and ask visitors to their site to click on the ads. I’ve seen this some on message boards, smaller fan fiction archives and anime fan sites where the people running them don’t seem to understand that click fraud is taking money away from people.
November 16th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Hm, it’s good to know that there are people finding ways to prevent/combat click fraud. Still though, we all need to be careful.
November 17th, 2008 at 2:21 am
Wow, couldn’t be explained any better. Thanks, really helfull.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
As usual, the No. 1 perpetrator of negative things, is the “United States of America”:
Among perpetrators, 75.2% were male and half resided in one of the following states: California, New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. The majority of reported perpetrators were from the United States. However, a significant number of perpetrators where also located in United Kingdom, Nigeria, Canada, Romania, and Italy.
For some reason, like with military spending, pollution, waste, murder, crime, national debt, obesity, and all other negative things, however the Great USA is not mentioned whilst those lesser culprits such as Nigeria, India, China, Romania, are.
Thanks StatCounter for a very interesting coverage and many interesting comments from StatCounter users with many perspectives.
CPM or CPA is the best way to go, as it is far easier to spot fraud on those basis than CPC. The very best can be Rental - provided the price is right and the audience is known or statistics are available and transparent.
We’ll be urging users of our advertising service to sign up to StatCounter in order to monitor their statistics, as we can place their StatCounter code along with their advertisements published via our advertising network.
Just a further comment: the US is collapsing (Babylon a fall down big time now) and its executives are trying to hold on to their fat salaries instead of tightening their belts - as a result US ad agencies such as Google have dropped their quality to an all time low, with inappropriate ads and poor targeting being the norm. Using StatCounter to monitor and verify agency statistics is best practice and should be encouraged!
November 18th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
PS: the above info on click fraud perpetrators is from the link mentioned in the StatCounter post:
http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/internet_scam_statistics.htm
November 19th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I feel bad about the negative feedback on ad publishers. A feeling is being creating about specific behaviour & integrity of ad publishers in general I totally NOT recognize myself in.
First: For Google counts that all publishers are monitored 24×7 with special detection software for clickfraud, they know with which IP you login frequenty to check your adsense earnings so a match of the publishers generated clicks with a shortlist of IP’s is the easiest way I can think of. . Which I support 100% by the way. So doing click fraud as a publisher is really kind of stupid and you will be banned from the progam in no time! Leaving your earnings on Google’s bankaccount. So you better stay with the Google TOS for advertisers.
Second: I have a network of websites where frequently (over 400.000x per Quater) google ads are shown. I personally believe the triangle Visitor - Publisher - Advertiser is very important and thereby it never came up in my head to sneaky clicking or let other do this. I focussed more on investing in better content for my advertisers & visitors. Resulting in a average higher CTR & PPC.
Third: I know Ad publishers using adwords for a while now promoting their local shop here downtown. They pay standard toooo much a click because they don’t know how to configure all campaings proper with keywords. correct daylimits and average ppc… and more. So little mistakes in settings can lead to a lot of unnecessary costs. Get yourself trained well in using these programs and do little try outs first.
Grtzz,
GAP
November 20th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Things are not good even for me.. Some one have continuasly clicked on google ads and now my adsense is blocked
November 20th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
You know, if they “click bomb” and “click fraud” that actually gives them a bad rep. They think they’re “making money” but…..uhhhh…good luck on your reputation.
If I notice I only make 1 sale from an advertisement, then I’m never using their service again. There’s thousands of services you know?
If these people who are unhappy want to get “revenge”, the best revenge is success! Invest your time in your hobbies or something! Eventualy blossom and have success in something! Revenge is a waste of time.
Love dies when vengeance smiles.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
[...] este artículo procedente del blog Statcounter sus autores hablan de sobre diferentes formas de prevenir los clicks fraudulentos a través de [...]
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Very interesting article and relevant to my work. Thanks for the statcounter. Its very useful.
Keep the good work!
November 27th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Wow that’s opened my eyes!
Didn’t know it was such a fraudulant type of advertising but I suppose it’s very obvious really!
November 30th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Click fraud has cost me a lot more than I dare admit. Love to see the clicks, but the conversions are the only thing that really matters!
November 30th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Not to mention I cant spell, as in the tattoo finder in the above link!
December 1st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I was a victim of click fraud a few months before and fortunately google gave me the refund.
This article provides a good insight. Good work mate
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:58 am
[...] Hits from Specific countries - StatCounter analyzed click fraud reports. It suggests that many third party Click Fraud operations are located in countries such as India, [...]
December 8th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Companies involved are doing there best to stop click fraud.
December 9th, 2008 at 12:09 am
I’m not sure that companies involved are doing a good enough job. Also are they not a bit powerless to stop click fraud completely?
It would be good if they could as this is poor for everyone that use these services.
December 11th, 2008 at 2:58 am
Attention:
This message is not in any manner directed to you, but its purposely and specifically directed to Nigeria Scam victims, if you have fallen for Nigerian Scams, do not hesitate to contact us for more details on how we can help.
December 19th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Companies involved are doing their best to stop click fraud but i doubt if it can ever be stopped…even if there is a way of stopping it, those who are after the logic will also be the one that will expose how to bypass it…thats technology today fr you……….
December 20th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Unfortunately now a lot of people have ip number that can be changed just by closing and again opening internet connection…:(
December 28th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Clickfraud can be so common that just by using software or script where it clicks on your adsense ads with high CTR and google will most likely to ban your account. Using of OpenX can help to solve this problem. I am still trying my best to learn OpenX.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I use it to monitor activity on my adsense sites and block any IPS that visit to often or go from page to page only spending a few seconds on each page.
I block the IP then let Google know about it. My adsense account has always been in good standing because of this and Google always sends a email thanking me!!