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 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
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- 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 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.
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- 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.
- Repeat Visits from Same IP Address
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- 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.
- Time Spent on 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.
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.
“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.
Thanks for informing us of Click Fraud and ways of resolving this activity.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
hi all,
this post will be a great help if you can monitor your stats every minute..
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
www.afijiholiday.com
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
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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
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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.
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!
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.
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!!!!!
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)
I think you never can stop clickfraude.