Click fraud – prevention better than cure

If you advertise online, you have probably heard about click fraud. If you want to know more about what it is, see the links at the bottom of this page.

If you want to prevent your campaigns being subject to click fraud, you can employ these simple strategies to dramatically reduce the risk.

1. Monitor your campaigns

It sounds obvious, but the simplest option is to regularly review and measure your campaigns to determine what is and isn’t working. Google and Yahoo provide reports you can access easily, and Google can email you reports on a regular basis.

Look at your reports to identify sudden increases in daily costs and focus on the keywords or campaigns that caused them. If an increase is suspicious, stop the campaign until you are sure of the cause.

2. Limit your advertisements to specified countries

Some countries have a much higher incidence of click fraud than others. These countries tend to have lower labour costs, and companies reportedly pay people to sit and click on advertisements all day.

Limit your campaigns to the countries where you actually sell products and services.

3. Know where your advertisements are displayed

Google and Yahoo search marketing both have a network of sites which display their advertising. Google’s is known as the AdSense network and Yahoo’s is Content Match. These systems, and others, will also show your ads on sites other than Google and Yahoo sites. The owners of these sites receive a commission for every click the ads receive.

Many quality sites run this type of advertising, so turning the content targeting off altogether may not be the best option as you will miss quality traffic. However, a large number of low-quality sites also display these ads, and there is a high level of risk that the site owners will click on their own ads, pay someone else to click or use automated software programs to do it for them.

It’s difficult to determine which sites are responsible for these clicks, and Google and Yahoo don’t disclose this information. But ClickTracks does. It’s an easy-to-use product that produces search reports that identify the content-targeted websites sending visitors to your site. A weekly check is recommended.

Once you have identified sites you don’t want to advertise on, Google gives you a simple means of excluding them from your campaigns.

4. Have a different bid price for content-targeted sites

Limiting the amount you are prepared to pay for each click reduces the financial risk, but it may also reduce the clicks from quality sites. Google and Yahoo allow you to have different bids for content-related advertising.

5. Target high-value sites

With Google you can set up campaigns to run on specific sites. These campaigns are based on price per 1,000 impressions (CPM). You bid on the price you are prepared to pay for the ads to be displayed.

Not all sites in the network support this option, but it can allow you to specify the sites you want to advertise on.

6. Monitor results with a web analytics tool

While this is not measuring click fraud per se, you should carefully measure the outcomes of each of your campaigns. This will help you identify which keywords and ads generate business, and which are bringing ‘tyre kickers’. Panalysis recommends ClickTracks and Google Analytics as excellent tools to evaluate your advertising campaigns.

7. Use ClickTracks

ClickTracks’ advanced click fraud detection system is available in the ClickTracks Professional product range. The software looks at a range of variables and flags any campaign that appears to be suspicious. It also assists in preparing the reports you need to prove your case to your search provider.

Call us to arrange a demonstration of how this works.

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