August 15th, 2009

This article is provided by Yesup SEO, an established SEO services.

click fraudClick Farm networks set up relatively valueless websites and then work with search engines to distribute PPC ad listings, but obtain and send irrelevant traffic to clickable links. Click pimping companies increase their revenues, advertisers get meaningless clicks and visitors browse no-content sites.

Affiliate Fraud and Competitor Fraud are still hard to spot but, astute marketers and innovative software has made both forms of online cheating easier to manage. Cheaters never lie down easy, however, and have now taken to establishing online click fraud scams defined by complex distribution networks.

Known as “click farms”, these networks have set up seemingly valid websites and then have joined with search engines to distribute pay-per-click (PPC) ad listings, as opposed to mere content vehicles. Once entrenched, click farms then employ their talents to “obtain” clicks through PPC search ads and pop-ups, sending irrelevant traffic to clickable links at low marketing costs to themselves.

Referred to as “click pimping” or PPC Arbitrage, this new type of fraud employs astute marketing and valueless domains to significantly drive up revenues; the sites in question offer visitors seeking information little or no relevant content, a plethora of PPC ads and would likely not be re-visited. Such sites are quickly weeded out by the major search engines, often not even appearing in organic indexes.

Click farm sites, then, do not even show up in any meaningful engine listings, and generate valueless clicks and little or no conversion. Yet they are increasingly prevalent on the internet, and their concept is being duplicated across many different industries doing business online. Recent research posits that click pimping may generate up to almost half of a company’s total search activity, depending on the category.

As is the case with other forms of click fraud, there are methods you can enact to identify and act against click pimping:

* Every day have your marketing people record web logs for referral sites, and identify and document who it sending traffic to your site (jot down the URL or web address). Evaluate the conversion rates from this traffic to better ascertain if the traffic is legitimate and qualified or if it is coming from a clink farm site. Request a click fraud refund from this site in question if results are found to be somewhat wanting
* Have your marketers examine the search engine rankings of any suspected click farm sites. The engines are pretty adept at keeping these sites out of any relevant indexes or listings, so a little research should reveal any potential problems
* Contact the search engines in question if you suspect click pimping; they will be more than willing to work with you to confirm this fraudulent activity, and then will promptly move to ensure that the site(s) in question face repercussions

If you have any questions about this article, or wish to offer suggestions, please contact us at Yesup SEO, an established SEO services.

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July 24th, 2009

This article is provided by Yesup SEO, an established SEO services.

cheatAffiliate click fraud occurs when an advertiser affiliate increases revenues by adding irrelevant clicks to an advertiser site. Competitor fraud involves intentionally undermining engine rankings for the competition by sponsoring ads or links connected to a valued searxch term, compelling the competitor to eventually discard it.

Click fraud involves deliberately clicking on paid advertisements not to purchase the product or service, but to “fool” the online advertiser into paying a PPC fee. There are two main types of click fraud: affiliate and competitor. Affiliate fraud occurs when an advertiser affiliate (publisher) tries to boost revenues by intentionally adding irrelevant clicks on the ad or link displayed on their website. The affiliate increases short-term revenues and the actual advertiser receives meaningless clicks, but not site traffic or sales.

Competitor fraud features companies trying to undermine their competitor’s search engine rankings by sponsoring ads or links associated with relevant and valued search terms; in such instances, competitors are compelled to spend lots of ad money with no return, often deducing that the search term is not profitable and consequently dropping out of term bidding.

Click Fraud is an important issue in the world of search, particularly with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising now a potent advertising venue. Some search experts claim that fraud losses are minimal, while others assert that almost half of paid-for clicks are misleading. Regardless of whether you view click fraud as an exaggerated or real threat, there are several measures which advertisers can employ to combat it:

* Have savvy marketers monitor the effectiveness of individual ads and search terms. The following areas should be carefully examined: advertisement costs; number of clicks; number of conversions; actual sales, or Return On Investment (ROI); Source Internet Protocol Addresses; and rankings across major engines for the affiliate site. Affiliate sites engendering feeble, sharply decreasing or negative returns should be suspect, as well as those generating lots of new clicks but without appropriate levels of conversion and sales. If the ad has not changed but your numbers have, then something might be amiss.

* Direct your marketing experts to also gauge the effectiveness of the affiliate site in question, specifically examining its rankings across the major engines as well as Source Internet Protocol Addresses. Low engine rankings should raise an alarm, as should lots of clicks originating from the same IP address or from addresses outside the country you are advertising in
* Consider purchasing and employing click fraud detection hardware, to get a better handle on this often hard-to-detect activity and to better identify trends in fraudulent activity. Beware, however, that click fraudsters have been increasingly successful at discovering new ways of “beating” such software
* Record any and all instances of suspected click fraud and contact the PPC engine right away. Major search engines such as Google and Yahoo are very motivated to cooperate with advertisers and promptly refund meaningless clicks, once identified.

If you have any questions about this article, or wish to offer suggestions, please contact us at Yesup SEO, an established SEO services.

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