AdWords, AdSense and Click Fraud

AdWords, AdSense and Click Fraud Introduction

As with any symbiotic relationship, the relationship between, advertisers, and publishers is built on trust. Advertisers rely on the quality of the clicks their ads receive. Publishers in turn count on advertisers supplying relevant ads which create a good experience for users, and an accurate and reliable source of income which contributes to the success of their websites and business.

Contents:

• Click Fraud and Invalid Traffic Definitions
• Why Click Fraud Occurs
• How Click Fraud Occurs
• Why Care About Invalid Traffic
• Extent of Invalid Clicks and Click Fraud
• How to Avoid and Monitor AdSense, AdWords Click Fraud?
  • How to Detect Fake Clicks
• What to do, If Click Fraud is Detect
• Google AdWords Click Fraud or a Poorly Managed Campaign?
• Google Refunds Fees When Invalid Clicks and Click Fraud Found
• AdWords, AdSense and Click Fraud Conclusion

Click Fraud and Invalid Traffic Definitions

Lets make sure were all talking about the same thing with a couple of definitions.

• Click fraud refers to clicks generated with malicious or fraudulent intent.
• Invalid traffic includes both clicks and impressions on ads which may not be the result of genuine user interest. This includes intentionally fraudulent traffic, accidental clicks and computer generated traffic.

Why Click Fraud Occurs

There are two primary incentives for committing click fraud:

• AdWords advertisers may try to attack competitors by raising their costs or exhausting their budget early in the day.
• AdSense publishers may click ads appearing on their own websites in order to inflate revenue.

How Click Fraud Occurs

The most common methods for carrying out click fraud attacks are:

• Manual clicking.
• Click farms (hiring individuals to manually click ads).
• Pay-to-click sites (pyramid schemes created by publishers).
• Click bots (software to automate clicking).
• Botnets (hijacked computers utilized by click bots).

Why Care About Invalid Traffic

Without valid traffic statistics it would be almost impossible for advertisers to accurately plan their spending and calculate AdWords bids which make economic sense for their business. Predictability for advertisers results in better returns on investment, which, in turn, can lead to increased spend on advertising and increased profits for both Google AdWords and Google AdSense publishers.

Invalid traffic results in skewed advertising statistics not only affects an advertisers bidding ability but results in a less competitive auction. In addition, advertiser spend diverted to fraudulent publishers represents an opportunity lost to AdWords and legitimate publishers.

Extent of Invalid Clicks and Click Fraud

Unfortunately I don’t have any concrete figures on the extent of invalid clicks and click fraud, but it would seem that invalid clicks and click fraud account for less than 10% of all clicks on AdWords ads.

• According to Google, the vast majority of all invalid clicks on AdWords ads are caught by AdWords online filters. See, Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin’s report, details in the conclusion.

If you are an AdWords advertiser, you can see for yourself how many invalid clicks have been proactively filtered from your Google AdWords account.

How to Avoid and Monitor AdSense, AdWords Click Fraud?

Click Fraud is a fake click for which an advertiser has to pay Google (same with Yahoo). This fake click is not generated by a legitimate user.

• Try logging into your analytic section and see which clicks never got converted into leads.
• The biggest problem with click fraud is the difficulty search engines are having detecting the fraud.

You can detect potential click fraud yourself through the AdWords Advanced Click Statistics. For example; if your target region is the USA or UK, and you are receiving a large number of clicks (20+%) from countries outside this target region, then there’s a high probability of click fraud.

Unfortunately, a huge pool of unscrupulous people have mastered the art of click fraud. They form a network of users who make profits by clicking on ads. Both Google and Yahoo are trying hard to cut-down click fraud as it costs companies an estimated 300+ million dollars of advertising budget per year.

How to Detect Fake Clicks

The best way of avoiding click fraud and invalid traffic is to manually monitor the traffic in your AdWords account. Although Google do their best, your own observations and deductions are probably better. So, observe your AdWords account analytics regularly and watch for the following:

• Unusual click trends or CTRs in your AdWords account.
• Monitor click timeframes. If you observe a sudden increase in the number of clicks within a short timeframe (less than 30 minutes), then it could indicate an unusual click trend. If none of those clicks convert into leads, it could be an indication of click fraud.
• You are receiving 1000+ clicks from AdSense but none of those clicks actually get converted into leads. Fraud?
• How many pages were visited by a particular user? How many minutes did they stay on your website? If you observe lots of 1 page visit / 0 minutes stay, then it could be an indication of click fraud.
• Is there a regular pattern of several clicks from one geo location with no conversions?
• Keep tabs on clicks from suspicious or untraceable IP addresses (what’s your competitors IP address?). Block these IP addresses if necessary using the tools available within your Google AdWords account.
• Use conversion tracking codes to detect clicks which are converting into leads/sales. This conversion tracking is available within your Google AdWords account.

What to do, If Click Fraud is Detect

The first thing to do if you think you have detected click fraud (or invalid traffic) is make sure you are targeting the right set of keywords for your niche. Targeting the wrong keywords will always result in high click through rates with lower conversion rates.

• i.e. You target the keyword, ‘dog food’ but specifically only sell, ‘bird food’.

Next, implement Adwords Capping. Targeting specific cities/locations, rather than the world will lower potential click fraud to a huge extent. Use the AdWords IP Address Exclusion feature, AdWords Geographic Location Exclusion, AdWords Site Placement and Categories Exclusion and AdWords Frequency Capping. See my article, AdWords, What is Google AdWords for more information.

Finally, if you’re really sure there is a fraud problem, try the Google Invalid Clicks Troubleshooter then inform Google.

Google AdWords Click Fraud or a Poorly Managed Campaign?

A lot of people suspect click fraud but as far as I can tell, it really does not happen that often. What might look like spikes in click numbers on Google AdWords versus the number of conversions may actually be the result of a poorly managed campaign rather than click fraud.

Suspected click fraud could really be nothing more than lots of people being intrigued by your advertisement without being converted. This would indicate a appealing advertisement which is poorly targeted, so people click away as soon as they hit your landing page. It could also be that your conversion path is confusing and frustrates people resulting in no conversions.

• Before accusing your competitors or website publishers of click fraud, be sure to check that it is not merely the result of a poorly optimized website.

Google Refunds Fees When Invalid Clicks and Click Fraud Found

If you do become the victim of Google AdWords click fraud, don’t worry too much. Google is very good at refunding advertisers with any money they have lost through fraudulent clicks on their advertisements.

AdWords, AdSense and Click Fraud Conclusion

Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin, an independent expert who has examined Google’s detection methods, policies, practices, and procedures, has documented these and other details of Google’s monitoring system. Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin’s report concludes:

“I have been asked to evaluate Google’s invalid click detection efforts and to conclude whether these efforts are reasonable or not. As a part of this evaluation, I have visited Google’s campus three times, examined various internal documents, interviewed several Google’s employees, have seen different demos of their invalid click inspection system, and examined internal reports and charts showing various aspects of performance of Google’s invalid click detection system. Based on all these studied materials and the information narrated to me by Google’s employees, I conclude that Google’s efforts to combat click fraud are reasonable. In the rest of this report, I elaborate on this point.”

You can find Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin’s report at, The Lane’s Gifts v. Google Report (pdf), (pages 25-26, 47; English only).

Well, I hope you found something useful and enjoyed this article, AdWords, AdSense and Click Fraud. Don’t forget to let me have your thoughts in the comment box below. See you soon.