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Google Adwords, the Cost per Click (CPC) advertising program is indeed an effective way for advertisors reach potential customers. There are some weaknesses in the model, which are promptly taken advantage of by fraudsters. The ignorance or arrogance of a few of Adsense also cause advertisors lose faith in this program.
Adwords Clicks Generated by Competitors:
This is perpetuated mainly by competitors of a business, who deliberately click on competitors ads to ensure the resources are spent without any return to the advertisor. Advertisor sees advertising amount slipping through his fingers. Competitors make a keyword search at Google.com and click on the advertising.
Adwords click frauds by Adsense Publishers:
This type of click frauds are mainly through Adsense publishers. Adsense is the program for website publishers, in which Google shares Adwords ads with publishers willing to share their advertising space inventory. Google identifies the context of the page in which advertising space is available and serves relevant advertising. Publisher gets paid when someone clicks on the ads displayed on their pages.
Adsense publishers, some out of ignorance and pure arrogance not to read the terms of conditions, click on the ads in their own pages for the sake of some extra revenue.
Adsense publishers, a few of them have even gone overboard by hiring people from other countries, say Bangladesh or Pakisthan, solely for the purpose of clicking the ads on their pages.
Some Adsense publishers are even smarter. They hire people to chat through public chat features offered by instant messaging services like Yahoo Messenger, MSN Chat etc. They duty of the employees is to represent themselves as women of 20-23, chat to the visitors, ask them to visit the publisher page. They also ask to click on the 'links on the left', misrepresenting Google Ads as some plain links. That is all they want. It is a serious, almost undetectable condition, in which the clicks are generated from over different physical locations.
Advertisors Clicking their own Ads:
Sounds funny? Some advertisors do plan to click on their own ads, so that their ads will not be banned by Google Adwords. Google avoids ads that fail to generate clicks. By clicking their own ads, they hope their ads stay longer in the network. This can also can be semi-skilled Adwords agents promising n number of clicks per day. This is ignorance on part of advertisors and they are shooting at their own feet.
Possible Solutions for Adwords Click Frauds
Pattern give directions to anomalies. With Adwords click frauds, except in certain cases apparently lack a detectable pattern. Note the word apparently. It doesn't mean fully. In fact there is a pattern that Google can watch for.
The CTR of such a publisher or advertisor will be abnormally high, much higher than industry average.
The first thing to look for the amount of time a visitor spends at the landing page. If the visitor leaves the resulting page immediately after loading the page, it can be a sign of click fraud. Poor visitor retaining can also occur due to inaccurate targeting of keywords.
There are several sub-patterns within this pattern.
The visits are from same IP address.
If a visitor continuously click on a specific ad, it can be a clue to competitor click fraud.
Several Adwords click from same IP address
Several adwords clicks on different ads of no apparent relation can be the sign of a 'click-farm'. The 'employee' hired from another country gets a list of webpages to visit and make clicks for the publishers.
Immediate Ad click
A publisher gets clicks within moments of loading the page, with no apparent multiple page views. Get alerted about an IM-Chat-based click fraud. The visitor may or maynot stay on the landing page for a few moments, but will leave because he or she has nothing of interest in the resulting page.
Sadly, most of the criteria that fits Adsense click fraud also fits better performing Adwords ads or Adsense publisher pages. Advertisors use Adwords to get qualified visits to their site. The goal of the advertisors can be a product sale, a signup or spreading word about their movement. With click frauds, the advertisors will only be throwing their money in the air. Finding a way to prevent click frauds thus becomes the logical step towards ensuring income for Adsense publishers on the long run. Because it is from advertisors that the money comes from.
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