PPC Fraud

[DomainDrivers]

Did anyone catch the Washington Post article on PPC fraud? It was published on Sunday, October 22, 2006, front page (A Section, below the fold). One lady spends "hours a day" clicking ads and earns about $300 per year. uummmm....

[MoreMobile]

Did not see the article, can you give more info? How common is PPC fraud? Thanks

[DomainDrivers]

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/21/AR2006102100936.html

[MoreMobile]

thanks for the link...an interesting article. I did not know how organized it was..

[qasamm]

PPC fraud is too common. Some estimates have it as high as 20% of all clicks are fraud related. I stopped using PPC for my promotion about a year ago after having a major problem with fraud. I was using goClick PPC and had a major jump in click throughs. Using my visitor stats I determined that 90% of the traffic I received came from one, completely unrelated website and moved on to another completely unrelated site.

The traffic pattern was:
magicgames -> mysite -> joestruck parts about 400 times a day!
I contacted magicgames and joestruck parts and found that they also used goClick but had not noticed the pattern yet. goClick was completely uncooperative in resolving this obvious click fraud. Between the other 2 sites and mine there were over $1500 in clicks involved (luckily my portion was the smallest since I caught it only a few days after it started.).

I gave up on PPC right after that! The closest thing I use is exactseek's ads where you pay a flat rate for a keyword.

Sam Mancuso
President, RuzzMan LLC

[Kevin Kirtz]

Yeah, click fraud is rather rampant at this point in the PPC advertising evolution. There are ways to get around it though, it usually if not always involves extreme targeting of your audience so you reduce possible click fraud as much as possible. Certain networks are more susceptible to fraud than others, Google is only highly susceptible to fraud in their content network, where clicks are much less policed. My two cents. :)

[Ten Lakes Realty]

Did anyone catch the Washington Post article on PPC fraud? It was published on Sunday, October 22, 2006, front page (A Section, below the fold). One lady spends "hours a day" clicking ads and earns about $300 per year. uummmm....

I know this is an older POST, I just want to say that their is fraud in all industries. Liars and Cheaters are everywhere. That being said, I have lost thousands upon thousands of dollars on useless billboard ads on highways, local newspaper and shiny magazine ads.. when I turned this money to online advertising I was shocked. for Example I had a listing in Oregon, I spend 2000 dollars on advertising in Move2Oregon.com , newspapers and 1000 more on media outlets to promote the listing. It turned out that the website i build for the listing for around $120 was what sold it, I got $25,000 in commission and loved that Online advertising. So don't rule out PPC just because there are a few bad apples. When you find them ... report them. If you don't know how to report them. Include the Offenders in This Blog and we will shine a big light on them. Have a Great Day !!!

[Kevin Kirtz]

I agree completely. There are a lot of fruitless ways to advertise, but PPC CAN be a very targetted way to advertise to exactly who you want to see your advertisement. The buyers who are interested in what YOU have to sell. That's the best part of it all, you can target as deep or as broad as you like, or can afford. It's all up to you. Your skill, your expertise, your studies, your results :)

[Codythebest]

Few hours a day...for $300 a year !!!...C'mon...she could few yellow pages books on ebay and get more for wayyyyy less time...
I don't get it.
The new sport is to repeatedly click on the competition adsense for 2 or 3 days and email Google that he/she asked me to click for a payment.
No question asked, the competition is out of the picture in no time...

[AllBizHere]

I know this is an older POST, I just want to say that their is fraud in all industries. Liars and Cheaters are everywhere. That being said, I have lost thousands upon thousands of dollars on useless billboard ads on highways, local newspaper and shiny magazine ads.. when I turned this money to online advertising I was shocked. for Example I had a listing in Oregon, I spend 2000 dollars on advertising in Move2Oregon.com , newspapers and 1000 more on media outlets to promote the listing. It turned out that the website i build for the listing for around $120 was what sold it, I got $25,000 in commission and loved that Online advertising. So don't rule out PPC just because there are a few bad apples. When you find them ... report them. If you don't know how to report them. Include the Offenders in This Blog and we will shine a big light on them. Have a Great Day !!!

Google Adsense..
I got a lot information about it.
So many people make money with Google.
I wish, I will make money too...:D

[Ten Lakes Realty]

Google Adsense..
I got a lot information about it.
So many people make money with Google.
I wish, I will make money too...:D

You will, just put up good content and share your experience, the online ad dollars are picking up and you will do great...

Real Estate Marketing (http://www.independentrealestateconsultant.info)

[Kevin Kirtz]

Yeah, Adwords and Adsense are great tools, being a specialist in advertising for real estate agents is sometimes, frankly, rather amazing at the results, and even more so at what's possible. Brings in my income :)

[MAAOnline]

I didn't really have much success with adding adsense to my website but I was able to profit from Adwords though.

[TimuM]

Interesting news...
If Google eliminates PPC frauds, it will lose 30% of its online ad income :)

[Orlando MLS]

What a disgusting way to earn a living. That is straight theft. It's criminal. I feel for the poor people out there trying to earn an honest living on a small marketing budget with crooks like this around.

IMO Google, Yahoo, MSN all need to take a stronger stance about shutting these people down. But that will never happen - it's lost revenue to them.

That's why I stopped doing PPC for a while. Too much fraud on my account by the haters out there.

[housetubetv]

I earn good $$ from google adsense because my sites get lots of traffic as they have rich content.

I'll never and don't need to buy google adwords to advertise my sites because they are already getting traffic.

The best way to get traffic is to buy Ads space from high traffic sites.

[the-ref]

Click fraud is nothing new and has been around for quite some time. I found it pretty humorous though when the first post that started this thread stated that one lady just spends time clicking and earns $300... a year.

Anyways, click fraud will always be around because like people have already stated, eliminating the problem means eliminating income for the PPC providers. They may try to reduce the problem and help people out with justifiable causes (with strong evidence, of course), but it will probably never go away. If you're worried about it, don't use PPC. But if it may be worth it to be able to acquire targeted traffic.

[housetubetv]

Click fraud is nothing new and has been around for quite some time. I found it pretty humorous though when the first post that started this thread stated that one lady just spends time clicking and earns $300... a year.

Anyways, click fraud will always be around because like people have already stated, eliminating the problem means eliminating income for the PPC providers. They may try to reduce the problem and help people out with justifiable causes (with strong evidence, of course), but it will probably never go away. If you're worried about it, don't use PPC. But if it may be worth it to be able to acquire targeted traffic.


There will be always be frauds in any business!!

[mnewks]

If you use Google AdWords, you need to track your conversion rates with their Content Network to make sure it is paying off. The content network are sites outside of Google that Google pays when people click on your ad.