Thread: PPC Fraud

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....

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

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102100936.html

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

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

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.

Originally Posted by 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....

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 !!!

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

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...

Originally Posted by Ten Lakes Realty

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...