by Michael Baker
Protect Yourself Against Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Fraud

What is click fraud? This is when clicks are created artificially. It can be done by robots or repeated self clicking. Other ways include the use of frames and software. As technology advances Pay Per Click (PPC) engines have become more adept at detecting click fraud. However the cheaters have also become more cunning and develop more new software and techniques to counteract the detection software. It is a constant war to cut down click fraud in PPC advertising.

There are several ways that people engage in this form of deception. This is why it is so hard for PPC engines to keep up with all the cheaters:

Network click fraud: This is some of the most common and is done by syndication partners. These are smaller search engines and publishers who send false numbers which is click fraud to the parent PPC engine. The cheaters get paid but the advertisers lose out. These cheaters manage to send false information by means of robots and frames.

This activity results in worthless traffic, or simply no real visitors to the advertiser’s websites and sales pages. Click fraud like this is simply wasting or even stealing money from the advertiser. Surprising enough many advertisers are not aware of this or just choose to ignore it. This results in substandard advertising and is how PPC advertising gets a bad name.

Competitive click fraud: is a serious problem for those companies that are competing in high paying brackets. Here we are talking about $10 per click and up. Here is how this click fraud works. If your competitor really wants to rack up bills for you, he just clicks on your ad and each $10 adds up rapidly. This form of deception is plainly unprofessional and malicious.

Impression click fraud: This is an insidious attack on your PPC campaign in Google Adwords. It is based on the fact that keywords are ranked by Google according to the quality of traffic and activity on the links they attract. What is this click fraud? It works like this. A competitor will pause his campaign and sends a large amount of impressions with no clicks to competitor’s keywords. This type of deception will make all the keywords for the competing ads that are active become worthless, because Google will disable them. The competitor will then make a new active campaign and dominate the market.

Click fraud has created many pitfalls for the PPC advertiser, but there is a way to fight back. You can do this by carefully monitoring your PPC advertising campaign. When you keep a close watch on every aspect of your campaign you can stop cheating in its tracks.

With all these click fraud wars the advertiser finds himself stuck in between the 2 warring factions of thieves and PPC engines, but smart marketers know that they must take steps to protect themselves against click fraud. One way to do this is to track your ads, with a 3rd party ad tracker. When you do this you will know exactly what is happening to your ad.

Tags: Advice, Affiliate Marketing, Helpful Knowledge, Tips and Tricks