Guide to Detecting and Deterring Click Fraud on Google, Yahoo and Other Search Engines

Sources of Click Fraud

• Competitors — competitors are the largest source of click fraud. If they want to deplete your account and waste your advertising funds, all they have to do is click on your ad a couple of times a day and your money will go down the drain.
• Ad Publishers — publishers work with search engines by displaying their ads and earning a portion of the revenue for each click. They may see little or no harm in clicking a couple of times on the ad themselves to generate extra income on the side. In competitive industries, cost per click can be several dollars, so a few clicks per day per affiliate or competitor and you can be losing thousands of dollars a month.
• Impression Fraud — On Google, if your clickthrough rate drops below 0.5%, your ad will be disabled and your competitor can grab a top position at a lower keyword cost. Using bots, your competitors generate thousands of false impressions on your ads (without clicking on it) which causes Google to disable your ad.

I recommend: ... that you Investigate who your top competitors are and where they are located. By identifying their location, you may be able to figure out where certain fraudulent clicks are coming from. To research a specific IP, go to IP2Location.

... to be careful when you advertise on AdSense or any other content network. You have the option to disable it or set lower prices for clicks coming from content publishers, so make sure to use it. For additional information on AdSense, visit Wikipedia's page.

Detecting Click Fraud

Some telltale signs of click fraud are quite obvious, while others take a little more tracking and analysis to identify. Here’s what to look for:

• Keyword performance — if you notice that some specific keywords in your ad campaign that normally do not do well suddenly generate tons of clicks, investigate.
• Abnormal number of clicks from the same IP address — although this is the most obvious and easily identified form of click fraud, it is amazing how many fraudsters still use this method, particularly for quick attacks.
• Decline in conversions — if your conversion rate is normally positive, and all of a sudden, conversion dives into negative numbers, this could be a sign of click fraud in action.
• Large numbers of visitors who leave your site quickly — if visitors come to your website and leave right away, it should raise a red flag.
• Clicks coming from countries outside of your target market — use dnsstuff.com to track where IP is from.

I recommend: ... that you use a 3rd party tool to detect this activity. While you can do this yourself, it will save you time and effort to use a company that specializes in detecting fraud. Some companies that you can consider are AdWatcher.com (shameless self promotion), WhosClickingWho.com and Clicklab.com

Getting Money Back from the Search Engines

1. Gather up all of the information you have on the fraud occurrences over a specific timeframe.
2. Write a paragraph describing the trends in logs and/or reports that have led you to believe the click activity is invalid.
3. Contact the search engine with the report. If you have an account representative, forward the data to him or her.
4. After you submit the information, you will likely receive a response similar to one of these:
   1. They have conducted the investigation, found the clicks fraudulent, and will issue the credit to your account.
   2. They are requesting additional supporting information, such as your traffic trends, server logs, etc.
   3. They may refuse to acknowledge that the clicks were fraudulent. If scenario a) or b) occurs, follow whatever instructions are provided. If c) occurs, ask to speak to your contact’s supervisor. Don’t take the first “no” as a final answer.

I recommend: ... that you follow up extensively. follow up. Once I submit my fraud alert, I print out the email that is sent back with a case number. I wait five to seven days before following up, just to make sure I don't hear from them first. After seven days I follow up with another email and a phone call, using the case number that the search engine sent me.

 ... if you want to see what a sample click fraud report looks like, check out this link.