Expose Click Fraud

By Pamela S. Stevens

Click Fraud can be an expensive misfortune, but if you have seen success from your pay–per–click campaigns it doesn’t make sense to shut them down all together. So what do you do?

Monitor Clicks

If you have a busy site, searching through server log files everyday is impossible, so use reports compiled by your pay–per–click service and a third–party website traffic service.

Here are a few things to look for: Numerous Clicks from–

• One IP address
• One country or region
• From your competition

In addition these clicks–

• Include few page views
• Do not include conversions
• Are short visits

What to do if you Suspect Click Fraud

The first step is to collect evidence. In order to recover costs you will need to gather the visitor’s IP address, the country of origin, referrer information, date/time of clicks as well as a description of the ad and the landing page parameters. Once you gather this information from your pay–per–click service and your third–party website traffic service, search your log files for the same information. With these three sources of evidence to support your suspicions, request a refund or a credit from your pay–per–click service.

Automatic Click Fraud Detectors

Some website traffic statistics or analyzing services can compile reports that highlight suspected click fraud. So instead of searching through your visitor and page statistics yourself it will automatically compare visits to origins, IPs, page views, conversions and so on for you. Some affordable services that offer these reports include OneStat.com , ClickTracks and HitsLink .

Ways to Prevent Click Fraud

Click offenders look for ways to not get caught. For example, they can employ a bot that “steals” numerous IP addresses and then when they perform the offending clicks it looks like it is from one of the “stolen” IP addressees, instead of their own. Additionally, they can make it look like the clicks come from multiple addresses instead of just one. So far there is no way to prevent this type of malicious activity; however, you can install software that can prevent bots from “stealing” your IP address. So potentially, if everyone installed a good security program to protect their computer, this avenue could be shut down.

Overall, preventing click fraud is nearly impossible, but with the right evidence you can at least recoup some of your costs.

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