Pay Per Click Fraud

Preventing Fraudulent Pay-Per-Click Activity

Pay-per-click advertising provides an excellent way for you to market your website and business. Similarly, a person can make a decent amount of money by hosting pay-per-click ads on his or her website. Making money with pay-per-click ads is a booming industry. In fact, thousands of people are creating informational websites with the soul purpose of placing pay-per-click ads on the site and getting paid every time a site visitor clicks the ad. But, what happens when someone acts unscrupulously and clicks these ads numerous times just so they can make that extra cash?

Making Clicks That Werent Really Meant to Be

Sadly, there are a growing number of people that are trying to play the system and are doing just that. After setting up a website and creating pay-per-click accounts, some are hiring people from other countries that are willing to sit at home and click on ads a countless number of times for a very low wage. Yet others are creating sophisticated software called 'hitbots' that click on these links repeatedly. This practice is called click fraud and is a major problem for honest business owners that are trying to draw in targeted Internet traffic.

The use of hitbots and other fraudulent strategies to click on these ads is such a problem that one man, Michael Anthony Bradley, was recently indicted in the United States for fraud and extortion. Not only was Bradley creating fraudulent clicks, he actually attempted to get Google to pay him $100,000 for the click fraud software he created by the name of 'Google Clique.'

Draining the Pocketbooks of Business People

The fraudulent acts of these criminals are causing a great deal of harm to business owners, namely because they are paying the high costs resulting from all of these clicks but are not getting new business traffic in return. After all, the point of a pay-per-click advertising campaign is to bring new visitors to the site. But, when someone sits back and repeatedly clicks on the ad in order to make money, the ads are not serving the purpose they were intended to serve. Meanwhile, the business owners pay-per-click account quickly drains.

Fortunately for business owners, companies such as Google Adsense that offer pay-per-click advertising have been more than understanding about the situation. In fact, a Google representative recently made the following statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission:

'We are exposed to the risk of fraudulent clicks on our ads. We have regularly paid refunds related to fraudulent clicks and expect to do so in the future. If we are unable to stop this fraudulent activity, these refunds may increase. If we find new evidence of past fraudulent clicks, we may have to issue refunds retroactively of amounts previously paid to our Google Network members.' That is certainly good news to business owners, but it is not exactly fair that Google should have to swallow the costs created from this criminal behavior. In addition, demonstrating that fraudulent activity has occurred on a pay-per-click ad requires paying close attention to your account and doing a little bit of investigating. Reducing Your Chances of Being Victimized by Click Fraud There are a number of steps you can take in order to reduce your chances of being taken advantage of by click fraud.

* Audit the log files of your website on a regular basis (you can use software such as WebTrends, ClickTracks, or AWStats to help you with this process if you are not comfortable with taking a look at the log files of your website).

* Look for repeated clicks coming from the same IP address.

* Immediately report any fraudulent or suspicious activity to your pay-per-click company.

* Go to the American Registry of Internet Numbers and enter the questionable IP address into the 'Whois' search box in order to find out who has been assigned the IP address that keeps clicking on your ad.

* If the IP address is not fro the Americas, go to the RIPE Network Coordination Center in order to trace European, Russian, or Middle Eastern registries. Or, visit the Asia Pacific Network Information Center for IP addresses assigned to those regions.

* If the IP address belongs to a business you are familiar with, such as a competitor that may be purposely attempting to drain your account, confront that person with your information and demand that he or she stop. If the activity does not cease, take legal action against the individual.

If the fraudster is using a sophisticated type of software to create the clicks, you might have a difficult time tracing the IP address. In this case, it may be impossible to prove to the pay-per-click company that you have been taken advantage of. For this reason, it is important that you resist the temptation to pour all of your marketing dollars into your pay-per-click campaign. Besides, the broader you expand your marketing ventures, the broader the number of potential customers you will reach.

I have been invloved in the buseinss of online marketing and website designe for around 5 years now. I have optisimed many ppc campaigns as well as websites. Many of the websites I have been working on are now getting listed number 1 on Google.