It's worthwhile
to examine Google's definition of Google AdSense and
Click Fraud , before delving deeper into AdSense
Fraud .
Google AdSense fraud is one of the diseases that plague
the Ad Words advertisers. The AdSense program essentially
allows website publishers/owners to sign up with Google,
enabling them to display Google Ads on their sites.
These publishers essentially act as Google Partners
. The ads chosen by the Google bot for display are contextual
and the ads are related to the contents of the publisher's
website, more specifically that particular web page.
The intent for Google is to capitalize on the traffic
to these (in practice) niche sites and provide highly
direct targeted traffic to the advertiser. A subset
of the users of the Google Partner website, click on
those ads and Google charges the advertiser per click.
Google shares the booty with the website publisher but
the revenue sharing ratio falls under Google's
undisclosed criteria. While the exact amount can
be reverse engineered, the take home lesson is that
the final amount is proportional to Google's income
from that click.
In theory it's a match made in heaven. The advertiser
gets good ROI through targeted traffic, the publisher
gets to monetize the traffic on their website and the
web browser gets to buy that classic CD that he couldn't
live without. Not to mention that Google gets a wad
of cash. The gods of lucre smile beneficently on all.
Unfortunately, this happy façade hides blemishes. Severe
ones. For all Google AdSense Publishers are not created
equal. While (we daresay) many advertisers have a genuine
website, providing a valuable or interesting service
to the world wide community, there is a significant
number of unscrupulous operators who are out there to
prey on the advertisers. These creatures of the night
(and we will explain later why we use that term), make
websites for the express purpose of milking AdSense
revenue.
This category of fraudsters deserves a taxonomy of its
own, which we have developed (the other categories,
click fraud and impression fraud are even bigger problems
in some industries). In the interest of not being gender
biased, we have alternated between genders. We hope
that our lighthearted tone does not mask the revulsion
that we feel towards these cheats.
Regressive Fraudster ( aka ClickMonkey ):
This guy is at the bottom of the food chain. Inspired
by the riches of his neighbor Ms. Jones, who has been
making more than ten grand a month in AdSense revenue,
he plans a course of action. He invests
in a clickbot software( a simple google search reveals
many) and gets a list of anonymous proxy addresses.
He then goes to register a few domains and hires someone
off of elance to create a network of sites and
click bot . He hopes that the interlinked
sites will provide each some link popularity
and increase his page rank. If only it were that simple!
He then proceeds to use the $30 clickbot to start clicking
on the sites. Or he could click on them himself manually
using the proxies. We don't call him click monkey for
nothing. He clicks and clicks all the way to see his
account getting banned. No banana for this monkey! His
calls of despair to google fall on deaf ears. This person
is likely to quit, but sometimes retries to get up the
food chain, the Wanna -Be-Fraudster.
Wanna -Be Fraudster ( aka BOZO):
This girl searches for high paying keywords like
home loan equity (current ad words rate: $45),
or web hosting (ad words costing $20). She
correctly guesses that the AdSense payout is proportional
to what Google earns and therefore homes in on such
words. Her strategy is to make a page with contents
that are appropriate for the targeted high payout keyword.
She moves ahead by clicking on the link multiple times
and recruits friends and family to give them a click.
Or ten!
Little does she know that Google has a 45 day inspection
period before she get her nubby little fingers on that
cash. With little to no knowledge of Click through Ratio
, her greed couples with her ignorance. Seeing her ill-gotten
paper wealth multiplying in her AdSense interface, she
increases the clicks. Google however inspects the CTR
and throws a fit when they see a CTR exceeding 20%.
Furthermore, Google notices clicks mostly originating
from a few IP addresses and that essentially seals her
fate (or rather docks her earnings). That virtual cash
is now just some deleted bytes on a hard disk on Google's
servers. She moans, nay she rail against the cruelty
of Google's policy. Some of these people wisely cease
and desist such activities, perhaps philosophizing about
the NFL (no free lunch) theorem. Others however see
it as ground school for the next stage of nefarious
behavior. The Almost-There Fraudster.
Almost-There Fraudster ( aka SmartAlec ):
The archetypical ATF is supremely confident in his ability
to fool Google. Like the BOZO, he looks for high paying
keywords and makes appropriate website(s). Let's assume
that he is in a third world country, just to make the
case more interesting. The case described here is 1
year old news. He has read this article and taken the
learnt the subsequent lesson . He knows that that the
clicks from the IP Addresses of USA, UK & Canada
are worth much more than the clicks from the IP Addresses
from the third world countries. He therefore seeks to
befriend people from such IP addresses by logging onto
messenger services.
This way, he gets the unique, unrelated IP clicks and
(he hopes) that Google is fooled. Remember creature
of the night . Well, these people typically are more
than a few time zone removed from the US or Canada and
therefore are up at odd hours whenever they feel that
their targets are most likely to be active. Plus they
sometimes have to deal with inconveniences
like a day job.
AT fraud thinks that the clicks he obtained by trolling
on these sites is a job well done. He has got clicks
from the IP address of his choice .. An interesting
factoid is that for AdSense, state also matters. Clicks
from Washington and New York State have the highest
payout for AdSense Fraud.
He has just one problem. His tragic flaw. While he worked
so hard to get the unique IP and high earnings, he is
not able to maintain a good CTR. He is likely to cross
the limit of 30-40% of daily CTR and 10-20% of overall
CTR. He ends up in the same purgatory as the BOZO. The
account is banned, and he gets the abominated email.
Yes, the AdSense account closure . Almost-There
is never good enough in this nether world of AdSense
gaming. Although it is possible that he would have made
a few thousand dollars before the punishment catches
up to his crime. Crime doesn't quite pay, now does it?
Well, gentle reader, unfortunately crime _is_ paying
to the next category. Fraudster Maestro ( aka Satan's
Spawn).
Fraudster Maestro ( aka Satan's Spawn):
This category of fraudsters is the most sophisticated
and rarely gets caught by google . She has researched
the high paying keywords as well as the CTR issues well.
She has the smoothest lines in the business of soliciting
clicks. She can flirt online, and ask to click the
link for her picture. Or she may claim that clicking
the link causes the hungry child to be fed in Ethiopia
. Let's follow a typical simple chat session:
US User : hello
FM Fraud: what are your coordinates, handsome?
US User : NY , NY
FM Fraud: Oh! Wish I could be there. Can you help out
a damsel in distress?
US User : sure
AT Fraud: I have made a site and want to see if all
the links on this page are working or not. Can you please
click on the links and see if the other page loads?
US User: Sure. Link?
FM Fraud:www.fraudstersite.com/high-value-keyword-page.html
US User : wait! Yes I checked all the links and they
are working fine.
FM Fraud:
Thanks
US User : so can we talk about you now? ( Message Not
Delivered as the fraudster has blocked the User and
is busy looking for a new victim)
And she has lots of tricks up her repertoire besides
chatting up strangers. She knows about opt in lists,
usenet and blogs where she can snare the victims. Technically
savvy and able to empathize with her victims she doesn't
let arrogance get in her way to success. Since she is
very mindful of the CTR issues she has a secret weapon.
She has optimized her site for some low paying keywords
which are really not competitive. She organically gets
lots of traffic (but for things unrelated to those competitive
high paying keywords). In her website, she may be giving
away free greeting cards Or free screensavers. End result
is a fabulous impression count. The second step for
her is to makes unrelated pages on the same site and
these pages pertain to the high paying keywords. These
keywords are used to attract the victims of chat sessions.
The process of getting the clicks is different but the
results due to CTR are very lucrative.
So, how does all this geek talk affect the PPC advertiser?
It's a $5 billion+ dollar market (for exact projections
onto the future, please check out our FAQ, and with
a 20% + fraud rate, we are talking about a 1 BILLION
dollars fraud per year. Even Dr. Evil may be impressed
by such a number. It's greater than the cumulative GNP
of a few banana republics. And a fair chunk is ending
up in the coffers of these fraudsters. We know from
anecdotal evidence, how people are clearing up to 20
grand a month. All, courtesy of the hapless PPC advertiser.
We want to emphasize
that there are lots of authentic sites serving genuine
content. But unfortunately the existence of these people
(as discussed above) reduces the ROI of many advertisers
to the extent that they rethink their interest in PPC.
In the word of one of our organic SEO customers, with
PPC you always get a little less back than you
put in . It needn't be that way, if you watch carefully
where your ad words traffic is coming from and take
some steps (such as traffic analysis or at the very
least a log file analysis) to protect arm yourself.
Look for patterns, some of which are obvious (such as
large traffic spikes from India). Unfortunately other
patterns may require a doctorate in artificial intelligence.
Still the keyword is to stay nimble. Convincing search
engines to refund money is a lot tougher and a lot more
work than proactively watching for problem visitors
and taking steps that you deem appropriate. Before the
situation goes out of hand. Remember, an ounce of prevention.
In the word of one of our organic SEO customers, with
PPC you always get a little less back than you
put in . It needn't be that way, if you stay nimble.
Convincing search engines to refund money is a lot tougher
and a lot more work than proactively watching for problem
visitors and taking steps that you deem appropriate.
Some things you can do to stay ahead of the game. This
is by NO means an exhaustive list, but it's a start.
It's sorted by the level of protection in ascending
that you may need.
1> Let your visitors know that you are tracking them
and know quite a bit about them. For instance, if you
visit http://www.sofizar.com/
, you will see information about yourself. You can display
this information to all your visitors, or only to some
of them. It can be in-your-face or subtle, but it will
remind at least some of the fraudsters that they are
being watched. Sofizar provides free sample code and
connection to its database allowing you to display
premium information(like City, ISP, ISP contact
number).
2> Invest in a serious visitor tracking software.
Set alarms based on the number of times a person clicks
on your site in a certain time period(hourly, weekly,
monthly). Display the same information to someone who
is definitely PPCing your budget to death, as a custom
message box. Something harsh, if the pattern keeps
up. We are logging the usage, and we are
noticing that you keep clicking on our site through
PPC. If you don't cease, we would be forced to call
your local ISP at +91-23-344-5678 (if you see the information
that we can glean about visitors, you will know we can
get even more specific). This will weed some of the
casual fraudsters.
3> Start checking for things that we have discussed
earlier, by investing in an industrial strength data
collection package. Based on your data collection, one
strategy is to score each visitor, deducting (or adding
points), based on the following (non exhaustive) list.
a. Visitor conversion/past conversion history.
b. Visit Depth Analysis.
c. Visit Time Analysis (time spent on each page, and
time of day the visit happens).
d. Cookies/Javascript/ Unknown OS
e. Keyword Cost analysis.
f. Anonymous Proxy Server
g. Is part of Fraudster list .
h. Country/Localization analysis (are you really targeting
people in Sao Paolo , Brazil for your French Restaurant
in New York ?).
4> Do pattern matching. See what your top 20% of
your customers do as part of a macro pattern
and match the visitor against that pattern.
Keep in mind that you will get a few false
positives and vice versa. A few innocent people
may get tagged unfairly as fraudsters while
a few fraudsters may well give you the slip.
It's not an exact science, but over a period of time
you can get fairly close. If you decide to take up your
case with Google, you have to make a very convincing
case. All based on meticulous data, instead of (what
may be considered by them as) paranoia.
Over the long term, as the threat evolves and the
fraudsters improve, you have to keep adapting your strategy
using your friends, diligent data collection, statistics
and pattern matching.
If
you have any further question, comments or want
us to give you a free evaluation if your PPC campaign
is a likely magnet for fraudsters, please email to:
art@sofizar.com or visit http://www.sofizar.com/contact.php |
