| Frequently Asked Questions |
Here are answers to some of the questions we are asked.
|
| What is click fraud? |
There is no universal definition of click fraud, but most agree that repeated clicking of a pay-per-click (PPC) advertisement by someone who never intended to buy is undesirable. This is not necessarily fraud, but repeated clicks by such a person or an organized group of people increasingly amount to click fraud. Competitors who click an ad to check out a landing page are not necessarily committing fraud.
|
| Who commits click fraud? |
Click fraud is usually committed by or on behalf of three groups: affiliate marketers, competitors and disreputable PPC engines. The clickers are individuals who are paid to "read ads", competitor staff, or infected, innocent PCs whose owners are unaware of this activity. Some novice affiliate marketers who display PPC ads on their pages are tempted to click them so that they can make some money from programs such as Google AdSense.
|
| Why do people commit click fraud? |
Competitors usually do it to deplete the advertising budget of their rival. Most others do it for money - the people who employ home-based clickers get paid by the competitors or disreputable PPC engines and they, in turn, pay pennies to the clickers. |
| How can I identify and prosecute fraudulent clickers? |
It is nearly impossible to identify and successfully prosecute a malicious clicker. If the clicker is careless, you can tell from our reports that a specific IP address belongs to a certain company. Beyond that point, you would need a court order to get the conclusive damning data. In practice, a telephone call to that company's owner would probably end the malicious clicking. On the other hand, if the clicker uses a public ISP or a library computer, it would be much harder to identify the culprit. Your best bet is to show the report to the PPC engine and request a refund of the excessive clicks.
|
| How do you detect suspicious clicks? |
We use several measures, such as using a cookie to identify unique PCs, IP addresses, click patterns not only on your ads but on the ads of other customers. We also use confidential data from other sources to build a "suspicion rating". Most of these measures can be altered by you to avoid getting false positive alerts.
|
| I don't trust anyone with my clickstream data but need such a service. What can I do? |
By purchasing and hosting our Enterprise Appliance at a place of your choosing, your secrets are safe. We will send you periodic knowledgebase updates so that your appliance is up to date.
|
