|
How to avoid click fraud
Click fraud is becoming a major problem for online advertisers.
If you advertise your web site on pay per click search engines
such as Overture or Google AdWords, chances are that you pay
way too much for your clicks.
What is click fraud?
Click fraud is the practice of artificially inflating the
number of clicks in a pay per click online campaign.
Overture defines
click fraud as clicks arising for reasons other than the good-faith
intention of an Internet user to visit a web site to purchase
goods or services or to obtain information.
Google defines click fraud, or invalid clicks, as any method
used to artificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or
page impressions.
No matter how you define it, click fraud means that someone
is cheating you and that you pay too much for your pay per
click campaigns.
Who are these people?
There are three main groups that click on pay per click ads
without real interest in the offered goods:
- People who joined Google AdSense or other per click affiliate
programs click on the ads on their own web site to make
a little income. Often, these people cooperate with other
webmasters to click on each other's ads.
- Some unethical companies click on the pay per click ads
of competitors to drive up their advertising costs.
- Companies (often in India, Russia and China) hire
people who are paid to click on ads.
Is this really a big problem?
No pay per click company denies that pay per click fraud
exists. According to some web analytics companies, as much
as 50% of all click activity is fraudulent.
This means that your pay per click marketing activities are
half effective as they could be because of click fraud.
What can you do to save money?
The best way to lower your pay per click advertising costs
is to optimize your current ads so that they deliver a better
return-on-investment.
There are many things you can do to improve the effectiveness
of your pay per click ads. Details can be found in our Google
AdWords eBook.
In addition to useful information that helps you to lower
your advertising costs while increasing your profits, the
eBook contains a list of keywords that attract click fraudsters
and information on how
to avoid click fraud.
|
