Follow These Steps To Manage Click Fraud on PPC Campaigns

August 11, 2010 – 1:00 am

A Click Fraud is the term used for illegitimate or bogus clicks incurred by an advertiser during a PPC or display advertising campaign which may have been done for competitive advantage or financial gains. There are two types of click frauds.

Competitive click fraud – Bogus clicks from advertiser’s competitors to cause financial loss

Network click fraud – Bogus clicks (or impressions) from ad publishers in order to increase their revenue

Although Search Engines have mechanism in place to detect and discard some of the false clicks they not fully effective. Advertisers on their part can try to monitor click fraud on PPC campaigns and other advertising networks by following steps.

•    Look for sudden spike in clicks or traffic which is significantly higher than normal

•    Increase in clicks without any increase in conversions

•    Large number of clicks from same IP or geographical location

•    High traffic from locations other than where your target audience exists

•    Large number of visitors who leave you site quickly

Although there is no foolproof method to detect the click fraud following these methods to detect the click fraud can certainly save some money. Once you detect some of these bogus clicks, do report them to search engines or network authorities.