PPC Advertisers are tolerant of some fraud
A couple of high profile lawsuits against Google and Yahoo Search Marketing have made smaller advertisers stop and think about how much fraud might be happening in their PPC campaigns. After stopping and thinking, however, many search advertisers are willing to live with click fraud.
How to investigate click fraud
Several AdWords consultants we work with will not even investigate click fraud for clients without a certain minimum of AdWords business (think thousands per month). It just isn’t worth the effort, unfortunately.To investigate, precise traffic measurements and testing procedures must be enacted. This is beyond most AdWords consultants, as it is more of a technical process than a marketing one.
Who are these PPC clickers / fraudsters?
A few reports have appeared in the news the last few years highlighting houswives in India making $300/month extra income by clicking ads.A Black Hat SEO technique is to click your competitor’s ads until their daily budget is expended. While Google and Yahoo Search Marketing do make efforts to prevent click fraud, obviously more could be done.
As long as money is to be made in Google Adwords, most advertisers are going to be too busy honing their campaigns instead of focusing on click fraud.
