Fight Against a Digital Crime: Click Fraud
04.29.09
Crimes surround our lives; absolute safety doesn’t exist, even in virtual world. Pay per click campaign on Google AdWords is not free of being robbed. Remember: that kind of advertising is displayed on Search Engine result page, but you don´t have to pay for posting, only for each click you receive.
Now, think of this: What happen if someone begins to click and click on your ad several times? That makes your company have to pay a lot of money, in a lot of cases thousands of dollars.
That’s usually know as click fraud “a type of Internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link”.
Unfortunately, that felony is growing and could be on any people’s hands. Experts consider that there are three groups of criminals:
- Cheat competitors
- Some companies which are affiliated to Google AdSense allow PPC ads on their own sites; so, they began to click and click for raising their incomes.
- There are companies which hire people to click on PPC ads.
So, what can you do to avoid fraudulent clicks? Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, but proving or attacking that problem definitively is practically impossible. However, monitoring your campaign you can control it and reduce the risk:
- Constantly review your ad for checking what is working or if there something out of place.
- Suspect if there are a considerable increase on rates.
- You can limit your ads to a specific geographical area
- As you decide the investment, limit the price you want to pay for each click.
- Sometimes, Google refund money when they detect fraud through the ‘click fraud report’
Always the best is to leave your PPC ad campaign on expert hands. Ilikesem.com does the entire job for you.
