Joanna L. Krotz, in a Microsoft Small Business Center article, tackled the subject of click fraud.
What is click fraud and why is it on the rise?
Click fraud is defined as someone who clicks on a paid search ad with harmful or dishonest intent. The click is made to artificially rack up fees rather than because of interest in your goods or services. As a pay-per-click marketer, you must then cough up the amount of illegal clicks on your paid listings but you gain nothing — not the sales or leads you seek.
Sadly, click fraud is the price of the Web's success. In rather short order, Internet advertising, including search engine marketing, has gone from a dot-com joke to nearly a $10 billion business, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. And growing. In other words, there's now real money in them 'thar clicks.
By 2005, the average cost of popular keywords had risen to $1.75 a click, with some hot industries even higher, including an average $5.39 per click for mortgage/refinancing services and $1.85 for telecommunications/broadband, according to the ZDNet Index. Multiply those numbers by thousands of illegal clicks and fraud can get costly.
Where do
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Software and hackers. Some scammers automate the fraud by using so-called "bot" software, which are robot programs to rack up thousands of clicks per hour. |
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Paid clickers. Companies, often based in places like Russia or Asia, pay low-wage workers to click. The Times of India recently reported on Indian housewives and college students who are earning up to $200 a month clicking on ads for a few hours a day, without really knowing it's fraud.
She offers 6 steps to help protect your business against click fraud.
- Combine paid and organic (free) search.
- Monitor Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.
- Balance your ad budget.
- Buy keywords that can inoculate you.
- Hire a watchdog.
- Report suspicions to the search engine.
If you are going to go the pay-per-click route, then know your business, your clients and your site interaction.
LP |