What is Click Fraud?
Click fraud is when competitors manually click on your pay per click advertising campaigns to increase your marketing costs. This malicious and widespread practice also damages your advertising plan by running through your weekly budget earlier in the week than you had planned. Click fraud also increases your costs because campaigns that are more active have higher per click fees.
Competitors also conduct click fraud by having automated bots click on your ads. Your competitors may work with so-called “bot farms”, hiring people to click on your ads to increase your costs.
Click fraud can originate from the sites being paid to host your ads. They receive a portion of the ad revenue and unfortunately, sometimes they have people or a program click on your ads to increase their profits.
Click Fraud Prevention
There are steps you can take to minimize click fraud and protect your bottom line. It is critical to establish a click fraud prevention program for your pay for click campaigns. While ad platforms like Google AdWords have programs to try to detect bots and improper clicks, they are not foolproof. And it is really not in their financial interests to lessen their income by stopping all this extra activity. It is necessary for you to protect your own business.
–Recognize Bots and Other Click Fraud
Regularly check the statistics of your campaigns and don’t let bots or competitors ruin your statistics and budget. Access and review the activity logs from your server and checking for high numbers of clicks from the same IP address. A large amount of clicks without a related increase in sales is another red flag. Once you identify the offending IP addresses you can block them in your advertising campaigns.
–Choose Sites Carefully and Use Filters
Avoid improper activity by being more selective about the sites on which you advertise. Reputable sites will not sabotage you by clicking fraudulently on your campaigns. Adding captcha and other safeguards to be sure that only real people are clicking is a good step too.
–Invest in Click Fraud Prevention
For a small monthly fee, you can use fraud protection software that will monitor and prevent click fraud. It is much more efficient than trying to download and block IP addresses manually.
Protect your company with this effective tool. If your PPC is currently managed by SearcherMagnet, click fraud protection is included and may be running. Contact support for details.
Don’t think it won’t happen to you. Take proactive steps for click fraud prevention today!
