How to avoid click fraud!

Fraud in the online advertising, especially in the case of the search engines not only make more and more online advertising campaigns to become inefficient, but even began to generate losses for companies.

A year ago, DiamondHarmony.com, an online jewelry store, she decided to increase the channels of publicity. The company filed in the effort to develop a marketing plan that includes search engine advertising campaigns with a pay-per-click based on keywords, reports CNET Networks.

But, although the intention was good, the company was caught in the wake of fraud issues with fake clicks.

Far from being actual visitation of the site, click sites came from illegal sources. Fraud, which damages DiamondHarmony with 17,000 dollars (13,370 euros) in seven months, was not covered by the analytical software the company installed the company ClickTracks of Santa Cruz.

Click fraud type occurring especially when the partners "traitors" who receive a portion of proceeds from the sites click on sites that pay, generates, in a deliberate, clicks that have no connection with sales business to pay for them.

Click false sites may be generated by automated programs or by persons convinced to spend time clicking click many times on a link advertising.

DiamondHarmony initially paid 45 or 50 dollars a day in the eight search engines where it placed advertising, said Joe Tedd, manager of strategy for search engines.

With a week before Thanksgiving, Tedd noted a number of increasingly large clicks for advertising published on a particular search engine, while the conversion rate - the number of sales in relation to the number of clicks links - drop more.

"In November I noticed that the growing number of searches on each of the search engines place on Advertising," said Tedd.

"But while all the other search engines had conversion rates increasing, this engine was very bad that I decided to cancel on that site."

"Your search engine selling keywords partners, but while the clicks were counted prices on all partner sites, they were not counted on our site," he added Tedd.

Business of any kind may be victims of fraud clicks.

Companies that rival vaneaza same position on a list of results based on paid visits can click long enough on a competitor's ad, making it exceed his spending limit and eliminating him temporarily from the search list.

Usually, the companies estimate a budget for individual search and for the entire campaign.

This year, eMarketer, a research firm, estimated that online advertising market turnover reached 16.7 billion dollars (13.14 billion), advertising on search engines is estimated at 6.9 billion dollars (5 , 42 billion) by the end of.

Global advertising market online has been revalued, it being 3-6% less than the initial assessment. Market marketing search engine remained, however, constant.

Complexity of the problem lies in how it is described and the one who describes. Employer Iain Burton, president of ASPIN London, a factory that sells leather goods, says the fraud clicks are more elusive than he can tell the search engines. Burton, who spent about 50,000 dollars (39,300 euros) each month to pay for advertising on search engines, says the situation is cry to heaven.

"I used to make money from advertising pay-per-click. I say that was really good. But it has now become ridiculously expensive. I lost a lot of money because of fraud clicks in time."

Those who provide search engine advertising disagree and say that the overwhelming majority of fake clicks were never seen by the advertising, because they were found and replaced. Purtatoarea the word of Yahoo!, Gaude Paez, also said that the fraud clicks are serious problems that may yet be resolved.

"We believe that the industry must be vigilant and stay one step ahead of those who fraudeaza," said John Slade, senior director at Yahoo! Clickthrough Protection.

Click Forensics, a consulting firm in San Antonio, said that the number of false clicks are about 14% of the total, based on a recent survey done among more than 1300 merchants in online.

Truth is probably somewhere in the middle, says Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, an online industry newsletter.

Google, the leading search engines, has agreed to pay 90 million dollars (70.81 million) to establish an understanding in a process clicks fraud. In July, demand for the Google deal was approved by a judge in Arkansas has decreed that the decision as a "fair, reasonable and adequate."

However, 556 sellers of advertising have opted not to take into account that the process had to Google and leave doors open so other processes. In June, Yahoo! has agreed to pay legal fees of both parties dispute, estimated at 4.95 million U.S. dollars (3.89 million euros) and to compensate any company that can demonstrated that it was a victim of fraud clicks in January last year until now.

What makes the problem even more complicated, as industry analysts believe online is that many types of fraud with clicks remain undiscovered. "We are at this moment in a stage of the Internet era in which we can easily detect the problem and to discover and solutions," said Dana Todd, president of Market Organization Professional search engines. And more, "technological solutions able to combat the problem are neither free nor simple, especially for small businesses that are already overwhelmed by the search engine market.

In truth, while large companies can afford to pay their measures to prevent fraud by clicks, small businesses have no other choice than to find themselves potential problems, said Sullivan. The best way to start, he added, is to measure conversions to see if the ads work.

But for many small businesses, says Todd, the only way to monitor is the problem manually or through the implementation of software and services. And most often, it seems that they do not help anything.

"You have to follow all the facts and see where they can come and see why were added at the rate of conversion, which consume a lot of time," she said. You can use free software click recording feature, but they might not have a transparent enough understanding that we see what happens to your website. "