Click Fraud
If you're using AdWords or AdSense you must have heard about an emerging practice in the underworld of computing called "click fraud". But what exactly is click fraud and how is it accomplished?
Well AdSense uses a payment mechanism that awards a certain amount of money to a publisher (someone who holds an AdSense banner on their page) every time a person clicks on the said banner. So click fraud is the attempt to have people clicking the ads just so that they can earn a greater income.
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There are people setting up sites for the sole purpose of fraudulently generating revenue through Google's AdSense program. These users achieve an incredible number of clicks through many methods, some complex and sophisticated and some rudimentary and simple.
One of the most complex is through the use of so called "hitbots". These are automated programs who emulate clicking the links in AdSense banners (there are some that actually click the banners as well).
Include something free to your customers. If you include something free if they spend so much money on a purchase, they are going to be more inclined to spend that extra money to qualify for the free item. This could even be offering free shipping if they spend so much money.
Google's AdSense protection scheme is by no means perfect and nearly anyone can find the details of surmounting the protection mechanism, ironically just by doing a Google search.
Another, more rudimentary method is to hire a lot of people in a poor country to click the links on your site. This means these people will actually sit all day and just click links so you can earn a fortune. They come from very poor countries like India, and they're prepared to do so for just $0.50 an hour.
If you have a physical location it is a good idea to provide pictures of it to users all over the Internet. This may not seem like a big deal, but users are more likely to do business with companies that they can physically see have a location and not just an online presence.
Of course, there's a problem with this mechanism. Once Google receives a large number of clicks from a single address, the address and the site that had the AdSense banner will be banned, and the illicit behavior might even get the fraudster sued.
To prevent this from happening, many people use a large number of proxy servers for the purpose of clicking. These are basically trojans, located on computers throughout the world (though mostly in the US). What's even more daunting is that these clicks will appear to originate from an actual computer so such scams are really hard to detect.
Get your credits when they are due! Some websites don't consider all the sales you may help bring them from mediums other than online. Make sure you find a company that is willing to pay you for all the revenue you bring to them, regardless of the method used.
And don't think this happens only in isolated instances. There is a great deal of illegal activity in this domain.
In fact there's so much that if search engine companies don't increase their security with such programs as AdSense, such criminal behavior could become more become even more damaging.
A great way to use internet marketing to your advantage is to turn the ads on your page into articles. Talk about your products as a review, or a how-to project, when people get interested in the story they will click on the links to find out more information, and you make the sale.
Google has a very strict policy regarding click fraud, and it has sued those employing such techniques in the past. But while the search engine giant tries its best to minimize the risk of click fraud there's certainly room for a lot of improvement.
It is estimated that more then 20% of the clicks that follow an AdSense link are just done in order to get money from the person paying for the ad. Some people believe the number of fraudulent clicks to be even twice as large.
Keep up on your email list maintenance. To be successful in email marketing, your email list needs to be as clean and strategic as possible. Look for emails that have bounced repeated times and remove them. Mark the emails of customers who have been dedicated purchasers of your products so you can send them emails aimed specifically at them. You will find your email marketing will be more successful with a clean list.
There are a great deal more schemes involving click fraud, such as groups of AdSense publishers clicking each other's links (which is referred to as "clicking rings", or spamming people so that they click such links.
Despite Google still holding click fraud on a leash, the phenomenon is certainly raising concerns for the advertisers on AdWords, but despite this advertising with Google's AdSense still remains more profitable for the advertiser, as opposed to traditional untargeted advertising schemes.
Back up all claims. You need evidence to back up the claims on your website. Today's consumers are a skeptical bunch, so be sure to include anything that you can to convince them that your products are great. Endorsements, testimonials, test studies and guarantees will go a long way in gaining consumer trust and creating sales.
There are some means of protection against such schemes and all advertisers should be savvy enough to employ them. Many advertisers choose to avoid the content network all together for fear of click fraud.
