Pay Per Click and Click Fraud

While Pay Per Click is optimized correctly is returning huge investments back, the Pay per Click ads also can be purposely clicked by competitors to loose rankings of the top positions and loose marketing dollars.

Everyone one will want to be the "top position" on Google Pay Per Click, so bad that they will click on competitors ads continuously to drop rankings of other competitors. This is what is called "Click Fraud". Detecting click fraud has become easier to identify but more ways to defraud the system are becoming apparent and more sophisticated. The warning is laid out to both the buyer and advertiser; Beware.

While the PPC Engines are doing what they can do subdue the click fraud, there is not an exact number of how much is fraud. The more competitive industries are more likely to experience click fraud. Pharmaceuticals, Gambling, and Adult Sites. Sites will vary as well as the industries.

Be Concerned but there is HOPE!!!

Since everyone has an IP Address on there CPU one can identify the same clicks from the same IP Address. If you have a campaign with multiple clicks from the same IP Address you may have click fraud. Although a problem it can be identified and Google and other PPC engines take it very serious.

The take it so serious that if you report to them the Click Fraud, they will reimburse you the money. Also, there are pending lawsuits being files against services providers such as Google. Now search engines are realizing that there is a huge responsibility to dedicate themselves to solving the issue.

What to do if Click Fraud is happening to you?

If you feel you are a victim of click fraud review your log files and document the case and report it to the appropriate search engines. Be forewarned this may be the begriming of a lengthy process to recoup some, not all of the invalid clicks. You can also factor in the click fraud percentage rate and factor it in as the cost of doing business.