Click hijacking

direct007 · 05-30-2005, 06:50 PM

Hi, I'm new to the forum but have been marketing my e-commerce site for about 10 years now. I use Google and Overture pay per click programs with success.

Last night, I found an unusually high number of clicks using one of my overture search terms, they were all from different I.P. addresses but they all had one thing in common, they clicked on the overture link and never clicked on another page within my site. I noticed alot of activity around 3am eastern time when my site is usually very slow as far as visitor traffic.

My web traffic and charges were way higher than normal when I checked the reports today. Especially on a holiday weekend where my sales are normally slowest.

I did a search and found an article on click hijacking where unsavory webmasters use a computer program to generate falls clicks on pay per click search engines to drive up their income as they have revenue sharing agreements with overture and/or google.

My question is if anyone here has had this experience and what was done (if anything) by the search engines as far as reimbursement for false clicks and preventing it from happening again. I have logs to backup my experience.

This is my first experience in 10 years with this issue.

Any help would be appreciated.

direct007 · 05-30-2005, 08:05 PM

correction: just caught a typo, I meant false clicks, not falls clicks.

Lorven · 05-31-2005, 11:42 AM

Direct,

My company had a significant problem with click fraud several months ago, with very similar symptoms to the problem you had. Most of it came from the crummier second-tier PPC engines like Kanoodle, FindWhat, and some others, but some of it did come thru Overture. We told them about it (through the company that was managing our PPC at the time) and they issued us a credit for the amount they estimated we were charged for the false clicks. It was a surprisingly painless process, although that may have been because the managing company had a contact with Overture or something. I would say that if you have log files that could help point them to where the bad traffic is coming from, they are quite likely to refund at least some of the money you wasted. Hope that helps!

direct007 · 05-31-2005, 07:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorven

Direct,

My company had a significant problem with click fraud several months ago, with very similar symptoms to the problem you had. Most of it came from the crummier second-tier PPC engines like Kanoodle, FindWhat, and some others, but some of it did come thru Overture. We told them about it (through the company that was managing our PPC at the time) and they issued us a credit for the amount they estimated we were charged for the false clicks. It was a surprisingly painless process, although that may have been because the managing company had a contact with Overture or something. I would say that if you have log files that could help point them to where the bad traffic is coming from, they are quite likely to refund at least some of the money you wasted. Hope that helps!

Thanks,
I spoke with Yahoo/Overture today. They said they will investigate it and get back to me in 7 to 10 days. I asked about click fraud in the meantime and they said if it continues, they will credit it back to me if found to be true.
We spend about $30k a year on clicks with Yahoo/Overture so I think it will be to their advantage not to give us a hard time.

Now that brings me to my next question. I did a search for click fraud and found numerous companies offering click fraud detection services/software. Have you are anyone else here used one that you could recommend?