Pay Per Click Search Engines Update #56
June 3, 2006.
It's been a long time since I put a newsletter out.
I won't go into the reasons for the lengthy delay,
but I apologise to my loyal readers.
It won't happen again.
INDEX
1. Interview: The battle against click fraud
2. Keyword research
3. MSN adCenter Labs
4. Share your experiences
__________________________________________SPONSOR___________
*** Promote your site with goClick.com ***
* Now reaching over 600 Million Searches a Month
* NO Startup Cost or Monthly Fees
* Still only 1 Cent Minimum CPC (Lowest in the industry)
* $10 New User Trial -- Up to 10% deposit on all CC deposits
* Cancel any time for any reason (unused funds are returned)
* Over 23,000 satisfied customers
Read our top rated review at PayPerClickSearchEngines.com!
For only $10 to try, How can you go wrong?
Join today! -> http://www.goclick.com/?AID=7478
____________________________________________________________
1. Interview: The battle against click fraud
===============================================
Last week, Jay Stockwell launched a new site that sounds like it is going to be a huge step forward in fighting click fraud. It's an interesting community focused approach based around free PPC fraud tracking software. He took a few minutes out of his day to talk with me about it.
PPCSE:
Thanks for your time Jay. It seems like everyone is talking about click fraud recently. Do you reckon that this is all just hype, or something that PPC advertisers should really be worried about?
JS:
Good question. There's a certain level of propaganda being pitched from both sides of the equation. The PPC vendors are trying to reassure their customers that they're catching all the click fraud. While companies selling click fraud auditing services are scaring people into their services by telling them that up to 50% of their clicks are fraudulent. Like any heated debate, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
This is where we're trying to fit in with Click Sentinel. You ask pretty much anyone who's been doing PPC advertising for a while and they'll all tell you that they've seen some suspicious activity on their accounts. I don't think anyone would argue that click fraud doesn't exist. The argument is simply to what degree it is, and at the end of the day how much, in real dollar terms, does this cost advertisers.
PPCSE:
In what ways does click fraud manifest itself?
JS:
Click fraud is just a general term for a whole bunch of different ways that people’s ads are being clicked on for a purpose other than they are intended for.
I reckon this can be broken down into three types; "competition clicking", "revenge clicking" and "clicking for profits".
"Competition clicking" is when a competitor of yours repeatedly clicks on ads to waste your money. I guess the ultimate aim would be so that you would see PPC as too costly and give up altogether.
"Revenge clicking" is often by disgruntled customers. Their annoyance at you motivates them to try and waste your money by repeatedly clicking on your ads to get you back. Like competition clicking, this may be over a single session, or just a little bit every day for months on end.
The last and probably most damaging is the "clicking for profits" style click fraud. People use sophisticated techniques to click on ads so they receive a portion of the profits for each click. This is really just an exploitation of legitimate programs like AdSense that syndicate your PPC ads on other sites.
The fraudsters have quickly scaled this up by creating both human and bot networks to do the clicking for them.
PPCSE:
However, the vendors say they catch all of this click fraud. In your opinion is that true?
JS:
Thankfully the whole click fraud issue has moved into mainstream media so there is some pressure on these vendors to get their act together. In saying that however, I believe that they're doing a fairly inadequate job of dealing with it. Not just in their analytics, but also their relationships with their clients.
Their analytics are sophisticated, however, the only data they can use is pre-click. So from the time of the click backwards. They don't use any post click analysis.
As a result I don't believe they can ever legitimately claim that they're doing all they can. They should be using post click analysis as well. For example, by taking a look at the behavior of the user once they get to the destination site. So do they click away instantly, or do they look around? These are things that should also be put into the equation.
I reckon there are lots they should be doing to improve their client relationships as well. At the moment they're very secretive and quite unapproachable. It is difficult to talk rationally with them because their fraud checking methods are a black box. They don't share their data. They need to remember it's a business relationship they're in, and consequently need to be more open and transparent in their dealings.
PPCSE:
How does Click Sentinel stop click fraud? You say in your manifesto you fight it using more than just analytics?
JS:
Yes, we're definitely trying to take more of a middle ground with it all. We reckon that we need to approach this problem using a multi-dimensional approach. What this means in practice is that we believe we need to provide not only the analytics, but also help facilitate open relationships between vendor and client. In addition to that help users become educated about the problems as well as facilitate community lobbying power.
We're trying to work the multi-dimensional angle by making the fraud tracking software free for anyone to install on their site. This removes the barrier of entry and means that there's no financial reason why people can't start tracking for click fraud. This then has the positive side effect of allowing us to grow the community and as a result grow the community lobbying power.
PPCSE:
Does your click tracking software do anything else other than just track for click fraud?
JS: Yeah, the click fraud tracking software gives you lots of extra information about your PPC campaigns. Even if you don't care about click fraud, it is worthwhile using the software for the other extra benefits. For example you can dynamically track your keywords as well as return on investment (ROI).
I believe that even if click fraud didn't exist, every PPC marketer should be using some sort of way to separate their paid traffic from their organic traffic. It just makes sense to have a centralized and detailed breakdown of every visitor that is costing you money to obtain. The Click Sentinel software does this for you. The fact that it is free also makes it easier for people to get motivated to use it.
PPCSE: What are the steps a PPC user should take to see if they have been affected by click fraud?
JS:
Well firstly, you need to get yourself some sort of way to track your traffic. Whether you pay for another service, or use the Click Sentinel free software you need to make sure you're using a method that doesn't rely solely on JavaScript tracking. Fraudsters just turn this off.
Once you have your tracking software installed, you need to send all of your paid traffic through this. Each click will be analyzed and flagged automatically if it looks fraudulent.
Once you have a few days’ data under your belt, run some reports to see the activity on your campaigns. You'll then want to run a report for a 24 hour period and compare that to what your PPC vendor is saying. If they're drastically different, send them the CSV output of your report and you can then negotiate a refund from there.
PPCSE:
Thanks for your time Jay.
If you want to find out if your PPC campaigns are affected by click fraud, make sure you join the free Click Sentinel community here:
http://www.ClickSentinel.com/index.html
2. Keyword Research
=============================================
Jay's a busy man. Not only is he working on click fraud, he's also been reviewing a large number of keyword tools.
All ppc advertisers are aware of the importance of good keyword research.
The problem is that different tools suit different users. It's not always easy to know just which tool is best for your purposes.
Jay has evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of each tool and rates each one according to its suitablity for different tasks.
He identifies which keyword research tools are best for pay per click advertisers and which are best for other purposes.
Check out Jay's reviews:
http://www.KeywordWorkshop.com
3. MSN adCenter Labs
===================
While on the subject of keyword research tools I can't not mention MSN adCenter Labs. First announced back in January it's now been made available to everyone (in beta).
adCenter Labs provide 11 demos, in the areas of Paid Search, Contextual Advertising, Behavior Targeting and Emerging Markets, with more to come.
One tool I thought would be particularly useful to advertisers is the Search Volume Seasonality Forecast. This lets you see at a glance the seasonality patterns of different keywords.
Test all the demos here:
http://adlab.msn.com/demo.aspx
__________________________________________SPONSOR___________
Get top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo and MSN Search!
- Get more web site visitors and increase your revenue.
- Outperform your competition.
More than 10,000 webmasters rely on IBP to get more customers and more sales. Internet marketing experts swear by it. Free trial:
http://www.axandra-web-site-promotion-software-tool.com/index.htm ____________________________________________________________
4. Share your experiences
=====================
I'm conducting a very informal survey on advertisers' experiences with different pay per click search engines. I'd be very happy to receive your comments on any of the pay per click search engines you use, whether your experiences have been good or bad.
If you'd like to help me drop me a note at
Webmaster AT PayPerClickSearchEngines DOT com
All the best,
Glennys Faulds,
http://PayPerClickSearchEngines.com
Highly cost-effective, targeted advertising
