Find out the what, where and why of pay per click advertising's ugly underside, click fraud.
What is Click Fraud
Click fraud, also called click inflation or invalid clicking, consists of individuals (or bots) clicking on pay per click ads that have no intention of buying services or even reading website information. These clicks are maliciously used to drain advertisers pay per click accounts. Click fraud is a growing problem and a tough one to combat. Even pay per click search engines themselves recognize click fraud as a real threat and admit that click fraud is something advertisers should consider and be aware of when signing up with pay per click engines.
Where Does Click Fraud Come From
Click fraud is usually generated from four principal sources:
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Rotten competitors who may try to make your advertising costs rocket by clicking on your paid links
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Affiliates of advertisers who benefit from the increased sales and bid wars.
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Crawlers, spiders and bots (both official search engine bots AND malicious scripts that automate visitor type behaviors to use up clicks.), and/or
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Paid offshore individuals hoping to make $100-$200 per month clicking on ads.
Who is Susceptible to Click Fraud
All advertisers using pay per click search engines in all categories can be victims of click fraud. The most highly targeted advertisers, however, are the top five bidders in highly competitive and expensive categories.
How do You Fight Click Fraud
The pay per click search engines continue to battle click fraud implementing new systems and software for analyzing clicks, but there will always be individuals who try to beat the system. Search engines will fall short to defend you, so you must fight for your own fair clicks. To learn strategies for avoiding click fraud read here.
