Avoiding Google Click Fraud

Avoiding click fraud, or with any pay per click service, is no laughing matter. Google has wisely provided a video explaining how one might be able to identify possible invalid click-throughs on your AdWords account. Here is the short list:

• Review your account to watch for unusual activity. Despite Google’s work to help prevent this sort of thing from happening with AdSense, being aware of sudden traffic spikes is critical for the AdWords user.
• Compare your account’s clicks to verify that this is not simply a trend over a period of time. Obviously however, this does not help you if you suddenly had your account hit by a social network like Digg or StumbleUpon.
• Review those web logs, then compare them closely to Google provided reports in order to look for discrepancies in click-throughs. Unfortunately, this is also fairly unhelpful considering Google has possibly already filtered out false click-throughs for you.
  

What to do if you believe you are a victim of click fraud?

Obviously, this means contacting Google for help. You will want to contact the Clicks Quality Team at Google for assistance. You will need to include plenty of data however, which often times may not even be worth the trouble of bothering if have not really lost enough to warrant the time needed to resolve the issue. Overall, I’d compare it to disputing an eBay auction and we all know how much “fun” that can be.

Prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Because of possible conflict of interest, I cannot provide a list of services that can help prevent click fraud. That said, using a little commonsense can make the process of finding the best service for you relatively simple. Here is what I would look for.

• You want proof of click fraud in a simple, manageable, downloadable format to pass on to Google, Yahoo or whomever.
• You will want to be able to be alerted to ANY click-through spikes, even if they are legitimate.
• You are going to want the service to cover your backside. If you have competition, already know their IP address, the service you opt to use had darn well better provide you real-time alerts to competitor click-throughs. This is critical!

Again, it is not a matter of being able to stop click fraud completely, this is nearly impossible. But with the right click-through monitoring service and a little common sense, you can stem this sort of fraud from becoming something that nails your entire ad budget overnight.