Google PPC Clickfraud

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windjc

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Sep 24, 2008
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Is there any way to protect yourself or combat proxy click fraud from your competitors on Google.

We have competitors who have started a pretty aggressive campaign that has cut our business in half in the last week.

I'm not versed in the art of taking down a competitors site by force (although I'd be open to learned who to employ to do this) - what I am really interested in understanding are the options for protecting myself.

Thanks in advance.
 


How many proxies/ip addresse are they using?

If you have proof, like records of multiple clicks from same IP addresses, you can put in an Ip block.

If the dollars lost is getting significant, then a fuck-off-and-die letter from a lawyer's office can work wonders sometimes.
 
I don't like dirty games too, but if someone is ruing my damn business, I pick up the same weapon and don't think too much.
unfortunately can't recommend you anyone for this, but if you can prove their dirty campaign report them to daddy.
good luck
 
windjc said:
Is there any way to protect yourself or combat proxy click fraud from your competitors on Google.

We have competitors who have started a pretty aggressive campaign that has cut our business in half in the last week.

I'm not versed in the art of taking down a competitors site by force (although I'd be open to learned who to employ to do this) - what I am really interested in understanding are the options for protecting myself.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

How are they initiating clicks, on your ads in google search or content network?
 
there is IP exclusion as well. if you notice some of the same proxies IPs coming in then just exclude them.. wont solve it 100% but could cut it down some for you while your sending your info to google as well.
 
Also make a script to detects those open proxies on your site and each time one hit the site, record all the info and show them dickspins all day long instead of your orig. site.
 
we need a boondock saints for affil marketing.. see this type of crap going down all the type..
 
windjc said:
Search.
Click to expand...

OK so they are basically capturing the PPC Url which looks something like this

http://www.google.co.uk/aclk?sa=l&a....co.uk/chives.html&rct=j&q=buy chives&cad=rja

and running it through a load of proxies. What I would suggest you do is use this piece of code

PHP :: How To Detect If Clients Are Using A Proxy

to detect if a user is using a proxy when coming to your site and get a decent coder to code you an app that auto adds it to you google ip exclusion list. Over time the prick will run out of proxies to hammer you with unless of course he is using a botnet, in which case he could be using tens of thousands of ips.

How many unique ips are you seeing clicks from?
 
Seema said:
OK so they are basically capturing the PPC Url which looks something like this

http://www.google.co.uk/aclk?sa=l&a....co.uk/chives.html&rct=j&q=buy chives&cad=rja

and running it through a load of proxies. What I would suggest you do is use this piece of code

PHP :: How To Detect If Clients Are Using A Proxy

to detect if a user is using a proxy when coming to your site and get a decent coder to code you an app that auto adds it to you google ip exclusion list. Over time the prick will run out of proxies to hammer you with unless of course he is using a botnet, in which case he could be using tens of thousands of ips.

How many unique ips are you seeing clicks from?
Click to expand...

Ok. Question. If I add that PHP code where will the data be visible to me regarding the visitors and whether they are proxy or not?
 
windjc said:
Is there any way to protect yourself or combat proxy click fraud from your competitors on Google.

We have competitors who have started a pretty aggressive campaign that has cut our business in half in the last week.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

How would that cut your business in half? Certainly it would increase your costs, but shouldn't have any negative effect on the business you actually get. Those customers were going to click on your ad and buy regardless of whether your competitor is driving up your costs. Assuming your ads didn't go offline for exceeding your budget, of course.
 
windjc said:
Ok. Question. If I add that PHP code where will the data be visible to me regarding the visitors and whether they are proxy or not?
Click to expand...

Once the person lands on you site you detect if they are a proxy or not using the above code and then use some additional PHP to write the ip to a database or csv file somewhere on your server.

What I also suggest you do is have another column which logs the hostname so what you do is log two pieces of information to show google in a nice tabular format. This is piss easy and require about 15 mins of PHP coding.

The next part is harder. You need to piece of PHP which then logs into your google adwords account, adds the same ip to your ip exclusions list. So that if that prick uses the same ip again it will blocked from even clicking on your ads.

Once you have this system in place (about $200 worth of coding) you can get back on with running your business rest assured that

1. Your number of fraud clicks slowly diminishes over time.
2. Also any fraud clicks that are getting charged to you are logged. Once a week email google a report of your ip/host database and show them the proof and they should refund you the click costs.

eventually the problem should go away.
 
You can also probably just have a script extract this all from your logs. How do you know there's all this proxy traffic anyway?

Just give any data that shows anything "unnatural" looking to Google, tell them you know this is all fraud and they'll refund you. I think I've done this with them and I know I've done it with Yahoo for just plain crappy contextual traffic.
 
Benji49 said:
How many proxies/ip addresse are they using?

If you have proof, like records of multiple clicks from same IP addresses, you can put in an Ip block.

If the dollars lost is getting significant, then a fuck-off-and-die letter from a lawyer's office can work wonders sometimes.
Click to expand...

good advice.
 
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