Click fraud is a serious problem. But should it keep you from advertising on search engines? Find out why it shouldn't and what you can do to make sure it doesn't take you down.
Is the click fraud problem too big? Short answer: No. For the long answer,
and to understand why it isn’t, read on.
Click fraud is out there. It is a serious problem. And you should know everything you possibly can about it. BUT it should not keep you out of this valuable marketing outlet. First, let me tell you a story from personal experience.
My Story of Pain and Profit Loss
I had been running a client’s AdWords campaign profitably for some time when things suddenly died. It was like hitting a brick wall. He went from a steady stream of orders to none. Overnight. The strange thing was that he was still getting clicks on the ads, just no sales.
It took a while before the mystery was solved. We finally figured out that most of our clicks were now coming from competitors. Being the competition, we knew they had no intention of buying. This was a clear case of click fraud. So what did we do?
We were able to successfully contest the fraudulent clicks with Google. Our documentation was organized and solid, so they saw things our way. We then fixed the campaigns to block the competition. They were also put on notice that we were now watching them. Sales came back. What a coincidence.
Believe me, there were times when we were climbing the walls seeing our revenue flatline. The client was ready to pull the plug on his AdWords campaign. I had to reassure them to keep it alive, but I didn’t blame him for feeling that way.
The Silver Lining That Outlived the Dark Cloud
As bad as that was, we were able to finally see that, despite being a big blow, it was temporary. We were able to identify the problem and fight back. Today, income is not only back to pre-fraud levels, we’re doing better than ever. Remember, quitting lock, stock and barrel is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
What can you do to fight, and even prevent, click fraud? Pay attention to your web stats/metrics. Look for suspicious trends, like a lot of clicks from one specific area suddenly. In addition, get click fraud detection on your site – there are free services such as Vericlix (Vericlix.com) and Click Sentinel (ClickSentinel.com) that are very good. They’ll provide you with the data you need to detect click fraud as well as to use when requesting refunds from Google.
Accept click fraud as a price of doing business, like shoplifting. Is it frustrating? Yes. Should you do everything you can to stop it? Yes. Should you let it run you off? Absolutely not. Especially if you’re still making a profit. Keep in mind the Big Picture, which is what truly matters at the end of the business day.
