i use google adwords on one of my property sites and some of my other sites that i run. it has been getting more and more expensive to bid for the keywords that i want a year ago it would have cost £.50 for the keywords “sell my house quickly”, whereas now it costs around £4.00. thats for one click, ouch!
poor performing adverts
i’ve been a bit disappointed with the results this month as even though the budget of £40 per day is being used up we do not seem to be getting any conversions. conversions for my sites would mean people are submitting their details. so we still get about 6-10 clicks a day which drains the budget, but no conversions. this IS quite strange as normally the ratio is about 3 clicks to one conversion.
one malicious IP address
i downloaded this months log files for my site just to see if it would show me what what happening. after looking through the logs for a few minutes it became apparent that alot of the visits were coming from one IP address. so i double checked how they were reaching my site and each visit was the same. they came via google with the same search string each time, sometimes up to 5 times a day.
its not difficult to realise that “sponsored listings” cost money. so why unless they were malicious why would someone go to google type in the same search string and then click on your advert to access your site 5 times a day, everyday of the week? hell if you really liked the site you would bookmark it or even make it your homepage on Internet Explorer.
people don’t realise that the internet is not THAT anonymous and that most of your actions can be traced. i am first and foremost an IT geek so this is no mean feat for me. i must have some pretty malicious and unscrupulous competition in the property world to have some one go as far as to devote time everyday to use up my marketing budget. this is not the route any honorable business person would take.
google responds to adwords click fraud
i emailed google giving them details of what had happened and asked for a refund of the credits used as this is definitely fraud. I didn’t even know that they would allow this sort of thing to happen. this is there long and detailed (most of it is cut and pasted) response.
Hello Dave,
Thank you for your email. I understand you are concerned that you have received multiple clicks from the same IP address and as a consequence have excluded this IP address as these clicks have been using up a lot of your budget. I understand you would like compensation for these clicks.
Each click on an AdWords ad is examined by our system. Google looks at numerous data points for each click, including the IP address, the time of the click, any duplicate clicks and various other click patterns. Our system then analyses these factors to isolate and filter out invalid clicks that fit a pattern of use intended to artificially drive up an advertiser’s clicks or impressions or a publisher’s earnings. It is not in Google’s interest to allow invalid clicks in order to generate revenue since this would not accord with the interests of our advertisers.
are you sure its not in your interest? you still get paid for it don’t you?
If you notice click activity that does not fit your usual patterns, please keep the following factors in mind:
- Return visits: Individual users may legitimately click on your ad more than once when comparison shopping or returning to your site for more information.
yes i often visit sites, forget the name of them so have to search the same keywords to get search results. but after doing this a couple of times i’ll either remember the URL or save it to favourites. My site was visited through my adwords ppc by the same IP 36 times in 18 days, they just clicked and left, thats got to be foul play.
- Shared IPs: Multiple clicks from a single source may be due to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) assigning identical IP addresses to multiple users. Certain ISPs, such as AOL, distribute a relatively small number of shared, rotating IP addresses to a large number of users. As a result, multiple visitors may access your site from identical IP addresses, giving the impression of repeated clicks from a single visitor.
hardly ANY ISP’s still do this, but i’ve confirmed this with the ISP that owns the IP that they DO NOT share IP addresses
- Web server logs: Your site’s web server logs include data for all visitors to your site, not just those who arrived after clicking on an AdWords ad. You may also see ‘Google.co.uk’ referrers from users who reached your site via the Google search results. Please be assured that your account would only be charged for clicks that your ads received.
yes but the IP log data tallys up with the dates the adwords adverts were clicked.
No direct logging of IP’s in google analytics
is this the reason why google analytics does not directly log IP addresses, so that this kind of fraud normally goes undetected and google carries on making revenue on these clicks?
maybe the amount of business generated from adwords click fraud is too great to lose.
No related posts.
The solution is simple. Just get organic traffic instead.
yes thats a very good suggestion mr Seduction, but until the organic results get up there the short term soluction is to use Adwords.
Ok. Have you tried Yahoo PPC? See if you can get lower CPC there.
If you have a good links campaign I reckon it only takes 2 months to get to top of SERPs to get organic traffic. Seeing you get 1 in 3 to convert, thats a huge conversion rate. The return on investment is awesome.
i’ve not ventured into yahoo or MSN CPC yet but i’ve heard both combined will serve as good as google CPC.
you’ve done really well with your site getting top 3 SERP result in 2 months!
in your favour though you do not have that much competition for your “art of seduction” keyphrase.
also you have lots and lots of content on your site which will help. My Property sites are more like brochures and there is only so much you can write in a brochure.
still i quite like your site and think i will write you a review, not that you need it though!
Cheers for the heads up on my site. Yeah, there is not alot of competition for art of seduction but it gets alot of searches which is what we want. I have cooled down on my art of seduction link campaign though i am still accepting reviews (google is still indexing my backlinks so just need to wait for #1 position). Right now I am looking at other keywords. I am on first page of SERP of google for “pick up artist” which gets around 40k searches a month. I am still considering whether I should get to top for that or look for an even more substantial keyphrase.
Anyway, you can also consider focusing your Adwords on property sites that uses adsense, it may be cheaper also or as a compliment to your existing adwords campaign.
I’ve come in on this a bit late but there can be a huge variation in how long it takes to rank depending on the competition and the keywords you are going for.
If you are switching from an adwords campaign to organic traffic, it is a good idea to go for less competitive terms first (generally longer, more specific phrases), see an increase in traffic and reduce your adwords spend gradually.
Worth remembering that in many markets organic traffic lead to more solid leads.
Dan, This is exactly what I am doing. gradually my organic listings are rising in the SERP for all major search engines. my site now appears on most page1 for most target phrases.
This has been a great learning experience for my SEO skills as this has become a very cometitive market. Adwords clicks can be as much as £8 per click now.