Click Fraud For Paid Search Up for Q3 2010

According to a recent report released by Click Forensics®, Inc., click fraud for paid search advertising mediums, including popular pay-per-click advertising programs, was up to 22.3% in the third quarter of 2010. These stats were gathered from Cost Per Click campaigns, also referred to as CPC, PPC or pay per click, across all of the major search engines, as well as comparison shopping engines and social network advertising platforms.

Here are some of the key statistics for the study:

  • Among small to large businesses,  the overall industry average click fraud rate was 22.3 percent,  up from the 18.6% for Q2 2010 and 14.1 % reported for Q3 2009.
  • In Q3 2010, the countries outside North America with significant CPC traffic producing the greatest volume of click fraud were Japan, The Netherlands, The Philippines and China, respectively.

These statistics are very concerning. Over the years, we have seen companies losing thousands of dollars on a monthly basis to fraudulent click traffic. This can happen right under the company’s nose and yet if they don’t know what to look for, it can continue to happen on a daily basis.

Although the major pay per click advertisers continue to implement better click fraud monitoring throughout their advertising systems, it is still important for any advertiser to be able to watch for trends in their analytics and web logs that might indicate that you are becoming a victim of fraudulent clicks.

If your business has active pay per click or other paid search campaigns, it is very important to monitor your activity on a weekly or monthly basis and to report any suspicious activity to your paid search representative.

For more information on how you can protect your monthly spend for the various paid search advertising platforms, contact a&g at www.consultagc.com.

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