Do You Suspect Click Fraud? Here’s a Simple Solution…
We recently had reason to suspect that one of our client’s PPC campaigns was being targeted by one of their competitors. We suspected that they were clicking the ads to try and use up the daily budget early in the day. The trouble was how to identify who was clicking the Ads.
There are many expensive Click Fraud solutions available but we found a simple and free way of checking who was clicking the ads by using Statcounter.
By putting the Statcounter code on the website pages we were able to easily see the IP addresses of the clickers. This clearly showed that two Competitors were in fact clicking the ads. We then forwarded our findings to Google and hope this will result in a refund for our AdWords client.
Posted in Click Fraud, Google AdWords, Pay Per Click (PPC) | The post has tags: adwords, Click Fraud, ppc, Statcounter
By way of an update to Neil’s original post, click fraud was confirmed by Google and they responded positively and promptly with a refund for our client in addition to those clicks that their own systems had detected.
Hi folks,
I just wanted to stop by and thank you for letting us know how StatCounter has helped you to help your client! We were delighted to hear that you were able to use StatCounter to detect Click Fraud and secure a refund for your customer.
At StatCounter, we work hard to provide the best service we can and stories like this serve to motivate the entire StatCounter Team to keep improving the service for the benefit of all our members.
All the best!
[...] Some StatCounter members have recently shared with us their stories about they used StatCounter to help identify and prevent Click Fraud. You can read about one case here. [...]
I think one must be cautious when dealing PPC the business will be ruined. I have been using statcounter and it has been really useful
Thanks for this valuable info, and always statcounter is a valuable service for anyone.
When I looked into PPC advertising, the minimum cost for me was $0.10 per click. The cost could add up very quickly from click fraud. It was nice that Google agreed to refund the cost incurred as a result of the click fraud. I don’t think they are under any legal responsibility to do so, though, are they?
[...] Some StatCounter members have recently shared with us their stories about they used StatCounter to help identify and prevent Click Fraud. You can read about one case here. [...]
@DFAL –
Yes, Google is under legal responsibility to refund click fraud charges. It is part of the agreement they make with their AdWords Advertisers. They even give tools to request credit for questionable clicks.
Statcounter is the best free tool available! Thank you so much for Statcounter.
We are using it now for one year.
Identify IP from unwanted visitors is easy and useful to add them to our IP deny manager
Also one of many reasons we keep statcounter in our site is it does not make it slow to load the page
Only one thing we couldn’t figure out: What is this about the 0 Second visitors?
Its I good thing I am instaliling statcounter!
Dear Statcounter,
What a fantastic free tool you have given us. We just love the World Map solution. Thank you so much!