Click Fraud Detection: The State Of The Art

Click fraud is becoming a major source of concern for online retailers.

Click fraud occurs when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser and clicks on an ad for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link.

While estimates of the rate of click fraud on the Internet vary, both Yahoo.com, the second largest host of pay per click ads and Click Forensics, a cyber security group, report that click fraud is in the twelve to thirteen percent range at this time.

Fortunately, there has been a lot of attention paid to this issue since there is so much potential for losing money by online retailers who rely heavily on pay per click advertising to attract purchasers and make sales. Here are some of the ways that fraud is being detected.

Pay per click international traffic

Many pay per click fraud schemes originate in smaller, developing countries. Tracker software can report the country of origin for clicks. If you find that you are receiving many clicks from countries where you have never sold product, countries that do not make sense in terms of your product or countries where the language you sell in is not the primary language of that country, you may be the victim of click fraud.

The Click Fraud Network has identified that China, Egypt, and South Africa have generated the greatest volume of high threat-level traffic.

Pay per click repeat visitors using different sites

One way that a fraudulent user attempts to cover their tracks is by clicking onto your site through different search engines. In that way, even if the major search engines are employing tracking software to protect you, they will not necessarily pick up this sort of activity. However, software that identifies click by individual user can add together clicks from all of those sources and provide a picture of suspicious activity.

Focuses on worst-performing ads

If you have some ads that are statistically different, i.e., performing less well in terms of conversions, it makes sense to look at those clicks more carefully to see if that ad has been targeted.

Ads with unusual bounce rate

Ads that garner an unusually high bounce rate could be receiving fraudulent clicks.

Short visits

Ads that generate extremely short visits also represent a red flag.

Unusual volume spikes

While you may hope that an unusual click volume spike represents a piece of good fortune or shows off your latest marketing brilliance, before you celebrate, take a look at the traffic. Look for conversions, unusual visitor characteristics and short visits.

Bad Sources

There are some sources that are known for bad Internet behaviour. If you are getting a lot of interest from those types of sources, you may have a problem.

Time of day

Look for unusual patterns in time of day usage. If you find that there are suspicious patterns, try suspending ad activity during those periods.

In general, if you stick with the major search engines, analyze your data and watch the budget, you will minimize your exposure to click fraud.