Is Click Fraud Really a Problem?

Is Click Fraud Really a Problem?

by: Tommy Maric

Click fraud is currently a major topic in online advertising. Many argue that it presents a threat to the stability and viability of payperclick (PPC) advertising, the key revenue generator for both Google and Overture. In actuality, click fraud is not a significant issue at all.

Click fraud occurs when ads are clicked for reasons other than a genuine interest in learning more about the product or service advertised. Click fraud occurs in two forms. In one instance, fraud arises from competitors trying to sabotage each other. One competitor clicks on the ads of another just to drain the budget of that company. The other instance occurs when webmasters (or people associated with the webmaster) repeatedly click Google AdSense ads (which are syndications of others’ ads) on their own web pages in order to generate more revenue. While both Overture and Google have developed sophisticated technologies to detect click fraud, their systems are, and may never be, foolproof.

The real question is how much does click fraud actually damage the PPC industry? Gross fraud, i.e., when one person or technology consistently and repeatedly clicks on an ad, aside, which Overture and Google can easily detect, we believe that click fraud has no real impact on the industry. The following explains why.

Efficient market theory says that it is impossible to ขbeat a marketข because prices already incorporate and reflect all relevant information. As the PPC industry has matured, efficiency has begun to take root. That is, the price of each keyword has been driven up to the point where it reflects the highest price an advertiser is willing to pay for a click.

For instance, a book retailer may pay $1.00 per click based on internal metrics. These metrics dictate, for example, that on average 30% of clickers purchase a book and the average profit per sale is $4.00. So, for every 100 clicks ($100 cost), they make 30 sales ($120 revenue) and generate a $20.00 (20%) profit. Note that years ago, the same retailer may have been able to pay only $0.50 per click, but as the market matured and more retailers began advertising, competitive bidding forced the price up to $1.00 where the highest return the most advertisers can make is 20%.

The key point is that click fraud is already taken into effect when advertisers select the highest amount they will bid. For instance, there is no difference whether an advertiser pays $0.83/click for 121 clicks with 21 being fraudulent, or $1.00/click for 100 clicks when there is absolutely no fraud. In either case, the advertiser pays $100 and generates a profit of $20, and Overture and/or Google make $100. What changes is the advertiser’s yield (e.g., the percent of clickers who purchased the book) which in turn effects their highest bid price. That is, with fraud, 30 out of 121 clickers (24.8%) purchased the book, and without fraud 30 out of 100 clickers (30%) purchased it. Without fraud, the bid price in an efficient market will rise from $0.83 to $1.00.

In summary, online advertisers must focus on analyzing and improving their internal metrics (e.g., conversions) and not worry about click fraud as it is already incorporated into keyword bid prices. Hopefully, the frivolous lawsuits and refund requests spawned by apparent click fraud will end as those in the industry recognize this undeniable fact.

About The Author

Tommy Maric is the manager of TopPayingKeywords.com. TopPayingKeywords.com is designed to help webmasters maximize their profits using Google’s Adsense™ program. Through extensive research, TopPayingKeywords.com develops uptodate databases of the most popular keywords and their accompanying bid prices. For more information, please visit http://www.toppayingkeywords.com.

Contact:

877TOPWORD

(8778679673)

tommy@[email protected]

This article was posted on April 13

by Tommy Maric

Possibly The Biggest Misconception About Ranking W

Possibly The Biggest Misconception About Ranking Well In The Search Engines…

by: Brad Callen

Which is more important? Onpage optimization or Offpage optimization? If you are serious about getting your website to the top of the search engines, you MUST know the answer to this question…

Quick Review

Onpage search engine optimization are things that you can change ON your webpage.

Title tag

Header tags

Bolding, Italicizing, Underlining

Alt image tags

Meta Tags

Etc.

Offpage search engine optimization comes down to basically 1 thing, which websites are linking to your wesbite and how they’re doing it.

Anchor text uses in your link

The title of the page your link is on

The page rank of the page your link is on

The ‘themeก of the website your link is on

Etc.

By now, Iกm hoping you see that itกs the offpage search engine optimization factors that will get your website to the top of the search engines. Again, the onpage factors are things you SHOULD do, but are not nearly as important as the offpage factors.

Ok… Let me show you why.

Letกs analyze a website!

In this example Iกm going to analyze the #1 ranked website on Google for the search term กclick hereก.

First, letกs go to Google and enter กclick hereก.

Youกll notice that the #1 ranked website is www.adobe.com. Thatกs interesting…

Now, why would adobe.com rank #1 for that search term? I would think adobe.com would rank well for terms like:

graphic design programs

create printable documents

web design programs

and other keywords related to what they sell…

A few things that you should notice by looking at the picture above.

The word กclick hereก isn’t in the page title

The word กclick hereก isn’t in the URL of the website.

The word กclick hereก isn’t even in the description listed by Google!

Now, letกs click on the listing in Google and check out the actual webpage.

Now, get this… The words กclick hereก aren’t even on the webpage, anywhere!

If all of those onpage optimization techniques that many SEO companies talk about were true, then don’t you think a different website would rank #1 for this term?

Onpage optimization factors like:

keyword density

keyword prominence

keyword proximity

bolding, italicizing, underlining

etc.

are NOT critical to worry about when trying to rank well for a search term.

Yes, you should spinkle your keyword throughout the webpage and do the other onpage optimization techniques Iกve taught you in previous lessons, but again, I really want to drill this into your head. It is the offpage optimization that will increase your rankings in the search engines; specifically Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Then why exactly does adobe.com rank #1 on Google

for the term กclick hereก?

Letกs do some website analysis on this adobe.com. Iกm going to use a software product called SEO Elite to do this, but you can analyze the website manually if you choose to do so. I prefer SEO Elite because it only takes a few minutes, as opposed to several hours.

First, weกll select radio button 1.

Next, weกll enter the URL from Google into step 2.

(http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html)

Next, weกll select Google from the list of search engines.

Finally, click กokก to run SEO Elite.

When itกs finished running, letกs click on the ‘report viewก tab to view some of the results.

The first thing you should notice is the Google Page Rank of all of the pages linking to adobe.com. If you click the column heading within SEO Elite labeled กGoogle PRก, it will sort the column in descending order.

You can see that the pages linking to adobe.com have an extremely high Page Rank. Any website with a Page Rank of 6 or higher are VERY high page ranks. There are only a handful of PR9 websites on the entire internet and a few are actually linking to adobe.com!

Next, letกs click the กanalysis viewก tab.

If we click the column heading titled กanchor textก, it will sort this column in descending order. We can quickly see that the words กclickก and กhereก are within the top 10 words listed in the left hand column.

Remember, the anchor text column will show you the number of times the word in the กWordก column appears in the actual anchor text of the link pointing to adobe.com

Anchor Text:

Example) Click here to download Adobe Acrobat Reader…

กClick hereก is the anchor text in the example above.

So, by looking at the analysis above, we can see that the word กclickก appeared in 16 of the links pointing to adobe.com and 6.8% of the total links pointing to adobe.com contained the keyword กclickก. The keyword กhereก was found in 34 links pointing to adobe.com and appeared 14.5% of the time.

Reason adobe.com is ranked #1

The main two reasons that adobe.com is ranked #1 for the keyword กclick hereก is because:

The websites linking to adobe.com are very quality (have a high Page Rank)

The websites linking to adobe.com used the keywords กclickก and กhereก many times in the anchor text of the links linking to adobe.com

There are a few other offpage optimization factors that help adobe.com to rank #1, but those are the main two reasons. I hope you can clearly see the power of offpage optimization (linking).

So, the next time someone asks you what the proper keyword density is, the proper keyword prominence, the proper number of times you need to bold, italicize, or underline a keyword on your page… You can tell them that onpage optimization is NOT critical when ranking well for a given search term.

Until next time, happy optimizing!

About The Author

Brad Callen

Professional SEO and creator of the powerful Web Promotion Software, SEO Elite

Get my FREE SEO Blueprint (PDF) by cicking the link below. Itกs 60+ pages of power packed information that will show you exactly how you can easily dominate the search engines, guaranteed…

http://www.seoelite.com/Articles/FreeSEOBlueprint/

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 15

by Brad Callen