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Pay-Per-Click Fraud Exposed--Part IIDean Phillips According to Andy Jones, a member of the Best Practices Search Engine Forums, fraudulent clicks are just another aspect of the business. "Any of us that use AdWords or any other PPC has to pay for a certain percentage of fraudulent clicks," he said in a forum discussion. "I factor it in as a cost of doing business." Can you believe that In other words, hes saying, I know the pay-per-click companies are stealing my money, but its okay, because Ive considered that fact ahead of time. Unfortunately, that mentality is pervasive among pay-per-click advertisers. No wonder the pay-per-click companies arent making stopping pay-per-click fraud a top priority. Who can blame them If their advertisers dont care, why should they Heck, with all of the money the pay-per-click companies are making, its actually more cost effective to issue an occasional refund, than to develop technology to eliminate click fraud. And if you read between the lines of the following statement, Google even admitted as much: In a recent filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google acknowledged, "We are exposed to the risk of fraudulent clicks on our ads. We have regularly paid refunds related to fraudulent clicks and expect to do so in the future. If we are unable to stop this fraudulent activity, these refunds may increase. If we find new evidence of past fraudulent clicks, we may have to issue refunds retroactively of amounts previously paid to our Google Network members." That statement doesnt exactly instill any confidence, now does it And if Overture is asked about click fraud, theyll just issue their standard company line: "Our Click Protection System is sophisticated software that evaluates each of our advertisers clicks. This software makes decisions as to the validity of any click. Our Click Protection System uses search and click data to make both rules-based inferences and pattern recognition-based inferences about which clicks are valid clicks. We have two patents pending related to this technology, so we cannot currently disclose too many details about the methods we use." Do you honestly think newspaper, magazine, radio or tv advertisers would just sit back and let those media get away with blatantly stealing their money You know they wouldnt. Then why do pay-per-click advertisers allow it I dont know the exact answer to that question, but I have my theories: First of all, youre talking about a whole different level of sophistication with pay-per-click advertisers, compared to media advertisers. Many pay-per-click advertisers dont even know how to access or even analyze their log files, so they have no idea how much money is actually being stolen from them. In addition, some pay-per-click advertisers are making more money than theyve ever made before. And rather than upset the apple cart, theyd rather keep quiet and allow the vicious cycle of click fraud to continue, so that they can keep cashing those big checks. I also suspect many advertisers are afraid that if they complain too loudly, they may be penalized in the search engines, in regard to their free listings. If my theories are accurate, silence is one heck of a trade off, if you ask me. Why Because according to a report on MediaPost, an online study done by Clicklab revealed that fraudulent clicks can account for more than 50 percent of your total clicks. So, if the goal of pay-per-click search engines is to bring lucrative, targeted traffic to your web site, what are the pay-per-click search engines doing about the click fraud epidemic, to prevent abuse that needlessly drive up your costs and reduce your ROI Unfortunately, since so many pay-per-click advertisers are willing to play the role of "lambs going to slaughter," the pay-per-click companies really dont have to do anything. In the meantime, your ROI is going to continue to plummet, and the pay-per-click companies are going to continue to milk those cash cows AKA pay-per-click advertisers, for all theyre worth!
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Internet Nielsen Reports What if you were able to have access to your competitors web statistics What if you knew how much traffic they had, the average number of page views, what other sites their visitors went to What if you could tell how successful a campaign was or if their recent press release had any impact Would that be a strategic advantage Intro to the Traffic Exchanges Even if youve been marketing on the internet for only a very short time youve no doubt come accross traffic exchanges. The number of exchanges out there is staggering, so if you need to know what these things are all about read on. Marketing Tourism Online, Part One: The Basics This is part one of an article series which will introduce some basic strategies, considerations, elements, and techniques for marketing tourism products online. We plan to update and refine these articles as situations change and when we have new knowledge to present. If you have comments or questions, or you are interested in Leave Homes travel marketing consulting services, please visit www.Leave-Home.com or contact the author directly. You can also request to be notified when a new article in the series is available. Design Web Album and Deployment Using Adobe and Macromedia- Part 1 OK, here is my mission; completely install a customer example photo gallery found here http://www.cardprinting.net/ in 2 hours or less. The basic process starts from Adobe Illustrator CS or Corel Draw 12. This is the format all customers� work is saved in. There are aproximately. 300 files I need to access export and create a photo album with full navigation. |
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