Click Fraud and Comparison Engines
OK, so I don’t have rock solid data that would convince Sherlock Holmes.
That’s my disclaimer, but reviewing tracking information from many perspectives, click fraud does not appear to be a concern on shopping comparison engines. Why? The answer seems simple…there is no money to be made.
For Google Adwords, a lot of AdSense account holders can make money by fraudulently clicking on their own links, thus earning revenue. Google attempts to block this process, but essentially I can post a Google Adwords link, and then click away on my own link, making me money in the process.
Since CSEs don’t encourage affilate programs in general, there is little motivation for anyone to commit click fraud.
Of course, if you are a company with a number of competitors (or perhaps just one unethical competitor), you should keep an eye on the inbound IP addresses coming through engines. However, for the purposes of this posting, you should not spend too much time on looking for fraud.
Instead, perhaps you should concentrate on 4 little letters that make up the next posting…
One Response to “Click Fraud and Comparison Engines”
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September 7th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Sometimes we get some weird clicks on products from shopping.com, they have so many weird partner sites and sometimes we get like 500 clicks on one product with no conversions. Its always from some odd ball partner site of shopping.com.
I also think its pretty crap that you can’t exclude yourself from these partner sites and sites like shopping.com seem to take anyone on as a partner without making sure they are a legitimate site that will produce decent conversions for their clients, the merchants.