Think I'm being scammed - PPCSE

[jeffb0]

I have been using Overture for over five years with very few problems. I just activated my accounts at several other PPC search engines at the beginning of this month (June):

- BrainFox
- FindWhat
- Kanoodle
- myGeek
- Search123
- SearchFeed

Well, after two days of testing and checking logs, I've cancelled these two because they had thousands of clicks on a couple of keywords, when all other keyword clicks were in single-digits. Seemed very suspicious...

- Enhance (ah-ha)
- ePilot

... the problem I'm having is in my logs... I seem to be having a TON of traffic from some spyware and can't figure out where it's coming from. It appears to be Deskwizz.com (known spyware) and traf34.com. Here are some logs that might be relevant:


- http://ads.deskwizz.com/to.php 4095 visits
- http://216.133.243.28/2.php 653 visits
- http://www.abcsearch.com/jump/ 313 visits
- http://traf34.com/to.php 169 visits
- http://traf34.com/LandingPage.html 148 visits
- http://media.deskwizz.com/gate.php 105 visits


and...


- Unknown search engines 2205 visits


Overall, 10.2% of my traffic this month seems to have been bogus. So the sixty-million dollar question is, does anyone know which of the above PPC engines might be sending me this traffic? And does anyone know who Deskwizz.com is? Or even Traf34.com? I would be eternally grateful for any insight.

[Marcia]

Here's what a search brought up for deskwizz.com

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-11,GGLD:en&q=deskwizz%2Ecom+ppc

To be honest, I'd be afraid to check out any of those sites using IE but I think it's pretty obvious what's going on.

[jeffb0]

Yep, I checked google and found the same thing you did. It appears that Deskwizz hails from a malicious spyware program called 'svrrun.exe.' The question remains, which one of those PPC search engines is sending the traffic to Deskwizz? If any? I find it hard to believe that a spyware program would want to include my little site in it's ads for free, so it's got to be related to one of the above listed PPC engines.

[Marcia]

Jeff, you might find this site a helpful resource, there's information on adware and how it operates

Affiliate Fair Play (http://www.affiliatefairplay.com/)

[seobook]

a good reason to stay with some of the larger PPC players off the start, so you are guaranteed some legit traffic, and are not wasting your time tracking junk traffic or reshuffeling your site to try to get bunk traffic to convert.

when you start marketing on the web attention and time are two of your most limited resources and many people / systems / businesses will cheat you out of those using a con based on saving you money, which in the end costs you more money while cheating you out of your other resources as well.

[jeffb0]

I certainly appreciate the feedback. I have a good grip on how the PPC engines work as I have been using them on and off for around five years to market my real estate investing manual. Overture has been wonderful, but expensive.

Does anyone know about this Deskwizz.com? Which one of the PPC engines are in cahoots with Deskwizz.com?

[seobook]

I certainly appreciate the feedback. I have a good grip on how the PPC engines work as I have been using them on and off for around five years to market my real estate investing manual. Overture has been wonderful, but expensive.

Does anyone know about this Deskwizz.com? Which one of the PPC engines are in cahoots with Deskwizz.com?
do you have a way to access the Deskwizz search results? if so compare them to some of the engines results

shady operations will come and go. your best bet is to track the ads by identifying what pages the deskwizz is sending traffic to. instead of sending traffic to your pages directly you can create new pages for each engine (and track the referals to those pages) or use tracking codes on the URLs ( like send traffic to http://www.example.com/?src=findwhat

[jeffb0]

do you have a way to access the Deskwizz search results?


No, wish I did. :confused:

[seobook]

No, wish I did. :confused:
then you may want to set up tracking codes.

the point is not one or a few shady sites. shady sites and shady partnerships come and go.

the point is making sure you track your overall ROI or know what sources are providing mostly legit traffic and which ones provide mostly shady traffic.

even if you find out who is partnering with one shady site today they may boot the shady site. then the shady site could just repartner with another engine - which you may also be advertising with.

[AFP]

So the sixty-million dollar question is, does anyone know which of the above PPC engines might be sending me this traffic? And does anyone know who Deskwizz.com is? Or even Traf34.com? I would be eternally grateful for any insight.

Actually all of the PPCSEs you listed could be responsible as I've seen all of them showing their results through various spyware/adware. Brainfox is ExactAdvertising's PPCSE portal. ExactAdvertising has 3 or 4 different adware applications themselve now. MyGeek is part of the AdOn Network, a group which contains several adware companies who will run each others inventory through their applications including as primary partners 180Solutions and OfferOptimizer (aka DirectRevenue aka IPInsight aka Transponder aka many other names) and CoolWebSearch (the most prevalent adware installed according to WebRoot). FindWhat owns some companies that put out adware (although the screensavers.com app seems to run Overture when I tested it). But FindWhat listings show up frequently in many of the major adware applications. But like I said I've seen all the PPCSE's you listed show in various adware.

From my own personal experience, the smaller PPCSEs are likely to be having forced clicks happening through the spyware/adware than the major PPCSEs like Overture.

Over the last year and a half or so, I've seen many/most of the adware applications shifting a good % of the inventory from affiliate/media buy pop ups to PPCSE pops.

Kellie

[jeffb0]

Excellent Kellie, thank you! I will shut them down one at a time and see which one is the culprit.

[seomike]

Shut them all down. Anything besides Adwords and Overture is Pay Per Asian Click.

We've learned this the hard way the same way you have :)

[jeffb0]

The more I research this, the more I think you're right. Some of the traffic is legit, but most is coming from other countries. I haven't seen sales increase so I may just shut everything down except Overture and Google.