Detecting fraud

[jmastrom]

I am fairly inexperienced with ppc advertising. I have a case of multiple clicks (6) within a minute and a half, with no othr clicks from that ip address. It appears, to me at least, as fraud. Overture is not very helpful, and I am not sure whether to push the issue. Please let me know what you think.

radissoncruise 64.235.162.202 Tue Jul 13 09:03:55 2004
radissoncruise 64.235.162.202 Tue Jul 13 09:04:31 2004
radissoncruise 64.235.162.202 Tue Jul 13 09:04:45 2004
radissoncruise 64.235.162.202 Tue Jul 13 09:04:54 2004
radissoncruise 64.235.162.202 Tue Jul 13 09:05:08 2004
radissoncruise 64.235.162.202 Tue Jul 13 09:05:36 2004

Thats $13.50 gone. I have a few others I have tracked, but this appears the most obvious.

Thank you
Joe

[robwatts]

What Ive always struggled to understand (greed aside) is why PPC operators don't implement an if else conditional that identified issues just like you've outlined and discarded them as actual clicks.

Sure, some ISPs allocate single IP ranges to 1000's of users, but what about per user cookies and stuff like that? Im sure there are a myriad of ways of identifying questionable clicks, Im just a little puzzled as to why they aren't used..or maybe they are already, I haven't looked at it in depth...anybody?

[bradbyrd]

there are actually a wide range of anti-fraud measure in place, particularly at the major engines (overture/google).

robwatts, are you certain that you were actually charged for these clicks? although i obviously have very little info to work from, i would suspect that you were not. that type of click pattern is a typical example of traffic that overture will frequently filter.

jmastrom, they do use cookies among other techniques.

you both may find this discussion on detecting PPC click fraud (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=379) from the search engine advertising forum (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=41) interesting.

[robwatts]

"robwatts, are you certain that you were actually charged for these clicks? although i obviously have very little info to work from, i would suspect that you were not. that type of click pattern is a typical example of traffic that overture will frequently filter.
"

Hi Bradbyrd thanks for those links. I didn't actually say that I was charged for the clicks, that was the other guy :)

Agree entirely, if ppc users are to have any confidence in the system then they need assurances.

Off to read those threads :)