It's not a new way to abuse advertisers, but it's certainly an effective one.

Unqualified traffic in the performance-based universe can cost you a pretty penny. In lieu of counting the new Google millionaires, counting unwarranted traffic is the hot hobby du jour in search.  Is the practice -- or in some cases lack of practice -- deserving of all the hype, or has our archetypical societal behavior (hell bent on fear mongering) finally bled into search?

"Be afraid, be very afraid of everything," goes the tune. If it’s not the latest politically motivated terror alert having us believe that terrorists are sneaking dirty bombs into the country via Long Beach harbor, it’s the Christian Right interpreting the Bible 70,000 different ways to justify everything from loss of choice to loss of expression. Maybe it’s the Liberal Left out there every day sacrificing liberty in the name of freedom. Whatever the source of fear in our world, toss click fraud onto the pile of hyped-up drama.

Fraud is a dicey subject for pay-per-click providers and an unhappy topic for advertisers. It occurs in many forms with as many tactics as there are ways to optimize a Web site. Let’s take a look at the defining characteristics of click fraud, how search sites big and small view the problem, and what you can do to take action against it.

The “what is” report from search land defense

It seems everyone has an opinion as to how to define this form of pay-per-click abuse. Most commonly, fraudulent traffic can be defined as underserved site visitor reports in any form. Like, for example, every single visitor arriving at that garter-belt clad chicken site. Well, maybe not.

Karen Yagnesak, vice president, marketing and communications, from search provider FindWhat.com offers the following definition of click fraud. “We define click fraud as a malicious cheating, scamming or scheming with the intent for monetary or competitive gain,” she says. “In my opinion, there are two types of click fraud -- malicious user-generated fraud and unintentional fraud generated by robots and spiders.”

Most providers will agree the spider-, or robot-driven fraud is the most common form of unwanted clicks, but it’s an even bigger problem if all of one’s traffic comes from content sites (i.e. contextual search) as opposed to simple directive search.

“Good quality content sites tend to be indexed by spiders more frequently than most. Additionally, as advertisers become more sophisticated, they are starting to research and question the quality of the traffic they are paying for,” says Erik Matlick, chief executive officer, Industry Brains.

If the most common form of fraud comes from robots and is easily identified and subsequently dismissed, why all the hype? Comparatively speaking, the other type of click fraud is prevalent enough to warrant efforts in slowing or shutting it down all together. What Yagnesak called "malicious user-generated fraud" can come from sneaky click houses in other countries, competitors seeking to bleed your budget and remove your listing from competition, or really devious underhanded search site partners looking to make a quick buck.

Thwarting the evil and not-so-evil doers
 
Site providers are actually the first line of defense in protecting against intentionally cruel click fraud. Every search provider with a solid foundation and business model has stepped up to help protect against the click problem. Many won’t discuss the systems they use because the space is very competitive and of course, if you tell the enemy “what and how,” they’ll just adapt their fraud schemes to compensate. Now if we can just teach the American news media to adopt the same philosophy and stop educating terrorists.

One of the most common myths is that fraud only happens on alternative search sites like FindWhat, Enhance.Com, or Kanoodle. The fact is, unfair click traffic happens on the big boys' sites too. As the founding fathers of pay-per-click search as we know it today, Overture recognizes the click fraud issue and has a dedicated team in place to help prevent click fraud and oodles of technology behind fraud protection. LookSmart has recently implemented an entire system to help ensure traffic quality control. LookSmart calls the system TrueLeadTM, which keeps traffic from non-US destinations out of the network, evaluates traffic partners based on historical performance and seeks to keep out adult content. FindWhat also has a system in place to help screen click traffic in addition to a human evaluation process.

Publisher-side evaluation and protections systems have to be in a constant state of technological innovation and will certainly help you sleep better at night, but that doesn’t mean advertisers and agencies shouldn’t keep a close eye on performance to spot junk clicks.

Identifying and dealing with toxic traffic

Sometimes, finding click fraud is not a difficult task. If you own the phrase “Michael Moore is a big fat lying propaganda dealing jerk,” and in an average month you receive about 200 clicks on that phrase, but for some reason you got more than 10,000 clicks in a few weeks, something is probably wrong. Another red flag would go up if you sell anti-Michael Moore books on your site and received zero or very few conversions.

Beyond the painfully obvious, auditing click traffic gets a little complicated, but not impossible and using a combination of multiple tools as checks and balances to help identify click fraud can save the day.

You can start by configuring your site side log analysis tools to provide IP addresses, and time information for each keyword or phase from each engine individually. Almost every search site provides instructions on how to do this and the most common way is adding source coding to the URL string.

For example:

www.kevinhatesmichaelmoore.com/?source=overtureMichaelMooreisabigfatlyingpropagandadealingjerk

Multiple clicks from the same IP address at a very similar time usually indicates false traffic. If an abundance of these IP addresses are in countries in which you do not do business like China, India or Russia, clicks may not be valid. Log analyzers are commonly available from analytics providers like Urchin or WebTrends.

If a fraudulent IP address is found, it can be blocked, but even that isn’t foolproof. “Simply blocking an IP isn't necessarily good either. Because of proxy servers, many users may have the same IP address,” Industry Brains' Matlick says. “For example, we may have many clicks a day come from one IP address that is really different users using AOL to connect to the Internet. Since these are technically different users, we cannot just block the AOL IP addresses.”

Measurement tools provided by search sites or third parties help you to keep an eye on post-click performance by keyword for every engine currently in place, as well. My money is on the all-too-critical third-party tool, because, well, it always helps to use a third party. You may ultimately acquire much of the same data garnered in a log analysis, but it helps to have more information.

Some of these data include:

• Site provider information (ppc engine)
• User path analysis (number of pages or site activity from each click visitor)
• Comparative conversion rate trend information (daily, weekly, hourly -- x keyword normally generates Y conversions)

Many of these components might already be in place in your search campaign -- it’s just a matter of learning to use them in a new way. 

Documenting clicks of mass destruction

Whether it’s one of the dumb thieves simply pumping your budget without masking IP addresses or one of the truly intelligent deviants futzing with your tracking URLs to make it more difficult to identify them, once you have acknowledged instances of unfair click traffic, you still have to go out and get the refund.

In many cases, search providers will step up and help. “We work with our advertisers to analyze their traffic and conversions to ensure they are receiving value from the FindWhat.com network and encourage them to point out any discrepancies in their traffic logs by contacting their account representative,” FindWhat's Yagnesak says.

However, you can’t just walk up to the search site and ask for your money back without documentation. It’s just not as easy as going to war with Iraq, for example. That is to say, harvesting proof-positive proprietary and third-party data and presenting it in an easy digest format will go along way to expediting the refund process. And, for heaven’s sake don’t bogus up some information to try and get a fraudulent refund. If you are going to do that, it would be quite a bit more profitable for you to collect a bunch a half truths, present them in a feature film format, and call it a documentary.

iMedia columnist Kevin Ryan’s current and former client roster reads like a “who’s who” in big brands -- Rolex Watch, USA, State Farm Insurance, Farmers Insurance, Minolta Corporation, Samsung Electronics America, Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Panasonic Services and the Hilton Hotels brands, to name a few. Ryan believes in sound guidance, creative thought, accountable actions and collaborative execution as applied to search, or any form of marketing. His principled approach and staunch commitment to the industry have made him one of the most sought after personalities in online marketing. Ryan volunteers his time with the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, and several regional non-profit organizations.