Has any other advertiser seen any strange activity on HostSearch and WebHostingMall in the past 4 days? I regularly advertise our company in the PPC areas of both sites and all of a sudden saw a HUGE increase in the number of reported clicks and therefore cost skyrocketed!

This is not just with our site because I also noticed that nearly all of the regular high bidders were wiped out with their funds on deposit depleted. This is no small matter of chance since the percentage of clicks increased over 110% more than the average daily number!!!

We use a very robust tracking system to track ROI (clicks to sales) and I do not see anywhere near that sort of traffic coming into our site. As a long term advertiser I have found HostSearch and WebHostingMall to be among the best for ROI and most reliable in combating fraud. Yet the events of the past 4 days have raised serious doubts unless they get the problem identified and fixed quickly.

I reported this to HostSearch yesterday and received a reply today that everything was normal and they dont see any fraudulent clicks. However, this is in no way normal and I do not believe that both sites miraculously increased exposure and click activity in the past 4 days. They say they will continue to investigate so if you are an advertiser on these sites in the PPC section please pipe in and let us know if you also saw this strange behavior.

Again, it is obvious that it is not just our site that was affected.

Best Wishes for a .Net Success!

Just to confirm - do your logs show the visitors HostSearch stats report?

Boris

Right, but Awstats and Webalizer Logs are'nt correct always!

No the logs do not show the click throughs. We do not use Awstats and Webalizer. For advertising, we use a sophisticated in house proprietary system that is almost flawless.

Again, this is NOT an isolated event as it affected all advertisers. I just received the following update from HostSearch support. They did change their scripts on the two sites on the 17th that caused this problem with spiders and bots making the hits. Here is the response;

"What we have changed on the Aug 17 was the way the ad was linked. Previously we use a JavaScript to link the ad and we was informed by some users that they cannot open the link on multiple Windows if it's a JavaScript link because they used a browser called FireFox. So we changed the way we link the text by just simply link without JavaScript. Doing so it will allow some users be able to follow the link.


What we have found:
1) The old system that counts clicks on both sites didn't fully count all the clicks. If the users use some browsers that didn't support JavaScript or turn the JavaScript off, the clicks were not counted. Clicks from specific IPs and locations were also not counted. We are finding the cause. Most advertisers have been getting free clicks.
2) The new system that we launched and got into the problem didn't fully protect visits from spiders and bots. This resulted in excessive clicks in the past few days.

Right now the old system has been resumed. Thank you for your patience."
/end support comment

and it appears that they have credited our account for at least two days. Like I said before, HostSearch is a fantastic resource and my faith in them is restored.

I put this post up for two reasons,
1. To receive feedback from others who are seeing the same problem
2. As a warning to all PPC advertisers to carefully monitor your click thrus, stats, charges and complete activity each day. There are so many automated spiders, bots, and an army of paid click thru surfers that are costing our industry millions of fraudulent advertising dollars. Sites such as HostSearch that are not syndicated (such as Google, Kanoodle, etc) are usually safer since there is no incentive to earn money on clicking a link.

If you are curious about what I meant about "an army of paid click thru surfers" check out this article from indiatimes.com
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-654822,curpg-1.cms

The matter at HostSearch appears to be resolved for now but do be on watch for your PPC activities.

Best Wishes for a .Net Success!

If you are curious about what I meant about "an army of paid click thru surfers" check out this article from indiatimes.com
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...822,curpg-1.cms

I dont know why's that Times Of India Artcle (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-654822,curpg-1.cms) about incentivized Clickers being so Popular!

Most of the cheaters and fraudulent/incentivized clicks are generated by Chinese users followed by Poland, Belgium and India. (thats what the stats of my ppc say)

Also, the most important thing is that the artice is about PTR ( Paid to Read Email) Ads and NOT, I repeat NOT about PPC (PayPerClick) search engine Ads.

See what a person says in the article:

"I have no interest in what appears when clicking an ad. I care only whether to pause 60 seconds or 90 seconds, as money is credited if you stay online for a fixed time...""

Article also reads:
"Take Click2freemoney.com. Calling itself an Internet advertising company that shares profits with members, it gives three options to earn money — by clicking on website links via e-mails that they send, by clicking on banners and text ads in their paid-to-click section, and by referring others to the website."

have a close look at that website and you'll know about what the article is..

As far as I know, PPC Ads dont have timer nor do you've to wait for any fixed interval to get credited for the click.

So, the article is about PTR (Paid to Read emails) Sites like puregoldmails.com, allyousubmitters.com and a lot lot lot more.

PTR's are mostly SCAM, they oversell Ads, pay only a few members who have huge downline and are active and after a few months they close the site and dont pay a lot of their members.

Those clickers and those sites are good for each other as both are doing what they should'nt

Its really irritating to see this article everywhere which makes the reader think that most scammers are indian. It really affects a countries reputation. PayPal and other services dont offer Debit Card Services, Bank withdrawal etc.., PPC's will block Indian Users and many many other organization will think twice before offering their services in India now just because they know (reading this article) that their are people clicking ads for money but they dont know that those ptrs are scam itself and even those clickers dont get paid.

Just my 2 cents..

Refer - this (http://www.jimworld.com/forums/index.php/action::thread/thread::1091165384/forum::ppc-search-engines/) - for more info on this CRAP >

Hope it helps you understand that article better!

I am sorry if you misunderstood my intention here. My intention was not to bring discredit upon the fine people of India but simply to point out to readers and advertisers that they should closely monitor their ads and make an awareness of incentivized Clickers.

I did not say in any way that India was the only place where this happens. It is just an article that points it out pretty clear for readers and therefore gets wide exposure. If one were to look closely, I suspect they would find paid to read click fraud happing even on a wider scale right here in the United States. Most of the fraud we see comes from the US and Vietnam, not India but that is limited to only our company experience and does not involve incentivized Clickers but pure credit card fraud.

The article in my opinion is not dealing only with paid to read email such as what Click2freemoney.com offers but also paid to click on advertising site listings in PPC search engines. The timer technology they are refering to is widely used on sites such as Ezhits4u.com trafficg.com and ClickThru.com where they have a timer or code that counts the seconds the ad or site is viewed and when the time has run out, the paid clicker moves on to the next ad. Most have no intention at all to make a purchase or even have a slightest interest in the ad but are seeking to earn income by clicking on advertisers links. In defense of the above mentioned sites, most of those do not include Google adwords or syndicated ads from other PPC engines and opt to use their own system instead. Most were developed as webmaster traffic exchanges sort of like the banner exchange programs but some eventually started to pay people to click ads in order to increase traffic and income. I am simply mentioning them so readers can easily see the technology we are discussing.

Another problem of course in click fraud is automated bots, spiders and even competitors who click on ads in order to increase the cost for their competitor. With Google however, these increased clicks actually lower the cost per click for the advertiser (but it still cost the advertiser for the click nevertheless).

The recent problem at HostSearch was due to spiders and bots, not paid surfers. That seems to be resolved there now since they reverted back to the system they were using prior to Aug 17th which had protection from these types of fraudulent clicks.

PPC (Paid Per Click) advertising revenue has grown significantly in the past 4 years. So much that it is now the most popular method for advertisers. Banner ads are dead, PPC is ruling the scene and the newer paid per lead type is increasingly growing in popularity.

1PlanHost,

The article in my opinion is not dealing only with paid to read email such as what Click2freemoney.com offers but also paid to click on advertising site listings in PPC search engines. The timer technology they are refering to is widely used on sites such as Ezhits4u.com trafficg.com and ClickThru.com where they have a timer or code that counts the seconds the ad or site is viewed and when the time has run out, the paid clicker moves on to the next ad. Most have no intention at all to make a purchase or even have a slightest interest in the ad but are seeking to earn income by clicking on advertisers links. In defense of the above mentioned sites, most of those do not include Google adwords or syndicated ads from other PPC engines and opt to use their own system instead. Most were developed as webmaster traffic exchanges sort of like the banner exchange programs but some eventually started to pay people to click ads in order to increase traffic and income. I am simply mentioning them so readers can easily see the technology we are discussing.

I still disagree with you on this. The artice is NOT about people clicking PPC Ads. Infact, those people never come across PayPer Click Engines, Clickthru, ezhits and such are traffic exchange websites which display random PPC Ads. But there are a few PPC's who allow those users. You can find a whole lot of them on Getpaidforum.com. Thats (gtpaidofurm) the place where those (most chinese) users get started.

But that article certainly deals with PTR (Paid to Read Emails) and traffic exchange sites and a few, very few PPC's whose owners allow those users themselves. As I said, you'll get a very clear picture of it at getpaidforum.com