I am surprised that PPC Fraud does not get more attention. Have we all resigned ourselves to accepting it as the cost of doing business? Yet, each day it eats away our profits and advertising budget taking us off line and making our ads unavailable to legitimate buyers!

Google and Yahoo have no real incentive to correct this problem. It generates massive amounts of revenue for their companies every day!

Notice the Search Engines are offering the New Local Search, which has the ability to filter traffic that pertains only to a small business area. However, they do not offer the ability to limit foreign traffic from your site! Why is that? Because they are aware that many of the Fraudulent PPC come form other countries and do not want to lose that revenue!

Any site whose only purpose is to generate revenue from advertising should be suspicious!

Take notice of Shopping Directory Sites whose only content is PPC Ads appearing in your website statistics. Many have the same IP Address but use several different Domain Names through Masking techniques to avoid detection! Most of these sites cannot be found in a search on any Engine. So where does this traffic come from? Do they have their own Pay Per Read network? Do they have their own Spy Bot Network?

Why would the Search Engines sign up such sites to carry our ads anyway? Again, they are counting on our ignorance and will accept the few claims made by advertisers who do the research and make the claim. This is peanuts compared to the revenue these sites generate for the Search Engines!

I encourage every Advertiser to write to Google and Yahoo though your advertising control panel insisting that they make following changes:

Ability to Opt Out of Advertising on Foreign Domains.
Ability to Opt Out of Sites whose only Content is PPC Advertising.
Ability to Filter PPC visitors outside your area of business.It is my belief that these changes would go a long way in fighting PPC Fraud. They are changes that the Search Engines have the ability to make but WILL NOT without pressure from the Advertisers.

This problem will only get bigger unless we act together.

These are my thoughts - What are yours?

It's useless - I lost $1000's of PPC fraud, but when you contact Overture/Adwords you don't even get a REPLY or if you call they said - send us EMAIL :) I wasted like weeks on this issue and learn that ONLY if we do class-action lawsuit against them this may help - regular tactics not working - BBB, State Attorney General and etc

The only people who make money with Class Action are the Lawyers.

I am not Flustrated with my PPC advertising. I am quite happy with the results thus far. However, there are many things I will accept as the Cost of Doing Business. Fraud is not one of them!

Evil Flourishes when Good Men Do Nothing!

Unfortunately, too many advertisers and web site owners are not Tech Savvy. They Out Source the development of their sites, their SEO efforts, their Marketing programs, and even in some cases the administration of their site. They consider internet sales as gravy instead of meat! The Out Sources either do not care or choose not to enlighten their employers about such problems. This is why you do not have the Out Cry you would expect and would receive if it were Print Advertising or some other form they do understand.

I was attempting to send up a flare to the Advertising Community saying "Heads Up Guys....Pay attention....Check your stats....File some claims...Ask for changes!"

However, it appears the community of Advertisers I was hoping to reach does not exist.

I regonize this lack of knowledge has it's advantages for those of us who do understand the potential and pit falls. It gives us an edge. It also creates all sorts of job opportunities and ways to take advantage of their ignorance..... Like the search engines are doing and the sites who participate in PPC Fraud.

I think it doesn't get a lot of attention because most people are not tech sauvy. They do not understand click fraud or how it happens. I believe that most people think that people are actually clicking on the ads. Its a weird concept to imagine that progroms or robots are clicking on your ads automatically for some.

Sooner of later, Google and Yahoo will have to address this problem if enough people complain. But I think most people won't complain just because adwords brings them a lot of business.

Google does a better job than Yahoo in this area. They do have a geo-targeting program of sorts. You can also OPT your Ads Out of Specified Web Sites.

Yahoo on the other hand has NO form of Geo-Targeting other than Local Search and allows you to Opt Out of Nothing.

Any Changes the Search Engines make will be Later rather than Sooner unless we Advertisers start making a Fuss and Demand it.

Unforturnately, we have this Tech Savvy problem in Site Owners and Advertisers to content with which I believe the Search Engines are milking for all it is worth...... Billions of $.

Interesting post. Can't believe there are this many replies.