Mar 15 2008

Adwatcher - Adwords Click Fraud Monitor - Update

  • (10) Comments. Got a say in it?
  • Published March 15th, 2008 in Pay Per Click by Jonathan Volk

So, after a short couple days of testing Adwatcher, it has already detected over 300+ fraudulent clicks. It's actually quite interesting to see.

There are a couple main things that I really like about this program so far.

The first is that I think I found a competitors IP address. How do I know? Well, one person had clicked on my ads (and I had been charged) 22 times. That's right, one person clicked 22 times. I wont say how much I lost from that amount of clicks but it's significant enough for me to want to do something about it. So now that I have the information that they were probably researching my keywords, I want to prevent them from accessing my page.

What do I do? Hehehe...

I add that IP address into the Hosts.deny file and now that competitor cannot access my site anymore. :)

So far adwatcher has proven to be pretty useful but it does seem like a lot of work.

The process for getting your money back for fraud clicks seems to be like pulling teeth. A close friend of mine used adwatcher a couple months back and canceled his account because he never got any money back from Google. Knowing this, I wanted to make this work. I wanted to follow all the directions to make sure that I got paid for clicks that I didn't really need to pay for.

After reading all the steps you have to take, I'm wondering if it will be worth all the effort. I spend tens of thousands of dollars but really I doubt adwords is going to credit me back for people who click just 5 times (which is adwatchers default alert level).

All in all, so far it's helped me discover a few things but I'm not quite sure it's worth the $50 just yet.

What I have done:
To eliminate google complaining to me about wanting money back for what they will probably call "valid" clicks, I've raised my fraud limit up just a bit. That way it takes more clicks on the same ad to "trip" the fraud protector.

If the amount I save is $1000 or more, I will continue with adwatcher. If I make less than that or I dont get the credits back, then I'll be canceling.

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    • (10) Comments. Got a say in it?

    10 Responses to “Adwatcher - Adwords Click Fraud Monitor - Update”

    1. Ruck says:

      At least blog the fraud dude. Hell, I’ll even blog it too. Keep your screenshots of everything you check. Get enough PPC’ers reading this and maybe things wont be so tough on getting reimbursed.

      It’s not even work for me to get reimbursed outside of Google. I literally just call up and send a screenshot (if they ask).

    2. Good point. :) I plan to keep on updating and will post the screenshots in the next update. ;)

    3. Rhett says:

      My old ISP used a transparent proxy, so everybody on it appeared to be using the same IP address. Bummer if you go and block out an entire ISP in the name of click fraud…

    4. Nick says:

      Hey Jon (or Ruck) -
      Have you been able to find information on how to go about submitting click fraud csvs and screenshots to AdWords (ie: contact form, email, etc) and within what time frame? I signed up for the trial as well and have about $100 in clicks on a two day period that I’m going to try and get reimbursed but havent found much info on their site on how to do this. Any suggestions?
      Nick

    5. Geordie says:

      Were you using the 30 day trial?

    6. Gadget says:

      I’ve never heard about that. I will give it try…

    7. Dave says:

      Jon - Haven’t used AdWatcher, but it’s not merely for detecting click fraud, is it? Without looking at the site, I could have sworn it also allowed you to track conversions at the keyword level…no?

    8. [...] Subscribe to Jonathan Volk - Ready, Set, Super Affiliate - Latest Post: Adwatcher - Adwords Click Fraud Monitor - Update [...]

    9. Dustin says:

      Thank you for the recommendation, as a newbie PPC marketer, this could definitely spare me losing a lot when I first start out. I’ve bookmarked your page and will keep in check with it.

    10. Pieter says:

      Hello everybody. I’m the lead support for AdWatcher and I just wanted to drop a couple pieces of information for some of the questions that everybody has.

      First off, Rhett the ISP proxy masking the IP of the abuser is definitely an issue as it makes IP filtering very difficult. Since we incorporate both cookies and IPs for creating a click identity we can track individuals even if they are behind an proxy. This is really useful for anyone who gets a lot of traffic from the AOL bunch and wants to know who is who.

      Nick, as for the best way to start a refund request with Google is to submit a request using their form here:
      https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6432
      They used to have email contact but they have since decided against that, and have taken it down.

      The time frame for Google to consider fraudulent clicks is 2 months from the time of the event - again this used to be longer but ditto.

      Moving on to Dave’s question - AdWatcher isn’t just a click fraud focused we also do have keyword level conversion tracking. This actually ties into the identity we create for the people who click your ads - as we track them from the first click to the last purchase all the information is stored in relation to that identity.

      And of course Jon - thanks for your interest and bringing some transparency to the process. If you or anybody else ever need some help feel free to drop me a line.

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