Comments on: Adwatcher – Adwords Click Fraud Monitor – Update

By: Pieter

Pieter — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:27:07 +0000

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.

By: Dustin

Dustin — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 06:03:01 +0000

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.

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By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 02:05:36 +0000

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?

By: Gadget

Gadget — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:31:25 +0000

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

By: Geordie

Geordie — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:40:18 +0000

Were you using the 30 day trial?

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:26:12 +0000

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

By: Rhett

Rhett — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:32:31 +0000

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…

By: Jonathan Volk

Jonathan Volk — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:03:51 +0000

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

By: Ruck

Ruck — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:42:54 +0000

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).