Clicklab, a Web analytics and click fraud protection service, recently released research suggesting over 50 percent of all clicks coming from pay per click advertising are fraudulent. If true this number is far more significant than many industry insiders had previously thought and up to 30% more than previously published studies have shown and certainly more than Google or Yahoo, the two major players in the ppc arena, would admit to. Although some might recall that Google did underline the problem to the Securities and Exchanges Commission as a potential risk that investors should worry about during their IPO filing.

The study also revealed there are two categories of fraud, competitive where the clicks are meant to deplete a competitors daily ad budget and affiliate fraud where the clicks are meant to increase compensations.

So how are they doing it? Usually a program is created that will go to Google or Yahoo! and click on the same sponsored link. These programs then click through to the landing page which triggers the advertising or affiliate fee, abandon the session and then repeat. The same is true of the B2B offenders but their models will identify the competitor’s ad and start the cycle.

So how can you protect yourself against this abuse? Well there is no failsafe method yet but we have used tracking tools to help identify problem accounts and several are available through third party vendors. Some examples of this service are:

• Clicklab
• Adwatcher
• WhosClickWho

Besides using a tracking system, it is essential you stay in communication with the engine on which the fraud is occurring. Despite the negative impression pay per click fraud is having, Google & Yahoo! are committed to providing their service on the up and up and from our experience they will investigate all claims of fraud, they’ve got to, this is their cash cow especially for Google.

As more and more major corporations use ppc to advertise their wares this problem would seem to have a shorter rather than longer life. Rest assured when they start recognizing the dollars they’ve lost from fraud, they certainly won’t hesitate to use their influence in the political world to put an end to click fraud.

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Choosing keywords is one of the most important steps in the optimization process yet too many times I speak with people who only think their main keywords are important. I then like to ask them how they might search for a service or product on their own. It’s amazing to hear what terms they would use to find someone elses website but they don’t think to do the same when it comes to finding theirs.

One exercise I like to take when developing a keyword list is to look at the product or service from the viewpoint of many people who would be searching for different reasons. Like:

• Product or Service Specific Information
• Price Comparison
• Locale
• Buy Now

And so on depending on what it is I’m developing the list for. This exercise always produces variations that help me with a more rounded list which in return will bring a variety of visitors to the site and increase conversion rates.

So let’s try this briefly using Widgets as a product.
Product Information - Let’s say we want to find out the latest model of Widget available, so a term might be “latest model Widget” or if we want to know the history of Widgets the term might be “history of widgets”
Price Comparison - A simple one eh? “Compare Widget prices” or “Best Widget price” or “Price comparison Widgets”
Locale - “Widgets Dallas” or “Widgets Dallas TX” or “Widgets Texas”
Buy Now - “buy Widgets” or “online Widgets store” or “Widgets for sale”
Of course with each of these you should exhaust the possibilities but in the end you should have a very good set of “secondary” keywords that are very targeted and should translate into increased traffic and actions.