How to prevent AdWords click fraud

[dkt91]

A friend of mine and me are getting into lead generation here in Germany at the moment and things have already worked out very fine for us. We used Google AdWords to direct paid traffic to our landing page, take their phone calls and then successfully sell those leads to businesses all across the country.

Now here's the problem: Our competitors don't really seem to appreciate our efforts. Somebody has started to excessively click our ads using proxy servers and a click bot or something like that, because the clicks come from different IPs every time. BUT they always come within a really short period of time and continue until our daily budget is consumed.

We did get back our money from Google every time until now, but they don't seem to have found a real solution thus far. And our problem is that it always takes some time until the money is refunded. And during that time we are basically paralyzed because our budget is still limited.

Has anyone dealt with this before? What can we do against this kind of click fraud?

Thanks,guys!

 

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[Michael Raphael]

I will ask my business partner who works primarily with this type of stuff. Maybe he can shed light to this problem. If not I would love to hear an answer as well.

 

[smarty]

I dont think you can do anything about it. Call yourself lucky that you got your money back from Google.

 

[Michael Raphael]

Solutions:

First and foremost, you can do this yourself will take time OR I can have an intern do for you.

1. Watch for three days where these are coming from and then ban IP.

2. Target locations so places that are irrelevant to biz do not get the ability to see

Also, by them spending time/money clicking your ads it actually does a good thing.

If all of your budget is spent, that means it is being clicked a lot!!

What does that mean for you? Amazing stuff actually, it increases your google rank because google likes that you are being viewed and clicked by different people/account.

Alternatives: continue this and let your rank "organically" increase and find alternative sources of exposure with social media, direct marketing etc...

Services: I don't want to throw myself into sales mode. But maybe we can help you with getting other revenue streams/marketing sources.

As discussed in a different thread, having just one source of marketing streams can really damage your business. Let me know what I can do!

 

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[dkt91]

Thanks a lot!

IPs are coming from totally different locations each time. But what you say about making those ads only visible for places that are relevant makes totally sense. I'll see what we can do about that and how it turns out for us. Concerning those attacks actually being a good thing, I cannot quite agree, though. Each click costs between 10 and 50 $ in this niche (depending on location), so these attacks really hurt us.

We are implementing SEO into our strategy now as well, but we are aware that it will take us some time to rank on the first page for enough locations to be profitable. Whereas using AdWords we are making money right now already. So for the moment it just cannot replace AdWords for us.

 

[Michael Raphael]

Of course, but as you've stated perhaps increasing sources whilst doing this procedure can help. It does still increase your SEO rank when they do that. So it is helping you in some manner?
Again let me see what I can do. Speaking to him later, perhaps a more detailed answer will suffice but I don't think there is much.

 

[Jakeeck]

Of course, but as you've stated perhaps increasing sources whilst doing this procedure can help. It does still increase your SEO rank when they do that. So it is helping you in some manner?
Again let me see what I can do. Speaking to him later, perhaps a more detailed answer will suffice but I don't think there is much.

I see what you're saying about his ranking getting better, but it isn't exactly helping him if he's losing money faster than his rank grows if he isn't seeing returns on that rank in a reasonable amount of time.

 

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[Michael Raphael]

I see what you're saying about his ranking getting better, but it isn't exactly helping him if he's losing money faster than his rank grows if he isn't seeing returns on that rank in a reasonable amount of time.

Yea I mean if the ads werent worth 10$ a piece I would disagree with you. But that is the really detrimental part. I would let him do it. Keep getting money back from google and try and scan IP then block, limit location, and slowly slowly expand your market.

Just remember they are doing this because you are making a difference keep it up!

 

[dkt91]

Yeah, thanks! We'll definitely not give up on that one. We ARE making a difference already and this hasn't gone unnoticed.

If you have any other ideas about what we can do, please still get back to me.