No Comments since March 15th, 2008
I’m off to SES New York this evening. No, I don’t particularly enjoy red-eye flights.
On Monday at SES, I’ll be speaking on the Click Fraud and Click Auditing panel. Jeff Rohrs, Shuman Ghosemajumber, Tom Cuthbert and myself are the only carry-overs from the Click Fraud panels at SES Chicago last December. As Tom didn’t have a powerpoint last time, I look forward to him bringing forward some new data. I’ve got an entirely new presentation, with perhaps only one holdover graphic. I hope those of you who will be there will enjoy it!
Two weeks ago, Shuman and I had lunch at the Googleplex. We discussed a lot of things, and I only realize now that one thing we didn’t discuss was this panel at SES NY, other than to say “see you there.”
On Wednesday, I’m also moderating a late session on Searcher Behavior. I’m looking forward to moderating this particular session as I’ve spoken on it a few times, and the change from speaker to moderator on this topic should be interesting.
If you’re at SES New York, please do say hello, come check out the sessions, and ask lots of questions.
Posted under Analytics, Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, Search Engines, Yahoo
1 Comment since March 11th, 2008
A lot of people focus in on how to get refunds from Google or Yahoo for Click Fraud issues. Google doesn’t always call it click fraud, they often call them invalid clicks, and when they catch “invalid clicks” they pro-actively discount your bill accordingly. They don’t catch everything, but they do try hard. Yahoo! does the same thing, but less obviously. They don’t actually show you how many invalid clicks you’ve received, they just don’t appear to bill you for every click.
In both cases there are defined processes for requesting refunds or more commonly, credits.
Completing the documentation to request a refund isn’t simple, trivial, or a speedy process, (unless you have PPC Assurance where it’s a one click process). In fact, it’s quite complicated. Rather than confusing matters by outlining processes for both Google and Yahoo!, I’ll focus on Google. They’re the 800lb gorilla which everyone cares about.
In Google’s case, to file a request for credits for clickthroughs you believe you were improperly billed for, you need to identify all the original referrals, which means figuring out which entry in your log file is the original referral, and isolating the unique Google Click ID (gclid). You then need to document everything possible about that click, as in the course of an investigation, Google’s team might ask you for a lot of data. Be prepared. They are just trying to be thorough.
One issue you’ll face is how to claim what. The obvious documentation on the web deals with “Invalid Clicks” Unfortunately, invalid clicks don’t always mean the same thing to you as they do to Google. Not all invalid clicks are Click Fraud. To you an invalid click might be a referral for an incorrect keyword match. These do happen, but you’re unlikely to notice them in a large campaign, as too many terms are flying across your screen. This type of mistake actually gets handled by a different department at Google. Challenging to navigate, that’s for sure.
It’s not that Google actually sets out to make it difficult to claim back a refund, or to get a credit for mistakes. Simply put, Google’ a big organization with responsibilities for different issues assigned to different groups. They are trying to be as efficient as possible, but these efficiencies don’t necessarily make processes simpler for you, or your clients. They simply need to be thorough.
Is it worth your while to manually track down all the errors? It depends on your cost per click, and your volume. Is it worth doing so automatically? Definitely. At a cost of 1% of campaign spend, knowing what’s going on, when things go wrong, and how to deal with them is invaluable. Knowing you can recoup more than that means the ROI is pretty simple to work out.
Posted under Analytics, Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, MSN, PPC Assurance, Search Engines, Yahoo
I was reading yet another article the other day which referred to Click Forensic’s Click Fraud Index, and was particularly interested in their threat map, pictured below.
I’m not going to bother dealing with the numbers quoted, or commenting on which countries are more threatening, but if their threat map is real, what an easy problem this is for you to start dealing with, at least as far as Google, and Yahoo are concerned. That’s right, using their information, it’s relatively easy to minimize your exposure to Click Fraud, and to make your campaign much more effective at the same time.
How about that? Advice which won’t cost you a penny, but will save you a bundle in your PPC campaigns. The best part of it is, you’ll not just limit your exposure to Click Fraud, but you’ll also increase campaign ROI in innumerable ways.
Here’s how you go about it. If you are a retailer selling only in specific countries, why aren’t you simply geo-targeting those countries? If you only sell, or want to reach customers in the U.S., why would your campaign not have geographic parameters? Simple, isn’t it? But you can’t just simply choose U.S. only in your geo targeting. If you do that you’re simply limiting yourself to people accessing .com, .net, and .org sites. People in India (fiery red hot problem spot according to the Click Fraud Index), and Canada (a much bigger problem than the U.S., with only 10% the population), who use Google.com, or go to read businessweek.com will still see your ads. Why?
Well, if all you do is select “U.S. only” then you’re limiting your ads to anyone in the world using the U.S. default engines. Same thing if you’re running a UK only campaign, people in Argentina (another hot spot!) looking for information about the Falklands (err… Malvinas) on google.co.uk, or theregister.co.uk will see Google ads set to “UK Only.”
The good news is that it’s easy to keep those nasty Argentinian click fraudsters away from your ads, (actually I know and like quite a few Argentinians, and their wines!), so you never need to worry about them causing you grief.
The solution really is simple, go into your campaign settings, and instead of choosing “U.S. only” choose each of the 50 States, plus D.C. individually. Now you’ve just limited your campaign to people located only within the 50 States & D.C. Much better, isn’t it?
So what happens now when Google (or Yahoo or anyone else) serves out your ad to a viewer in Argentina, India, or Canada? Well, now you can go back to them, and file a claim for incorrect billings. These clickthroughs should now be labeled as “invalid”, and you should not be responsible for them. After all, if you rent a billboard in Las Vegas, and the company instead erects it in San Jose, you wouldn’t logically be required to pay would you? Same principal should apply here as well.
So, it’s really pretty easy to cut back on your exposure to potential click fraud, isn’t it?
Posted under Analytics, Click Fraud, Google, MSN, PPC Assurance, Search Engines, Yahoo
1 Comment since January 23rd, 2008
We put out a Press Release earlier today about the automated PPC refund claim submission process that we’ve added to PPC Assurance.
Apart from what’s in the release, here’s what’s notable:
Until now, if you’ve wanted to file a claim with Google or Yahoo! for an error in the way your PPC campaign executed, it was a nightmare process. You had to dig through log files, run whois and geo-lookups against IP’s, check times, etc. In short, it was virtually impossible.
PPC Assurance solves that. One click, and your PPC claim is submitted.
So why did we build it?
When advertising came to radio, a company called Arbitron emerged. They hired scores of people to listen to the radio all day, and mark down which ads ran when on which station. They compiled the data, and provided the information back to the ad networks, and advertisers. They provided an audit and verification service so that advertisers would be able to ensure that they ads they booked to run on particular stations in NYC, at certain times of day, and days of the week, ran as promised. Straightforward business best practices. Buy an ad, have a means to find out that you got what you paid for.
When advertising came to television, Nielsen offered the same service for TV advertisers as Arbitron had for radio advertisers. As with radio, the various networks cooperated with advertisers.
Independent verification is a good standard business practice. In traditional advertising, it’s been around for quite a while. But until now, it’s not been offered to Internet advertisers.
PPC Assurance fills that gap. It’s fully automated, so monitoring your campaigns is easy.
The value in an audit is in verifying what’s happening. We like to say, we help you know every click. We give you an additional benefit. It’s a bonus. Just knowing if things are fine is important. Having the ability to do something about it when things go awry is what the automated refund claim submission process is all about. Press one button, and file the claim with Google or Yahoo! They want to know when things go awry, and this is how you let them know.
In further posts we’ll examine the process after you file a claim. The engines don’t automatically just write you a cheque back, but our clients have been successful.
That’s a key point. Our clients have received money back from claims they’ve filed. We know we can help you too.
Posted under Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, PPC Assurance, Search Engines, Search Metrics, Yahoo
No Comments since January 21st, 2008
Last week I had the pleasure of attending, and presenting at SES Paris. It was held on January 15, 16, 2008, and somewhere in excess of 200 people were there.
The conference was broken into two tracks, and with one exception - Search Around the World, everything was done in French. I had the honor of being the only presenter for the Click Fraud & Campaign Audit Session. 1:15 minutes of presentation, and Q&A, all in French. That was fun, and I’ll admit I was nervous, but people told me they learned at lot.
This conference was very different from most of the other search conferences I’ve participated in, as in every session, the Q&A periods were much more active than usual. There was no shortage of audience participation. I think almost every session ran late due to overwhelming response in the Q&A. I’d say from a participants perspective, SES Paris was very successful. I don’t have firsthand knowledge of previous SES Paris shows, so I can’t compare them beyond mentioning that attendees who had been there in previous years said this one was a step up.
I also moderated four other sessions. They were a lot of fun. Here’s a quick summary of all the sessions. First off, day 1:
1) Optimiser son site pour les moteurs de recherche
This is the standard SES Fundamentals track session on how to optimize a web site. There were four presenters Maxime Grandchamp from Trellian Europe, Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz from vpod.tv, Didier Durand from Publicitas, and David Cohen from CVFM. Their various presentations were strong and to the point. Lots of good questions, it went off smoothly.
2) Meandres de la Recherche Universelle
The universal search panel. I was particularly interested in this one as I’d presented on the topic at SES Chicago and SES San Jose in 2007. This time out it was a European perspective on the subject. The presenters were Jean Veronis, a professor from Universite Aix-Marseille, Philippe Yonnet from @position, and Sebastien Billard from Relevant Traffic. Jean Veronis’s presentation about the history of search leading up to Universal Search was interesting, and his slides on what he thought Universal Search results should look like unique. Philippe & Sebastien’s presentations were more about the implication of Universal Search for SEM’s. I threw in a couple of slides at the end which showed some additional data. I’m going to use that info in a post at another blog this week. It’s been sitting in the can for 2 weeks, and I’m way behind in posting there. The Q&A was solid.
3) Clinique - “Optimisation de site web”
The always entertaining site clinic. This was a blast. We had David Degrelle from SEMPO & 1e Position, Walid Elias Kai from Google-Kai, and Yann Lemort from Pole Positioning. A lot of times in site clinics people are shy about having their site critiqued. Sometimes we even ask people to put up a competitor’s site so that they can get insights, and observe some opportunities. Not here. No one was shy. (this seemed to be quite standard in Paris, no one was shy!). We had people putting up sites they had built, new clients, problem clients. It was great, and I think people learned a heck of a lot.
On Day 2 of the conference I did the Click Fraud session, and moderated one other;
4) Click Fraud - clics frauduleux.
This was fun! I was the only speaker on click fraud (and the moderator). I tried to give a very balanced view on the issue, and recounted data that’s been publicly used at conferences and in discussions, as well as information we’ve discovered in our analysis. Then I focused on auditing your PPC campaigns, and ways to minimize your exposure to click fraud. I think this is an important point. Google and Yahoo! overwhelmingly represent the majority of the PPC marketplace. They offer great tools which allow you to minimize your exposure to Click Fraud, by really tightening down your campaign parameters. Unfortunately, most people don’t take advantage of these tools. I did quote from Andy Beal’s article from Click Fraud last year, using this chart to explain Google’s view of how prevalent Click Fraud is, and how it overlaps with invalid clicks;
To add a little humor to a topic which is both serious, and dry, I mentioned that this chart looks oddly similar to another image in common culture which is doubtlessly recognized by many of us. Ironically, this comparison brings a whole new perspective to “do no evil.” Certainly an unwitting comparison.
5) Strategies d’echanges de liens en 2008
Linking strategies. I had the always entertaining David Degrelle on this panel again, along with David Durand-Pichard an independent blogger, and Aurelien Bardon from Atregos, Of course some of the discussion dealt with the paid links update from last year. There’s still a lot of confusion on that, and and many people commented on how they got whacked and don’t sell or buy links. Of course, bugs are being worked out, but some people are still getting hurt. Good info on link-baiting, and David Degrelle tood a picture from the stage which he said he’ll blog about to get link bait from the audience. Similar questions to the ones we get in the U.S., but in my discussions with participants it appears that simpler techniques still work well, as the markets smaller, and not quite as competitive. I found this interesting, as it presents an opportunity as well.
This last session ended the conference for me.
Outside of the sessions, participant feedback and general observations, I enoountered quite a few people making negative comments about Google. I was surprised, but also found them interesting. On the one hand the French love Google. Our own data shows the Google’s marketshare there dwarfs shares in many other markets. All the marketers in the sessions just seem to use Google, and Google’s tools for research; in fact, they don’t really seem to use the other engines’ tools, or at least they didn’t mention them. For link analysis in particular I found this quite surprising, but I understand that each market is different, and habits are habits. Quite strange. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. The people supported Google, use Google, yet also somehow resent it.
In summary, was SES Paris worth it? If you wanted to learn a lot about SEO & PPC strategies, management and issues, definitely.
Posted under Analytics, Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, PPC Assurance, Search Engines, Yahoo
