Real Estate Click Fraud
It can happen. You are bidding on Google Adwords, Overture, Kanoodle or whatever is your favorite PPC engine. And, next thing you know your costs skyrocket. You are out of money before you know it.
This is a growing trend and it can come from a competitor clicking away on your ad. Or a nefarious software that stealthily bangs away on your ad links while your dollars disappear.
What is a Realtor to do?
Call in th epay per click advocates like: WhosClickingWho or ClickAssurance .
That is exactly what an Oregon insurance company did when they found they were getting clicks from the same IP address.
Why pay for ads ? Clicking by competitors can happen. Its a ctough market out there. Try www.RentNLease.com.RentNLease is free for listing anything for rent or for lease. If you like to add a new category please email them.
Posted by: renter | January 10, 2005 at 04:29 AM
This has become a real big problem, not just for real estate keywords but for any keyword. I'm pretty sure that google and overture have some kind of tracking to stop charges from the same ip address, I don't think I can say the same for others though...
Posted by: tyler | January 24, 2005 at 08:04 AM
I have been an advertiser on SuperPages.com since the day they
launched PPC. We were seeing ROI's of 300% every month.
Since the traffic wasn't as big as google or overture, the end profit
wasn't huge, but the ROI was enough to stick and make some money.
On February 1, 2005 THAT ALL CHANGED. Superpages must have partnered
with another portal and delivered YP content on other search engines.
My traffic more then tripled. And so did my cost. One problem, not
even a single purchase.
We were seeing a 1%-5% buy rate (better then any others mentioned
above) and that rate dropped to zero. Literraly zero.
We spent over $500 in a week, when we would usually do that in 3-4 busy weeks.
When I checked my referrer reports on the site, there were NONE, yes,
NONE originated from Superpages. In January and before, 99.9% came
directly from an end user searcing on the YP site.
We have since stopped advertising there and are extremely disappointed
with their decisions to be greety and send dirty and unqualified
traffic to our site.
P.S. They also increased the minimum bid to .20! Who do they think
they are - the gods of search?
Superpages is out until they fix their bad partners.
Posted by: Patrick | March 06, 2005 at 05:40 AM