Google AdSense Fraud: Sofizar

Arthur

It's worthwhile to examine Google's definition of Google
AdSense and Click Fraud , before delving deeper into "AdSense
Fraud" .

Google AdSense fraud is one of the diseases that plague the Ad
Words advertisers. The AdSense program essentially allows
website publishers/owners to sign up with Google, enabling them
to display Google Ads on their sites. These publishers
essentially act as "Google Partners". The ads chosen by the
Google bot for display are contextual and the ads are related to
the contents of the publisher's website, more specifically that
particular web page. The intent for Google is to capitalize on
the traffic to these (in practice) niche sites and provide
highly direct targeted traffic to the advertiser. A subset of
the users of the Google Partner website, click on those ads and
Google charges the advertiser per click. Google shares the booty
with the website publisher but the revenue sharing ratio falls
under Google's "undisclosed "criteria. While the exact amount
can be reverse engineered, the take home lesson is that the
final amount is proportional to Google's income from that click.

In theory it's a match made in heaven. The advertiser gets good
ROI through targeted traffic, the publisher gets to monetize the
traffic on their website and the web browser gets to buy that
classic CD that he couldn't live without. Not to mention that
Google gets a wad of cash. The gods of lucre smile beneficently
on all.

Unfortunately, this happy façade hides blemishes. Severe ones.
For all Google AdSense Publishers are not created equal. While
(we daresay) many advertisers have a genuine website, providing
a valuable or interesting service to the world wide community,
there is a significant number of unscrupulous operators who are
out there to prey on the advertisers. These creatures of the
night (and we will explain later why we use that term), make
websites for the express purpose of milking AdSense revenue.

This category of fraudsters deserves a taxonomy of its own,
which we have developed (the other categories, click fraud and
impression fraud are even bigger problems in some industries).
In the interest of not being gender biased, we have alternated
between genders. We hope that our lighthearted tone does not
mask the revulsion that we feel towards these cheats.

Regressive Fraudster ( aka ClickMonkey ):

This guy is at the bottom of the food chain. Inspired by the
riches of his neighbor Ms. Jones, who has been making more than
ten grand a month in AdSense revenue, he plans a course of
action. He "invests" in a clickbot software( a simple google
search reveals many) and gets a list of anonymous proxy
addresses. He then goes to register a few domains and hires
someone off of elance to create a "network of sites"and " click
bot " . He hopes that the interlinked sites will provide each
some "link popularity" and increase his page rank. If only it
were that simple! He then proceeds to use the $30 clickbot to
start clicking on the sites. Or he could click on them himself
manually using the proxies. We don't call him click monkey for
nothing. He clicks and clicks all the way to see his account
getting banned. No banana for this monkey! His calls of despair
to google fall on deaf ears. This person is likely to quit, but
sometimes retries to get up the food chain, the Wanna
-Be-Fraudster.

Wanna -Be Fraudster ( aka BOZO):

This girl searches for high paying keywords like "home loan
equity" (current ad words rate: $45), or "web hosting" (ad words
costing $20). She correctly guesses that the AdSense payout is
proportional to what Google earns and therefore homes in on such
words. Her strategy is to make a page with contents that are
appropriate for the targeted high payout keyword. She moves
ahead by clicking on the link multiple times and recruits
friends and family to give them a click. Or ten!

Little does she know that Google has a 45 day inspection period
before she get her nubby little fingers on that cash. With
little to no knowledge of Click through Ratio , her greed
couples with her ignorance. Seeing her ill-gotten paper wealth
multiplying in her AdSense interface, she increases the clicks.
Google however inspects the CTR and throws a fit when they see a
CTR exceeding 20%. Furthermore, Google notices clicks mostly
originating from a few IP addresses and that essentially seals
her fate (or rather docks her earnings). That virtual cash is
now just some deleted bytes on a hard disk on Google's servers.
She moans, nay she rail against the cruelty of Google's policy.
Some of these people wisely cease and desist such activities,
perhaps philosophizing about the NFL (no free lunch) theorem.
Others however see it as ground school for the next stage of
nefarious behavior. The Almost-There Fraudster.

Almost-There Fraudster ( aka SmartAlec ):

The archetypical ATF is supremely confident in his ability to
fool Google. Like the BOZO, he looks for high paying keywords
and makes appropriate website(s). Let's assume that he is in a
third world country, just to make the case more interesting. The
case described here is 1 year old news. He has read this article
and taken the learnt the subsequent lesson . He knows that that
the clicks from the IP Addresses of USA, UK & Canada are worth
much more than the clicks from the IP Addresses from the third
world countries. He therefore seeks to befriend people from such
IP addresses by logging onto messenger services.

This way, he gets the unique, unrelated IP clicks and (he hopes)
that Google is fooled. Remember "creature of the night". Well,
these people typically are more than a few time zone removed
from the US or Canada and therefore are up at odd hours whenever
they feel that their targets are most likely to be active. Plus
they sometimes have to deal with "inconveniences" like a day
job.

AT fraud thinks that the clicks he obtained by trolling on these
sites is a job well done. He has got clicks from the IP address
of his choice .. An interesting factoid is that for AdSense,
state also matters. Clicks from Washington and New York State
have the highest payout for AdSense Fraud.

He has just one problem. His tragic flaw. While he worked so
hard to get the unique IP and high earnings, he is not able to
maintain a good CTR. He is likely to cross the limit of 30-40%
of daily CTR and 10-20% of overall CTR. He ends up in the same
purgatory as the BOZO. The account is banned, and he gets the
abominated email. Yes, the "AdSense account closure".
Almost-There is never good enough in this nether world of
AdSense gaming. Although it is possible that he would have made
a few thousand dollars before the punishment catches up to his
crime. Crime doesn't quite pay, now does it? Well, gentle
reader, unfortunately crime _is_ paying to the next category.
Fraudster Maestro ( aka Satan's Spawn).

Fraudster Maestro ( aka Satan's Spawn):

This category of fraudsters is the most sophisticated and rarely
gets caught by google . She has researched the high paying
keywords as well as the CTR issues well. She has the smoothest
lines in the business of soliciting clicks. She can flirt
online, and ask to click the "link" for her picture. Or she may
claim that clicking the link causes the hungry child to be fed
in Ethiopia . Let's follow a typical "simple" chat session:

US User : hello

FM Fraud: what are your coordinates, handsome?

US User : NY , NY

FM Fraud: Oh! Wish I could be there. Can you help out a damsel
in distress?

US User : sure

AT Fraud: I have made a site and want to see if all the links on
this page are working or not. Can you please click on the links
and see if the other page loads?

US User: Sure. Link?

FM Fraud:www.fraudstersite.com/high-value-keyword-page.html

US User : wait! Yes I checked all the links and they are working
fine.

FM Fraud: Thanks

US User : so can we talk about you now? ( Message Not Delivered
as the fraudster has blocked the User and is busy looking for a
new victim)

And she has lots of tricks up her repertoire besides chatting
up strangers. She knows about opt in lists, usenet and blogs
where she can snare the victims. Technically savvy and able to
empathize with her victims she doesn't let arrogance get in her
way to success. Since she is very mindful of the CTR issues she
has a secret weapon. She has optimized her site for some low
paying keywords which are really not competitive. She
organically gets lots of traffic (but for things unrelated to
those competitive high paying keywords). In her website, she may
be giving away free greeting cards Or free screensavers. End
result is a fabulous impression count. The second step for her
is to makes unrelated pages on the same site and these pages
pertain to the high paying keywords. These keywords are used to
attract the victims of chat sessions. The process of getting the
clicks is different but the results due to CTR are very
lucrative.

So, how does all this geek talk affect the PPC advertiser? It's
a $5 billion+ dollar market(for exact projections onto the
future, please check out our FAQ, and with a 20% + fraud rate,
we are talking about a 1 BILLION dollars fraud per year. Even
Dr. Evil may be impressed by such a number. It's greater than
the cumulative GNP of a few banana republics. And a fair chunk
is ending up in the coffers of these fraudsters. We know from
anecdotal evidence, how people are clearing up to 20 grand a
month. All, courtesy of the hapless PPC advertiser. We want to
emphasize that there are lots of authentic sites serving genuine
content. But unfortunately the existence of these people (as
discussed above) reduces the ROI of many advertisers to the
extent that they rethink their interest in PPC. In the word of
one of our organic SEO customers, with PPC "you always get a
little less back than you put in". It needn't be that way, if
you watch carefully where your ad words traffic is coming from
and take some steps (such as traffic analysis or at the very
least a log file analysis) to protect arm yourself. Look for
patterns, some of which are obvious(such as large traffic spikes
from India). Unfortunately other patterns may require a
doctorate in artificial intelligence. Still the keyword is to
stay nimble. Convincing search engines to refund money is a lot
tougher and a lot more work than proactively watching for
problem visitors and taking steps that you deem appropriate.
Before the situation goes out of hand. Remember, an ounce of
prevention...

We want to emphasize that there are lots of authentic sites
serving genuine content. But unfortunately the existence of
these people (as discussed above) reduces the ROI of many
advertisers to the extent that they rethink their interest in
PPC. In the word of one of our organic SEO customers, with PPC
"you always get a little less back than you put in". It needn't
be that way, if you stay nimble. Convincing search engines to
refund money is a lot tougher and a lot more work than
proactively watching for problem visitors and taking steps that
you deem appropriate.

Some things you can do to stay ahead of the game. This is by NO
means an exhaustive list, but it's a start. It's sorted by the
level of protection in ascending that you may need.

1> Let your visitors know that you are tracking them and know
quite a bit about them. For instance, if you visit
www.sofizar.com , you will see information about yourself. You
can display this information to all your visitors, or only to
some of them. It can be in-your-face or subtle, but it will
remind at least some of the fraudsters that they are being
watched. Sofizar provides free sample code and connection to its
database allowing you to display "premium" information(like
City, ISP, ISP contact number).

2> Invest in a serious visitor tracking software. Set alarms
based on the number of times a person clicks on your site in a
certain time period(hourly, weekly, monthly). Display the same
information to someone who is definitely PPCing your budget to
death, as a custom message box. Something harsh, if the pattern
keeps up. "We are logging the usage, and we are noticing that
you keep clicking on our site through PPC. If you don't cease,
we would be forced to call your local ISP at +91-23-344-5678"(if
you see the information that we can glean about visitors, you
will know we can get even more specific). This will weed some of
the casual fraudsters.

3> Start checking for things that we have discussed earlier, by
investing in an industrial strength data collection package.
Based on your data collection, one strategy is to score each
visitor, deducting(or adding points), based on the following
(non exhaustive) list.

a. Visitor conversion/past conversion history.

b. Visit Depth Analysis.

c. Visit Time Analysis(time spent on each page, and time of day
the visit happens).

d. Cookies/Javascript/"Unknown OS"

e. Keyword Cost analysis.

f. Anonymous Proxy Server

g. Is part of "Fraudster list".

h. Country/Localization analysis(are you really targeting people
in Sao Paolo , Brazil for your French Restaurant in New York ?).

4> Do pattern matching. See what your top 20% of your customers
do as part of a "macro pattern" and match the visitor against
that pattern.

Keep in mind that you will get a few "false positives" and vice
versa. A few innocent people may get tagged unfairly as
"fraudsters" while a few "fraudsters" may well give you the
slip. It's not an exact science, but over a period of time you
can get fairly close. If you decide to take up your case with
Google, you have to make a very convincing case. All based on
meticulous data, instead of (what may be considered by them as)
paranoia.

Over the long term, as the threat evolves and the fraudsters
improve, you have to keep adapting your strategy using your
friends, diligent data collection, statistics and pattern
matching.

If you have any further question, comments or want us to give
you a free evaluation if your PPC campaign is a likely magnet
for fraudsters, please email to: art@sofizar.com or visit
http://www.sofizar.com/contact.php

About the author:

Ron Arthur is a Search Engine Marketer working for Carlsbad, CA
based web-metrics company Sofizar. He is a member of the team
developing a click fraud detection software, ZarTective. While
not writing expose's on the darker side of the web, he plays
with his cat "Mano" and watches "Rocky Horror Picture Show" for
the 17th time. Or maybe 117th.

About the Author: