Common Enemy

Yahoo! and Click Forensics team up to fight click fraud

The enemy of your enemy is supposed to be your friend, right? Well, the biggest enemy of Yahoo!’s traffic quality team is click fraud, which is why we’ve just become friends with click-audit company Click Forensics.

We’ve teamed up with Click Forensics, a well-known click auditor that attempts to track click fraud numbers, including publishing quarterly discard rates. The obvious question is, why would we work with a company that has been a critic of search marketing? Because, frankly, we care so much about click quality that we’re willing to work with anybody who can help us—and our advertisers—drive a better return-on-investment.

About the Partnership

How will we work together? In this new partnership, Click Forensics can act as an intermediary for advertisers and work with us on specific advertiser issues when advertisers request help from both of us.

Click Forensics generally provides a way to help advertisers understand their click data, and now can provide Yahoo! with more information on behalf of the advertiser if there is a question about traffic quality. If you are already a Click Forensics customer, you can also use your Click Forensics reports as the basis of click investigations.

Click Forensics can provide us with additional data that may help us update our traffic-quality measures, so even if you’re not a Click Forensics customer, you can still benefit.

What We Do for You

This fits in pretty nicely with what we’re already doing. Our Click Protection System, one of the best in the industry, typically discards between 12 and 15 percent of clicks before you pay for them.

Coming soon, you’ll be able to see for yourself the clicks that our system identifies and doesn’t charge you for. Our new Click Filter report will show you how many total clicks are being discarded, and the percentage of your total these clicks represent.

Of course, dealing with click fraud is not all we’re doing to improve traffic quality, whether it’s pricing discounts on traffic from certain partner sites, or the ability to block domains from which you don’t want to receive traffic. But when it comes to getting insight that could improve our traffic quality, a little extra help is always a good thing.

– Reggie Davis, VP of network quality

Posted by Administrator

[ Categories: Strategies, Yahoo! News ]
Bookmark with del.icio.us Send Blog via 360°

29 Comments Add your own

1. Sunil | April 2nd, 2008 at 11:59 pm

Good efforts
2. Dan London | April 3rd, 2008 at 6:11 am

Great news. Our clients have been asking about click fraud and this allows us to answer that highly volatile question with ease.
3. Pay Per Click Journal | April 3rd, 2008 at 8:27 am

This is great news for industry overall! Awesome to hear this!
4. Yahoo! Sharpens Its Claws&hellip | April 7th, 2008 at 7:26 am

[…] “build the highest quality ad network possible.” In a new endeavor against this menace, Yahoo! has teamed up with Click Forensics, a traffic quality management company that audits clicks received by an advertiser to fight against […]
5. BIG Pay Per Click Adverti&hellip | April 7th, 2008 at 7:47 am

[…] Common Enemy - Y!SM is teaming up with Click Forensics to combat click fraud. It looks like Yahoo! is adding a “click filter” report soon so we can see how many clicks we aren’t getting charged for due to suspected fraud. […]
6. Yahoo! Search Marketing B&hellip | April 22nd, 2008 at 5:19 pm

[…] report follows other recent traffic quality measures we’re undertaking. And now you’ll have a little more visibility into exactly what we’re doing […]
7. Memory4less | April 24th, 2008 at 3:31 am

This is where Yahoo were lacking I think and now its seems to me that they are really caring there Advertisers pains for the wast clicks so an advertiser should get $ for what they really paying $$ for.

A Quality Traffic from a Quality source!
8. Andy | April 30th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

Competitors regularly click on my paid advertising links. I guess they don’t realize I can see exactly who is clicking on every link, when they click, their exact IP address, and their company name. Luckily I don’t have to pay for these clicks thanks to the technologies provided by Google and Yahoo!. When will my competitors learn that they’re not actually costing me any money and stop wasting their time?
9. bill | April 30th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

domain blocking is too clumsy - how about blocking ip addresses
10. Kristen | April 30th, 2008 at 1:27 pm

I was so disgusted in 2001-2005 with all the charges on my credit card for clicks that never materialized into a call or business. I know something was wrong but Yahoo and Google refused to address my concerns.

I was spending up to 500 a month and not making one penny and it was awful. I advertise a lot less because of this fraud which I know originates from my competitors who are seeking to put me out of business by all their clicks, thus my costs skyrocket and they sit back and laugh.
11. Steve | April 30th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

Yes, we need to be able to block IP addresses. Better yet, Y!SM should not display ads when the clicker is using an open/hacked Web proxy, or a TOR node. That would stop a lot of this nonsense.
12. Paul | April 30th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

Yahoo Content Match = Click Fraud. A couple of years ago I fought Yahoo tooth-and-nail for click charges that were depleting my pre-paid advertising dollars and Yahoo wouldn’t admit that what I reported was Click-Fraud. When the sentence “if that doesn’t suit you good enough then try this” and the word suit links to a Men’s Suit Shop and the owner of that site get’s charged $1.00 for that click, I’m sorry to say but he was just defrauded for $1.00 of ad budget. And my situations were very similar, just different words. It was a total joke the way Yahoo handled and never resolved my complaint
13. albert ferrante | April 30th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

Great news. I am a small business owner and always wondering how many clicks are actual customers. Thank you
14. John O'Brien | April 30th, 2008 at 2:05 pm

Hey Andy, #8 How do you get the IP address. I’ve been told I can’t get that. I’ve got a competeter who clicks my ads and I haven’t been able to stop him except by blocking my ad from showing in his area (My seo does that, don’t ask me how.
15. Nova Lighting Guy | April 30th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

We’ve been advertising lighting fixtures on just about every advertising platform that Yahoo has. The results are good BUT click fraud is always one of those “how much are we losing” issues. Lets hope that Google jumps on the bandwagon too!
16. ben | April 30th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

Someone please answer: How do you get the IP address to see that it is your competitor?
17. Pam | April 30th, 2008 at 3:30 pm

This just might be the best reason to steer our spend further away from Google so that we can spend more with Yahoo.
18. Sharon | April 30th, 2008 at 3:35 pm

I keep wondering why, when my web counter lists maybe 21 hits on my website, Yahoo lists my click total at 25, and Google lists 9 hits. I’ve also been wondering why I cannot find my site listed on Yahoo at all, after exhaustive searching using keywords Yahoo lists as bringing clicks to my site. If I can’t find it, how is anyone else finding it?
You can get IP addresses, to answer the above question, by finding a free “hit counter” that tracks the incoming traffic. Go to yahoo and type in “tracking hit counter” or some such phrase.
Hope this helps.
19. Bennetta | April 30th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

Glad to hear how click fraud is being addressed by Yahoo. It will be nice the see the data from the Click Filter report. As a small business owner with limited advertising resources I have often wondered what percentage of our monthly PPC advertising budget is wasted by click fraud. I like doing PPC with Yahoo better than Google because I have felt, at least for us, that with Yahoo our shoppers convert to buyers at a higher percentage than with Google.
20. Barry | April 30th, 2008 at 8:56 pm

About Time. I have been cheated by Yahoo in January for nearly $1000. When I asked for help, BIG SUPRISE! They found no problems. However, I had 25% of the amount of clicks before, and am back to 25% of the clicks now.
21. Mike | April 30th, 2008 at 10:00 pm

I think I should get a reprt daily on the IP adresses that click on my ad…. Let me tell you if I suspect click froud as well as this new protection program.
22. Fred Parker | May 1st, 2008 at 3:08 am

Why am I so suspicious? After reading the comments above it is pretty clear that there are problems mainly by click fraud generated by competitors paying a third party to click onto your advertisment mostly from a content matching site ad. Often these are machine generated in foreign countries India and Bulgaria but sometimes not. The partnership with Click Forensics could well add a further layer of Corporate protection treacle between Advertisers and Yahoo who can now say “Well Click Forensics did not find anything wrong so the charges will stand” Now that minimum bids can be raised to such extortinate levels the 15% acknowledgedd fraud will generate a tempting pool of cash telephone numbers infact. How tempting is that? Yes we should be afraid, Very afraid.
23. Raji | May 1st, 2008 at 6:45 am

Peace of mind lets you work better achieving best results. We appreciate Great Services at Esteemed Search Engine YAHOO.
24. FLV player | May 1st, 2008 at 6:48 am

nice move. It is a step forward compare to Google, hope Yahoo can earn market share in paid advertising
25. Darrell | May 1st, 2008 at 7:08 am

Advertising is a tough game,Click fraud has been more preverlant than ever,and we are all paying for those that are dishonest.I have personally asked several times for Yahoo and Google to investigate incidences wherew
26. Darrell | May 1st, 2008 at 7:17 am

Advertising is a tough game-Click fraud has been more prevelant than ever,and we’re all paying as business owners for those that are dishonest.We’re darned if we do and darned if we don’t because everyone has gone to using the internet,a cost we didn’t have before.It’s also given us good and bad exposure that we didn’t have before.
I have personally asked several times for Yahoo and Google to investigate incidences where I knew click fraud was evident and that someone was clicking a thousand times on my website,only to be told that I had a small credit coming,when I was paying a large percentage for fraudlent clicks,literally thousands of dollars.
There needs to be legislation to regulate the fact that we can only be charged for one click per ip address per day.We also need to be able to block those IP’s.
I hope Click Forensics helps this issue and this isn’t a way to charge more per minimum CPC because supposedly the’quality’of our clicks are better.
27. joedc | May 1st, 2008 at 7:10 pm

Thanks for the advice about click counter I am new to this web stuff but I had been paying google about 500.00/month and stoped. yahoo i just started I did not realize that there was a problem with click fraud thanks for the info.
28. DaveL | June 3rd, 2008 at 1:42 pm

My experience is that advertisers still need to fend for themselves and carefully monitor their PPC campaigns. As long as there is content syndication there will be click fraud. My experience as both an advertiser and developer of click fraud auditing software is that there is MUCH that both Y!SM and Google could do that are not done. There is too much revenue at stake.
29. Amaan Goyal | June 22nd, 2008 at 7:45 pm

Excellent news and a move in the right direction. Our clients have been asking about click fraud and this allows us to answer that highly volatile question with ease.