Re: Sprinks.com PPC

From: Mark J. Welch <MarkWelch_at_MarkWelch.com>
Date: Thu 11 Apr 2002 01:22:05 -0600

Bryant Fitts asked:
>> Does anyone have any expierence with Spinks.com (it is about.com's PPC
search engine)? What is positive or negative? How did it compare to
Overture results? <<

I did a test on Sprinks.com (About.com) back in 2000, and the results were
quite dismal. On Overture, we draw about $5 in sales for each dollar we
spend. At Sprinks.com and at FindWhat.com, we drew only pennis in sales
per dollar spent. But I had a more recent experience (during the past two
weeks) that should be of some concern to other advertisers.

I recently spent some money at one of the other second-tier "pay-per-click"
search engines, to test whether it might be productive to use PPC systems
other than Overture and Google.

I quickly noticed three alarming problems with the (relatively small amount
of) traffic I was drawing

First, a substantial portion of the referrals for which I was charged,
never generated any http request to my web server; in other words, a
substantial percentage of the clicks simply didn't come through.

Second, almost none of the clicks coming to my site carry a "referring
URL." When the company furnished me with its spreadsheet listing the 650
clicks they charged to my acount, I noticed that a majority (450 out of
650) listed referring-URL data, but when I tested them, a substantial
number of these referring URLs were either invalid or generated scripting
errors.

Third, a substantial portion of the clicks which I did track as coming to
my site, were from foreign IP addresses, in non-English-speaking
countries. When I checked one slice of my local logs, I saw nearly half of
all traffic coming from IP addresses in Mexico.

Subsequently, the PPC company furnished me with a spreadsheet listing about
650 clicks they charged me for (mostly for the terms "sheet music" and
"music"). When I looked up those IP addresses, I found that more than
one-third were from IP addresses in China, and 56% were from IP addresses
in non-English-speaking countries. Only 44% of traffic came from
English-speaking countries. This is an extraordinary pattern, when
compared to typical traffic distributions.

Upon reviewing this distorted traffic pattern, I noticed that nearly all of
the "China clicks" came through a single "partner site" and most of the
"Mexico clicks" came through a different partner site. (That is, I was
dealing with Company A, whose keyword results are merged with other
PPC-search-engine results and shown at various partner sites, where the
partners share a portion of the per-click fee.)

Hijacking or spoofing IP addresses from foreign servers, hiring people in
foreign countries to generate clicks, and concealing referring URL data,
are all tactics commonly used by individuals and companies engaged in
"click fraud." Based on the information I have gathered, I strongly
believe that there is "click fraud" going on here, probably not by this
particular PPC company or its partners directly, but by one or more
"affiliates of its partners."

I am disappointed that despite repeated promises to investigate and
explain, this particular company has still provided no explanation
whatsoever for the aberrant behavior I described. Instead of researching
this issue and solving any problems, the company has threatened litigation
if I continue to share my opinions and the facts on which my opinions are
based. It seems as if they simply don't want to know about, nor do they
want their advertisers to learn about, the click-fraud strategies
apparently being used by affiliates of the PPC company, because the company
knows it would collect substantially less money from advertisers if the
fraudulent activity were blocked.

I have created a detailed spreadsheet showing the "click activity" that
the PPC company identified, together with the domain names and suffixes
(country codes) associated with each IP address, and a count of traffic
from IP addresses at each country/domain suffix (I'll send the spreadsheet
to anyone who requests it: Microsoft Excel, 168KB).

I urge every PPC advertiser to analyze your own log files in this same way,
to determine whether the traffic you are receiving from each PPC search
engine is legitimate.

Disclaimers I have received emails and phone calls from several of this
company's advertisers who have indicated that they have researched the
issue and found no evidence of click fraud. It is possible that this
situation is unique in some way, perhaps because of the specific search
terms ("music" and "sheet music") or for some other reason, and that click
fraud might not be a widespread problem at this particular company. One
advertiser reported a positive ROI from its spending with this company
(generally comparable to the ROI from another PPC search engine), from
which I can only conclude that for that client's bids, there is probably
not a significant click fraud problem. Finally, there are several
potential "non-fraudulent" explanations for some of the extraordinary click
patterns, and for the omitted referring URL data (though the company's
failure to deliver its promised explanations, makes me quite suspicious).

I only know what I can see in my own log files and in the reports that this
PPC company has provided. Based upon that data, I conclude that there is
almost certainly some "click fraud" activity occurring, possibly combined
with some technical problems, and that any advertiser considering
pay-per-click search engines, should carefully analyze the traffic received
to insure that it is valid and productive.


-- Mark J. Welch - Internet Performance Marketing Consultant
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ 925-462-8483 Pleasanton, CA






Received on Thu Apr 11 2002 - 02:22:05 CDT