This is an box for a short bio to be edited in the header.php file. Of course you can try to persuade people to PPC Click Fraud Rate Q2 2008 »
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- There is good news and bad news for PPC advertisers on the issue of click fraud for the second quarter of 2008. Click Forensics has released their click fraud numbers for last quarter and so I will give you the good news first:
- Click fraud rates went down last quarter (16.0 percent) compared to the previous quarter (16.2 percent).
Other than that, that is about all the good news for PPC advertisers and click fraud. Here is the bad news:
- Most click fraud happens on Search Engine content networks (Google Adsense and Yahoo! Publisher Network, for example). On those networks, the fraud rate was 27.1 percent last quarter.
- 27.6 percent of click fraud traffic came from botnets, which is up more than 2 percent from last quarter (25.2 percent). Another reason for users to protect their computers from hackers.
- Russia (4.9 percent), France (4.8 percent) and the U.K. (3.5 percent) are the coutries most responsible for click fraud traffic outside the U.S.
The sad thing about this is that, according to Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics, a primary reason for the slight decline in click fraud from last quarter is because of the efforts of the ADVERTISERS, not necessarily the Ad networks. According to Click Forensics, the advertisers have spent more time checking their clicks and filtering out the fraudulent ones before their campaigns were affected. The Ad Networks have made better strides in doing that automatically, but it is still not enough. In the end, it is still up to the people who pay to double-check their accounts, which is unfortunate that it has to be left up to them.
With the PPC click fraud rate being 16 percent industry wide, that loosely translates into $16.00 out of every $100 you spend is lining the pockets of some person who is not the least bit interested in your product or service. If your monthly budget is $100, you are paying a lot per year for fraudulent clicks. Pretty steep to me.
If you only advertise on Google and Yahoo, that number could climb to $27 out of $100, loosly figured.
This indicates that one should not just jump into Internet Advertising without examining all the angles. It can certainly provide great benefits, but also presents risks that one should measure first.
It should also be noted about Click Forensics that their data are gathered from their own network called the Click Fraud Network. That network is made up of more than 4,500 online advertisers and agencies, but it does not include everyone. So, if you are weighing the pros and cons of PPC advertising, you should review data from multiple sources including the actual Ad Network you are considering joining.
Yahoo! Rolls Out Web Analytics Beta »
Five months after acquiring web analytics company Index Tools, Yahoo! has announced that they are launching Web Analytics Beta. That is actually a pretty quick turnaround, I think. There is quite a bit of work involved in platform modification. Maybe the threatened mutiny by Yahoo! shareholders fanned the flames 
.
Currently, the Beta version is only released for use by a targeted group:
- Yahoo! Store
- Yahoo! Developers (Y!OS)
- Yahoo! Head Advertisers (Microsites)
If you do not fall into at least one of those categories, “No soup for you”. You will have to be patient and wait your turn.
You can, however, visit the Yahoo! Web Analytics website and signup to receive updates and get a sneak peek at some screenshots of the dashboard.
Dennis Mortenson explains on his blog:
…this is not a free-for-all-come-and-get-it launch, but a carefully planned controlled access launch, which will keep all of our functionality in place and even enhance it. There is no dumbing down of the tool in any of the engagements above – and we will be working hard to add to the list of customers who can get access. So expect the above list to grow rapidly over the course of 2008.
Michael Stebbins also reported on this on his web analytics blog, which is a must read.
Until everything is released to the masses, we will just have to wait and keep using Google Analytics and ClickTracks.
Google Selling Performics »
When Google purchased DoubleClick, they also became the owners of Performics – Search Engine Optimization company. There was a lot of talk in the SEO/SEM community about that being a conflict of interest – a Search Engine company owning a Search Engine Optimization company.
Last week Google announced it will sell off the Performics portion of DoubleClick:
It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Performics search marketing business to a third party. We believe this will allow us to maintain objectivity and the search marketing business to continue to grow and innovate and serve its customers. While we have not yet identified a buyer, we’ve received preliminary interest from a number of our current partners. Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold.
Of course, looking back, it seemed obvious that Google would do that. It was the right thing to do and failure to do that would have shed a bad light on Google. Danny Sullivan was one who openly expressed the desire to see Google do that and is glad they did.
Couple the sale of Performics and the reported layoff of 300 of DoubleClick’s employees and that means about 500 people share the distinction of briefly being Google employees. That fact still looks nice on a résumé…
Google Owns Performics (By Extension) »
Now that the DoubleClick / Google marriage has been blessed by both the European Commission and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, SEOs and SEMs everywhere will be eager to see what Google will do with Performics. Performics is a Search Engine Marketing company owned by DoubleClick and so Google now owns a Search Engine Marketing company by the fact that they own DoubleClick.
And to think that Google had the nerve to penalize US just for selling a few text-links on our blog … wow.
Here is a quote from Performics’ web site that I thought summed it all up pretty well:
Together, DoubleClick Performics and DoubleClick offer clients an unparalleled range of marketing solutions and are uniquely positioned to compare effectiveness across marketing channels for valued clients.
I particularly liked the phrase “uniquely positioned“. THAT is somewhat understating it, I think. Imagine being able to pick up the phone and call Google to find out what to do to get a particular site ranking #1… Why would ANYONE hire any other SEM/SEO firm? After all, if you wanted your brand new site to shoot to the top of the SERPs, wouldn’t you STRONGLY consider the Search Engine Marketing company owned by the number one Search Engine? Of course you would. At the very least, the fact that Performics and Google are related has to carry a ton of clout, even if Google claims that they are not going to give special treatment to Performics’ clients.
Danny Sullivan posted about this today in a post that would have taken me about 5 months to complete – good job, Danny.
November Search Engine Market Share »
There were no significant changes in Search Engine market share from October to November ’07, according to Virginia based Internet information provider comScore. Google is still way out in front compared to the others and, although Yahoo! dropped and AOL/Time Warner grabbed a little more share, everyone basically kept their same positions in November.
Of the 10 billion searches tracked, here is how they broke down during the month:
- Google captured 5.9 billion
- Yahoo! accounted for 2.2 billion searches
- Microsoft dropped just below the 1 billion mark at 984 million
- Ask was used 463 million times
- and AOL/Time Warner sites were used for 453 million searches.
AOL/Time Warner had the largest jump during the month (0.3 points) and Yahoo! had the biggest drop of -0.4 points.
For all you visual people out there, we have a pretty, little Flash graphic in the right column, so check it out
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