StopScum

Impression spam defined

An AdWords fraudster will toggle Off his own PPC adverts, then repeatedly query Google to bring up the results page which will display your PPC advert. By making sure that your advert is displayed many times but not clicked, the activity causes your CTR (click-through rate) to fall rapidly and dramatically and this results in Google disabling your Campaign. Since Google ranks the AdWords ads according to a formula comprised of both click-through rate and bid price, the fraudster succeeds in obtaining the same or better positioning for his own advert for a lower bid-price (once they toggle their ad back On), since your click-through rate has been artificially reduced.

How we discovered this issue

Special thanks to Major,(USMC) Richard E. Leino of WebsiteMaven.com who posted about this serious issue and brought it to our attention. Major Leino says:

"I benefit greatly from Google AdWords sponsored ads in Google.com and their search network. The problem I have is that they've also caused me untold amounts of frustration and money due to their inability to correct fraudulent "impression" attacks when they occur."

"If you have a great CTR over time, your ad can maintain a dominant first page position for far less than a new advertiser is charged. It takes a great deal of money and patience to remain in a top position and there are many competitors who will try and knock you off by either fraudulently clicking on your ad or causing thousands of bogus impressions to send your CTR through the floor."

"...whenever impression fraud occurs, Google recognizes it is a problem but will not "credit your account" to reverse the damage done by bogus impressions. Your ad tanks and then you have to increase your max CPC to get 1st page ad status until your ad gets in a strong enough position where you can lower your CPC again and remain in the same position. Google apologizes profusely for the problem but does nothing to help me rehabilitate my ad or save me the money. Translation - Google knows I've been attacked but now I have to spend hundreds of extra dollars to keep my ad in place."

"Case in point, just yesterday my ad received 45,000 impressions in a 5 hour period. My CTR is typically 1% and it tanked to .1% and my ad was put in a slowed state. Advertising for months, 45,000 impressions represented over 12% of all impressions and they occured in a 5 hour period! Google apologizes but says they can do nothing to remove the impressions from my Ad Group and now, after months and thousands of dollars on a good keyword, I'm sent to the bottom of the pile based on 5 hours of impressions."

Other comments by AdWords advertisers

"The real problem with this is that I spend a lot of time and energies getting to an optimal position, and developing a great CTR which helps keep me there. This impression spamming is destroying history on the keyword in Google, requiring me to start over in a new ad group or new camapign. Further, it seems Google takes a while to start serving the ad 100% of the time once I do re-start. This time it knocked me and all of my affiliates off of the keyword for about 24 hours, and it took another 3-4 days to right-size the campaign. When you're talking gross sales of $15k+ per day on this keyword, it really hurts."

"I've run into what appears to be impression spamming on a paricular keyword. The keyword can roll along nicely at 5,000 impressions per day, then one day it skyrockets to 30,000 or more. The kicker is, there are no more clicks, so it all appears to be some script that pings Google on that keyword relentlessly. So my CTR drops through the floor, and Google disables it."

Source and the Google Search for this issue

Google knows about the issue but does nothing but apologize

They call it "impression spam" and say this:

"How do you prevent click and page impression spam?
Any method used to artificially and generate clicks or page impressions is strictly prohibited. Google monitors clicks on Google ads to prevent abuse of the Google AdSense program. Google's proprietary technology analyzes clicks to determine whether they fit a pattern of use intended to artificially drive up an advertiser's clicks or a publisher's earnings. Clicks deemed by us to be invalid should not be included in your earnings.

These prohibited methods include but are not limited to: repeated manual clicks, using robots, automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited, to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs. All clicks must be generated as the result of a user clicking on the ads. We therefore require that Web pages do not include incentives of any kind for users to click on ads. This includes encouraging users to click on the ads or to visit the advertisers' sites as well as labeling the ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements."

Please be assured that there is no need for test clicks in order to verify the validity of the ads. Our AdWords specialists review ads to verify that the destination URLs of the ads are working and lead to a valid website."

Source - Please let me very clear. They mention impression spam a few times but have absolutely nothing to say about detecting it, correcting these fraudulent impressions via a "make good", or any disciplinary action that they will take against the AdWords fraudsters.

Why should AdSense affiliates care about this fraud?

Impression spam is fraud and has the real potential to unfairly deplete advertiser revenue via increased costs to advertise. If advertiser leave the AdWords program, your sites will display fewer keywords and your earnings will drop. Have you ever wondered why all of a sudden your site displays fewer keywords and or PSA adverts and your revenue drops or fluctuates wildly? A significant portion of this may be directly attributed to impression spam which eliminates the keywords. Some of you also use AdWords, so you are easy targets for your competition to eliminate your keywords by artificially lowering your CTR.

Only Google can fix this issue

We refuse to believe that the premiere SE in the world and the most talented group of coders can't devise a solution which eliminates the additional costs and time to AdWords advertisers. Frankly, many other networks have devised related solutions to eliminate fraud so Google needs to get serious about this issue and stop turning a "blind eye". A simplified solution for Google: repeated query's for the same keywords in a given period of time should trigger an automatic procedure by Google which ignores/fails to count the display of the advert. Yes, we are aware of the release of the new AdSence API, but it does nothing to address this issue. Next, Google needs to sue these AdWords fraudsters and insure that their site contains suitable verbiage indicating exactly what they won't tolerate and exactly what they will do.

Unfortunately, I'm not very optimistic that Google will implement corrective action. Why? They currently occupy the dominant position in the space so they apparently prefer to think short term. Naturally, this will change as Yahoo/Overture and Microsoft continue to gain market share and advertisers in larger numbers. This will cause a significant exit of advertisers from AdWords to these other SE and then the competitive forces of the marketplace will force everyone to treat advertisers in a fair and equitable manner.

Advice for AdWords advertisers

1. Assume that you will be abused via impression spam and click fraud.

2. When computing your ROI projections, use an additional figure of 25% for impression spam and click fraud costs.

3. Carefully examine your AdWords stats on the Google site and look for "traffic spikes" Many of the advertisers I contacted were not even aware of this serious issue until we examined the traffic spikes and the resultant suspension of the Campaign. You need to perform this audit on a weekly basis.

4. Read Internet News on a regular basis for additional advertising options via other companies.

5. Send your complaints, stats and thoughts to Google via the AdWords Contact Us form.