Click fraud is a big headache for advertisers in the PPC market. Every year, millions of dollars worth of pay-per-click advertising are lost as a result of click fraud. Such an issue has larger repercussions in the long run if left unchecked as traffic quality would drop and hence change the entire landscape and profitability of running online PPC advertising campaigns.

Such click frauds can come in different forms. Basically, a wasted click is generated each time a non-buying party activates a click. They could be generated by click robots which are programmed by hackers for personal gains or a competitor out to dilute your earnings from online pay-per-click advertising. There are also click rings/communities which are formed so that the members can click on one another’s ads for a profit.

Fighting to win a click fraud battle is by no means easy. That said, there are practical solutions to avoid it. Since these frauds are not only detrimental to you as an advertiser but to the pay-per-click search engines/networks such as Adwords, you can be sure that they are working very hard to stop the fraudsters at their tracks. Therefore, one good advice is to stick with the major pay-per-click players like Adwords, and Yahoo’s PPC network. These deliver high quality traffic with minimal exposure to such frauds.

Another more specific way to determine the quality of the traffic coming from online pay-per-click advertising is by looking at the conversion rates. If a PPC search engine gives you a much higher conversion rate than the other, it is obvious that this advertising campaign is more worth the money and less subject to click frauds.

If you are a more technically inclined person, there are advanced tracking systems you can apply. In fact, there are tracking scripts that allow you to capture the data of your visitors from these PPC search engines such as their IP address, the time they spent on your website, their country of residence and so on. These are effective in really scrutinizing the quality of your paid traffic. When you chance upon an advertising campaign that is suspected to be a target of click fraud, report this to the search engine for refunds.

With these tips, you can better guard yourself as a pay-per-click advertiser. This can really help you cut down on your online PPC advertising costs and improve your profit margins.

If you are keen on learning more about online pay-per-click advertising and other effective website promotion strategies, pick up a copy of my free report.