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Types of "weird" clicks

In the past, most of the undesirable clicks could be identified through simple features such as anonymous proxy IP in remote countries, velocity spikes, abnormal traffic volumes in some segments such as high paid keywords, abnormal query-to-click ratios, or just unsophisticated homemade robots.

All the parties in the PPC industry have gained experience, and this has changed the overall picture. Savvy advertisers selling to domestic clients receive many fewer international clicks, and the use of out-of-country anonymous proxies is declining on 1st-tier networks. Instead, we see new emerging trends:

Search distribution partners associated with 1st tier search engine networks, delivering real traffic but substantially boosting their revenue by using artificial clicks – paid humans in the past, but we have noticed an increase in botnets usage recently as they are easier to coordinate. For instance, each IP must click twice a day targeting a different advertiser each day. This is easier to achieve with botnets. Some of the most widespread botnets target IE but not Firefox.

Search distribution partners associated with 2nd tier search engine networks are getting smarter too. We have seen a noticeable increase in transparent proxy usage to perpetrate click fraud. In its simplest forms, the fraud scheme is very crude, essentially generating massive amounts of clicks through AOL accounts. More refined fraud schemes in this category involve using botnets or human beings "sitting" on Comcast or AOL IP addresses, generating only a few clients against each advertiser each day.

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