BobDolemite

Running my PPV campaigns, I see a chunk of views coming from referers like stuffsender.com, goofgoof.com, loadgeo.com, soykit.com, lookservices.net and smartzig.com. Checking them out, they look like no-name search engines. Are these legit? Or should I be doing something to avoid them?

I also get referrers like spotppc.com and rockppc.com and I deactivate those affected targets immediately.

rjrv10

You should stay away from those kind of traffics ASAP. Google won't like it obviously.

BobDolemite

rjrv10, this is for PPV. Google has no effect on this unless I'm totally missing something.

TE2

Contact your CPV provider about this. I have seen thsi before and it usually is an advertiser in their network trying to cheat - it's the CPV version of click/adsense fraud.

Regards,

John

BobDolemite

Thanks John, you've been very helpful! If you don't mind, can I shoot you a PM about this later (after I hit 50 posts)?

Jeff Scott

You'll want to contact your Ad provider about this. Depending on who you are using, you can also do URL/Domain exclusion to prevent it from happening going forward.

Professional SEO: How we dominate SEO for hundreds of clients regardless of keywords

!! FREE VIDEO: Watch as we use linkwheels to dominate the search engines.

BobDolemite

Yes, I'll be in touch with my AM. Do you know if this is possible with MT? There's an Exclusion list in the campaign setup, but 1. I can't seem to click on it, and 2. the FAQ says the Exclusion list is for targets, so I'm not sure if it would work for referers.

If these are indeed fraud views, should I be asking for a reimbursement?

dealmaker007

Oh boy do I have a story to tell you about that....

Try to see if you can get your account manager to add those domains to your exclusion list, because they don't let you manually add them (hmmm I wonder why?). Otherwise you will get hit by them again. And again. And again. They will just make it so your other targets also trigger traffic from those same low quality domains. That traffic never does anything, and it looks affiliate driven too. I am sure you see username=someid in the referrer url's. And regardless of the referring site it seems like the syntax is almost always the same, I think all those sites are in kahootz. I know my landing page isn't crap because it works very well elsewhere, something is definitely more than a little fishy with MT and those referrers. I asked for those referrers (plus several others...I have a huge list, let me know if you need to cross reference them), to be added to my exclusion list and instead of doing what I asked, they gave me some melarchy about it being impossible for me to see which url actually triggered my ad and implied that there was nothing wrong with their system. Typical. I have to dig up the e-mail to get their exact wording but if you ask me the fail is strong with them.

Don't expect mediatraffic company reps to come clean about why you keep getting traffic from those sources or why their traffic may not be converting. You can ask them questions but more than likely you'd have to find your own answers. They will blame your landing page or your offer before they scrutinize their own system.

Assuming we work in different verticals alltogether, this kind of proves this phenomenon is happening across the board. Were you bidding on keywords or specific url's for your targets? I notice that if you bid on keywords you are toast...you will get what looks like massive impression fraud. I even tried bidding on somedomain.com + keyword, commented to them that I thought this should produce more traffic than these no-name PPC engines and within a couple of days... mysteriously I started getting all this traffic from the "somedomain.com + keyword" target, BUT the referrers shown were the soykit.com, goofgoof.com, redseen.com, etc.

So I think there is something that MT does on their end to make you get this kind of traffic, then they BS you about what is going on.

You are doing yourself a favor by watching your logs and putting a halt to anything that looks funny...that mess would drain your account if left unchecked.

dealmaker007

That is a possibility but I was told by this same company that because of their ad software it is impossible for us to see which url actually triggered the popup, and that those referrers weren't the problem. I had a similar problem as BobDolemite and I reported it even gave them the list of the offending reffers. I notice they did not add them to my exclusion list....instead it seems as if they made excuses.

BobDolemite

dealmaker007, yikes. Please do send me that list of URLs. The reason why I signed up with MT is because I kept hearing that they were the most reputable. My AM gave me a similar response, so I'm not really sure what to do besides killing any targets that are bringing in bad traffic. I've wasted a good chunk of $ on that junk.

Yes, the ones that got hit the most were the keywords. Admittedly, they were popular short tail keywords, but here's what really bothers me. I would get a bunch of bad traffic for one keyword, so I would deactivate it. Not long after, they go after a different keyword, so I would deactivate that. This would go on for a few keywords. I would also get these referrers at random every now and then.

What to do.

dealmaker007

This pretty much confirms that they are full of crap. I had wondered if this was happening to other people too, but sadly they also got you. It's unnaceptable. I would say stop advertising with them until you can get down to the bottom of this, and if you must use them at all, just do sparse testing, not full-out campaigns. I'm talking only spend a little at a time. If you spent up your original deposit without seeing any clickthrus or leads or sales or anything that would indicate intelligent life from an interested visitor, I'd say it's time to move on, the reason you didn't see any ROI is quite possibly because no actual real targeted visitors saw your page/creative/etc. The network will tell you they have everything above board, but of course looking at your traffic stats/server logs you are seeing what is really going on. They are defrauding you, that is the reason for the poor performance. Of course our landing pages or offers could always be presented differently or even better, but if you are spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars and seeing nothing by way of ROI, not even a single clickthru that would indicate curiosity from a visitor despite bidding on targeted keywords or url targets then the problem is obviously with the network.

I have to get 50 posts before I can send you that info, but in the meantime I would halt the advertising with them

TE2

Well, I use MT and I see the triggering URL's.

I use prosper202 for tracking and see what URL's fire.

I also use the ROI tracking in MT and it also shows what URL's fire.

Regards,

John

ps - Bob, only your MT AM can access the exclusion list. You have to have them add exclusions.