Pay-Per-Click
All major search engines now include pay per click marketing services, or “sponsored listings,” which usually display on the top, right and bottom of the normal organic listings. Sponsored listings are paid for, and the highest position generally goes to whoever bids the most for each click through. This often causes “bidding wars,” which can make the job of regulating a pay per click marketing campaign difficult and frustrating.
Click Fraud
There may now be a higher rate of click fraud than the search engines report. Industry analysts are increasingly concerned about Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google’s AdWords and AdSense.
Click fraud is common for the same reason that spam email is more and more a nuisance: there is so much money to be made. Analysts suggest that click fraud now accounts for 10% to 15% of clicks on text ads (some say that as many as 25% of clicks are now fraudulent).
Many businesses will of course continue to use pay-per-click, but they should carefully monitor the traffic on their sites to detect signs of fraud.
Click-Through Rates
There may now be considerably lower click-through rates (CTR) than the search engines report.
Click-through rate is based on (1) the number of times an ad is viewed, and (2) the number of times the ad is clicked. If one hundred people view an ad, and two of them click on it and go to the advertiser’s site, the CTR is 2%. Analysts think that pay per click ads now average .002% CTR.
Our article "Continuing Questions: Click Fraud and CTR" has more information on these difficult problems. Allied Internet's pay-per-click consulting services may help you avoid some of the click fraud schemes described in this article.
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