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The conversions code is the standard adwords conversion javascript, added to the final 'thanks for your order' page. I would agree with you about the myspace t

by brc 16y ago

The conversions code is the standard adwords conversion javascript, added to the final 'thanks for your order' page. I would agree with you about the myspace thing- but I ended up with 5 or 10 of these bogus conversions, all on pretty low total clicks (I'm talking 10's of clicks resulting in a conversion). My best referral partners don't go anywhere near those sorts of numbers. In other words, one case makes a fluke (and myspace is highly visited, so I can agree with your theory) but after a couple of rare cases, you start to invoke the law of unlikely statistics in your head and say 'wait a minute...' Here are some stats: domain___cl_impr__CTR__ACPC_Cost_Cv_Co/Cv_CvRate xqno.com 13 1,138 1.14% $0.64 $8.33 2 $4.16 15.38% There's more like this. Some have 1 click, 3 impressions and a 100% conversion rate. No way is that going to happen more than once in a very long time, yet my adwords account has about 5 of these. And none of the conversions shows up in analytics. Anything that was giving me numbers like that- you'd say 'yeah, go for it'. But I could find no actual conversions in analytics for that domain. Looking at that domain we see a Url shortener with one google ad at the bottom. Just knowing my other referral rates and conversion rates for highly-relevant sites, makes me believe firmly that these stats are just plain wrong.

Natsu 16y ago
Assuming your site is small enough that they don't optimize to beat you specifically, the best way to defeat any kind of automatic spamming is to make your site unique in some trivial way. Even if it would take them almost no effort for them to change their tools to spam you, they won't bother if you're too small for them to notice.
- brc 16y ago
  Not sure what you're saying here. What I'm witnessing is click-fraud. It would seem like nobody is stupid enough to run 1000 clicks on my ad on their site, but they seem to nickel and dime each advertiser - a click here, a click there, nothing that couldn't be disproven. There seems to be a lot of work needed to wade through the display network. I don't know how the false conversions happen. It would seem to me they have found a way.
  - Natsu 16y ago
    I was talking about spotting the fake conversions. If you're using the standard code, it might be worth seeing if you can make it slightly non-standard enough that any standard way of faking it won't work. But maybe that requires something on Google's end; I haven't looked at it so I can't say.

by brc 16y ago

Natsu 16y ago

Assuming your site is small enough that they don't optimize to beat you specifically, the best way to defeat any kind of automatic spamming is to make your site unique in some trivial way. Even if it would take them almost no effort for them to change their tools to spam you, they won't bother if you're too small for them to notice.

brc 16y ago
Not sure what you're saying here. What I'm witnessing is click-fraud. It would seem like nobody is stupid enough to run 1000 clicks on my ad on their site, but they seem to nickel and dime each advertiser - a click here, a click there, nothing that couldn't be disproven. There seems to be a lot of work needed to wade through the display network. I don't know how the false conversions happen. It would seem to me they have found a way.
- Natsu 16y ago
  I was talking about spotting the fake conversions. If you're using the standard code, it might be worth seeing if you can make it slightly non-standard enough that any standard way of faking it won't work. But maybe that requires something on Google's end; I haven't looked at it so I can't say.