This is a big problem even for Bing/Yahoo. They've recently partnered with Media.net for their content (display network ads) and many of the publishers in that network deliver fraudulent clicks (Keywordblocks and the like).
The other problem I've noticed is that if you don't bid high enough for search keywords, they start sending you traffic from Media.net and make it look like it is search traffic. For example I bid on the search term "get money now" (don't want to reveal the actual query). For real search traffic, the clicks convert very well for me. A few months ago I noticed that my conversion rates had fallen significantly. When I investigated I noticed that most of it was from media.net/5_ways_to_get_money.cfm and none of these clicks ever produced a sale. I am in the process of pursuing a refund and have blocked the site. Real search traffic always comes from search.yahoo.com or Bing.com.
It is an even bigger problem for AOL (Advertising.com) that includes supposedly premium sites like HuffingtonPost.com. You will frequently notice:
1. Inflated clicks. Your analytics show you got 100 clicks, their's show you got 170. When you raise this with their support staff the standard answer is they will not investigate based on someone else's analytics. I said, I have two different analytics programs on my server that show the same count which is a lot lower than theirs. They still won't budge. I am in the process of pursuing a charge back.
2. Clicks with 100% bounce rate and that spent exactly zero seconds on your site. There is just no way these are real humans.
> 2. Clicks with 100% bounce rate and that spent exactly zero seconds on your site. There is just no way these are real humans.
If you're using common analytics programs, you're probably misled about what the time-on-site statistic means. Unless they actively ping every visitor on your site the entire time your page is open, which is not the norm, they have no way to know the time-on-site for single page visits. It's computed as the elapsed time between two page views (two loads of the analytics script), but if there is no second page view, there's no second time to subtract from. Someone who clicks through to your page and reads intently for 13 seconds before closing the page is a "0 second visit" as far as those programs are concerned.
There's actually a legit problem here though where ad networks are counting "clicks" while analytics programs are counting "visits".
Comparing the two always leads to different numbers because they are different things.
Google has this issue even between Adwords stats and Google Analytics stats. They are always billing people for more clicks than are reflected as visits in Google Analytics. Same reason, different things counted differently.
The other problem I've noticed is that if you don't bid high enough for search keywords, they start sending you traffic from Media.net and make it look like it is search traffic. For example I bid on the search term "get money now" (don't want to reveal the actual query). For real search traffic, the clicks convert very well for me. A few months ago I noticed that my conversion rates had fallen significantly. When I investigated I noticed that most of it was from media.net/5_ways_to_get_money.cfm and none of these clicks ever produced a sale. I am in the process of pursuing a refund and have blocked the site. Real search traffic always comes from search.yahoo.com or Bing.com.
It is an even bigger problem for AOL (Advertising.com) that includes supposedly premium sites like HuffingtonPost.com. You will frequently notice:
1. Inflated clicks. Your analytics show you got 100 clicks, their's show you got 170. When you raise this with their support staff the standard answer is they will not investigate based on someone else's analytics. I said, I have two different analytics programs on my server that show the same count which is a lot lower than theirs. They still won't budge. I am in the process of pursuing a charge back.
2. Clicks with 100% bounce rate and that spent exactly zero seconds on your site. There is just no way these are real humans.