Is PPCBully screwing Google Advertisers?

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webtrend

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I was reading the Faq on PPCbully's website and came across following:

How does PPC-Bully figure out if an ad has been advertised by an affiliate?

PPC-Bully will take a look at the destination URL, which is different from display URL, and check where that the specific ad will navigate to after a click on it. With the help of software expertise and manual investigation PPC-Bully is able to discover different affiliate programs.


So, not only the script is scraping the ads but also clicking on it to record the final destination URL and landing page. Wouldn't you as an advertiser be concerned about the fradulent clicks?

I certainly am.
 


, and check where that the specific ad will navigate to after a click on it
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Learn to read. It says, where that specific ad will navigate to (destination page same as clicker will see). This is written to differentiate between display url and actual url, like redirects etc.

Idiot.
 
glowleaf said:
Learn to read. It says, where that specific ad will navigate to (destination page same as clicker will see). This is written to differentiate between display url and actual url, like redirects etc.

Idiot.
Click to expand...

Calm down dude.. he was just asking.

..
 
So, not only the script is scraping the ads but also clicking on it to record the final destination URL and landing page. Wouldn't you as an advertiser be concerned about the fradulent clicks?

I certainly am.
Click to expand...

Calm down dude.. he was just asking.
Click to expand...

Now you have to learn to read. He is saying that the script is clicking, and that he is concerned about fraudulent clicks. His question is not "Is ppcbully clicking?". It is "since ppcbully is clicking, isnt that bad?"
Can I call you an idiot as well?
 
PPCbully is not ripping off the advertisers. If you've ever read through AdWord's clickfraud detection and all of PPCBully's documentation, you'd know this is not the case.

BTW, haven't you ever click a competitor's ad on Google?
 
BTW, haven't you ever click a competitor's ad on Google?
Click to expand...

That is different. You might click on 3-4 ads. PPCbully if it was clicking, which it is not, would generate a shitload of clicks on competitive niches. And since this is paid, people use it on competitive niches.
 
If you right click on an ad and copy the destination url, you can paste it into a url window and at the end of the string see where the ad leads to.

I'm sure ppc bully does something similar where it scrapes the destination url out of the link without going through google's tracking system.
 
If you look at the source code of google SERP, The destination-URL is of the format

www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai={long google hashcode}&q=http://Advertiser-URL

So, there are 2 scenarios:

Case 1: PPCbully is grabbing the content using the above mentioned destination URL. This will result in a fraudulent click and this is what I had in my mind when I wrote the question.

Case 2: PPCbully is grabbing the content using http://Advertiser-URL. However, the advertiser will be easily able to tell that the clicks did not originate from google serp and can potentially take counter-measures.

I am not sure which one is true.

As far as antifraud technology is concerned, only Google knows about it rest is speculation.
 
glowleaf said:
Now you have to learn to read. He is saying that the script is clicking, and that he is concerned about fraudulent clicks. His question is not "Is ppcbully clicking?". It is "since ppcbully is clicking, isnt that bad?"
Can I call you an idiot as well?
Click to expand...

Calm down, you take this shit too serious.

webtrend said:
How does PPC-Bully figure out if an ad has been advertised by an affiliate?
Click to expand...

That's what I was refering to.. which is obviously not what you were.
 
dude their clicks will be filtered and not charged fully or at all and also when doing adwords you should know that you get a lot of newbies clicking on your ads any ways thats why you have low ROI at times with big niches.
 
uguxseo said:
BTW, haven't you ever click a competitor's ad on Google?
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Ugux... This guy has a 100% legitimate concern, PPCBully's "Bully" feature runs ad checks 20+ times per day. Now that's not just a single click if it was actually clicking thru (which I highly doubt it is.) This may be why clickbully hasn't been released for the other paid engines yet, the links don't contain the actual destination for extraction.

Honestly, I try NOT to click on competitors ads. The odds are you could be improving their CTR, and if you're competing with them, that isn't good. :D
 
Pr0xyhub said:
Calm down, you take this shit too serious.
Click to expand...

serious.jpg
 
Spades said:
Ugux... This guy has a 100% legitimate concern, PPCBully's "Bully" feature runs ad checks 20+ times per day. Now that's not just a single click if it was actually clicking thru (which I highly doubt it is.) This may be why clickbully hasn't been released for the other paid engines yet, the links don't contain the actual destination for extraction.

Honestly, I try NOT to click on competitors ads. The odds are you could be improving their CTR, and if you're competing with them, that isn't good. :D
Click to expand...

Yeah, I agree. IMO, Google's got pretty decent clickfraud detection anyway--so, I'm not too concerned if this was the case.

[slightly off topic] I kind of wonder how many affiliates have clicked all of the "Acai Berry" ads on Google. Affiliates might make up about 50% of the total "acai berry" search volume on Google. ;)
 
I am not sure why my earlier comment did not show up on the board.

The only reason I raised the concern was what do they actually mean by destination URL. In my mind, it is the URL that appears in the Google SERP source code. If that URL is used it constitutes as a fraudulent click. With a large number of users using PPCbully's service, number of false clicks can be significant. Now, Google's anti-fraud algorithm may catch this eventually since you have access to only finite number of ip addresses.

On the other hand, if the service is extracting the actual affiliate/advertiser URL, then the only thing it does is lower the CTR across the board. I don't know if it matters that much. However, the advertiser should be able to realize rather quickly that the clicks are not originating from Google SERP and may take counter-measures. This, of course, is not in PPCbully's best interest.

Thanks to people who actually understood my question and responded constructively.
 
all you need to do is scrape the url of the ad and grab the url off the end. The program isnt clicking.
 
PPC Bully is not clicking!

I have read all the post LOL.... bottom line NO CLICKS ..... :rasta:
Be Cool and Let your competitors work for you......

Cheers, Emil
 
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