Click Fraud & Invalid Clicks

Google lets Negative KeyWord trigger Ad

Posted on January 6, 2007. Filed under: Click Fraud & Invalid Clicks |

By Jean-Pierre Khoueiri jp@ConstantClick.com

Hi there. This is a new blog so thanks for coming by for the “Grand Opening” (which isn’t so grand). If you have any ideas on how I can make it better, please let me know.

I hope the following article helps someone, I sure know it opened my eyes.

My client is in the private jet charter business. So after installing my tools and reviewing his visits, I noticed he was paying for and receiving many hits from Google Ads for the term “private jet for sale”.

Me: “Do you sell jets”?

Client: “No” was his quick response, “why”?

Me: “Your paying for a jet load of clicks (my cheap jokes again) for Google Ads triggered with searches for “private jets for sale”. Did you know this?”

Client: “NO! I did not.”

Turned out his old “Internet Manager” if he could be called that, was receiving a commission from all sales derived from Google. Seeing as 60% of my clients traffic comes from Google Ads, he (previous Ad manager) just used every keyword imaginable to cast as wide a net as possible, in an attempt to maximize his income at the expense of his former boss, my current client.

So without hesitation I quickly inserted “sale” and “sales” as negative keywords as evidenced in the image below, with a date and time stamp

As you can see, I added a few negative keywords on December 17, 2006. Amongst them are “sale” and “sales”.

I then tracked visitor stats and found the following visit, 8 (eight) days after adding the negative keyword “sale”.

I checked Google’s first 10 pages for “private airports for sale” to see if it may have been a natural result, but I was unable to find any evidence of that. The only other explanation I could surmise was that the Google Ad was triggered due to the KW “private” as in private jet.

But even that doesn’t explain why the ad was triggered, seeing as “sale” was and still is a negative KW.

If you have any ideas, I would greatly appreciate your input. Thanks.

Google allows clicks with a negative keyword in the Query

Posted on December 31, 2006. Filed under: Click Fraud & Invalid Clicks |

After a client asked for his ads not to trigger for any queries with the word “sale” in them, I promptly included “sale” in the negative keyword list as shown below. I also included the negative keyword “airports”. Look below to see what happened.