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Advertisers using pay per click search engines need to be aware of the unfortunate, but sure, existance of fraudulent clicks and the individuals who are responsible for maliciously wasting advertising click funds. Though there is little advertisers can do to stop click fraud from occuring, advertisers aren't completely defenseless against it. Read on for tips on minimizing your susceptibility to click fraud.

Use Overture
While no pay per click search engine is immune from click fraud activity, Overture has demonstrated the best defenses against it. Their click fraud prevention tactics seem to work better than any other large pay per click engines' and while it isn't impossible to abuse Overture, it is more difficult to abuse than other systems. Also they have a click fraud detection team that seeks out and acts on reports of click fraud activity. Overture does give occasional refunds to advertisers who have been proven victims of click fraud activity.

Analyze Data
Analyzing your own raw data logs from your website traffic is the best defensive action you can take. You can access your raw data stats through your web hosting control panel. Most web hosts offer raw data logs with paid web hosting packages. If you don't know how to access yours contact your web hosting support team. These are the things the fraud detection specialists suggest you look for in your raw logs for detecting click fraud:

• Repetition of IP Addresses
• An irregular or large number of clicks coming from the same geographic region or country.
• IP addresses belonging to cloaking software companies.
• Keywords that normally do not get any traffic are now getting an unusually high number of clicks.
• Your click throughs have doubled or tripled without having had any bid changes or rank changes.
  Source: Pierre Zarokian

Report Offenses
By keeping track of your own raw stats logs you can provide proof of any misbehavior at your accounts expense. Understandably pay per click search engines can't refund everyone who has a case for fraudulent clicks. But advertisers with a sure case and real proof are candidates for refund.

Remain on the Defense
Because click fraud can and most likely will happen to you at some point in your advertising campaign be prepared to keep good records, stay abreast of new technologies for analyzing web stats and tracking clicks, stand up to click fraud abuse, and never ever ever stoop to becoming a click fraud offender yourself.

Learning other avoidance tactics from ClickLab.