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Exactly WHO is clicking your ads? |
But what if somebody – a competitor maybe – were to spend all day clicking your ads? This would cost you money, bid up the price of your keywords and could mean that your ads exceed your maximum daily spend and then will not be seen by legitimate buyers. And what about your average innocent search engine user who has no idea how the PPC system works and just uses your ads as a convenient shortcut back to your web site? Same effect on your advertising budget!
The search engines take steps to detect patterns of so-called click fraud but they can't always detect the kind of sustained spurious clicking or click abuse that Click Detective has been designed to uncover. For instance, a "spam clicker" could come back to any one of your ads at different times of the day and different days of the week, from a different location or use another search engine and escape detection. This kind of activity is defined as "normal user behaviour" by the search engine but it could be costing you a large slice of your advertising budget every month!
Now there is a low-cost way of defending yourself against click abuse
Best Detective gives you the power to track return visitors to your site and alerts you immediately if there is evidence that your site may be under attack. forensicdetectives.in uses sophisticated tracking mechanisms to determine whether visitor behaviour is normal or abnormal and provides you with the tools to do something about it. The Information Detective sencers reports show EVERY click in real time, unlike most search engine reports, which provide only a summary of click-through several hours after the event. You can also set up return visitor alerts that remind the innocent repeat clicker to bookmark your site as well as alerting those visitors with less innocent intent that their movements are being monitored!It's as easy as 1,2,3...
Once you have registered your web site with Best Detective, setting up your first landing page is a 3 step process:
1 Log into the Member Section of the forensicdetectives.in site. Select Quick Start and register the landing page of your ad (or select a previously registered landing page).
2 Next, copy the one-line Best detective Code Snippet and paste it into the <BODY> of your landing page. Upload the modified page to your web site. The person who maintains your website can do this for you. This is a once only task for each landing page.
3 To activate click monitoring, log into your search engine account and add a Best Detective campaign ID ?cd=<campaignID> to the end of the destination URL of your ad: e.g. http://www.mydomain.com/myad.htm?cd=mycampaign
Now you have set up you first landing page you can explore the powerful tracking features to Best Detective at leisure!
Sign up for your FREE Trial!
Try out best detective at no cost and no obligation! Our 15 day free trial will show you how easy it is to keep the finger on the pulse of your PPC advertising. And besides being alerted to the possibility of click abuse there are many other benefits to be gained from greater awareness of where your PPC visitors are coming from and how often they re-visit.
Frequently Asked Questions
If you are an existing customer and have questions about setting up BestkDetective, please log in and refer to the Help section - Support FAQ.
What exactly is Click Fraud?
The widespread phenomenon of spurious repeat clicking of Pay-Per-Click ads and sponsored links is often referred to as “click fraud”. This term has come to apply more widely than a strict legal definition would allow and we prefer to use the broader term “click abuse”, which covers all forms of spurious repeat clicking, innocent or otherwise. In all cases, the effect on your advertising budget is the same, whatever the motives of the clicker
At Best Detective we have identified two categories of abusive clicker; the naïve clicker who probably means you no harm but who, through laziness or ignorance, keeps using your expensive ad as a way back your site. The second category of abusive clicker is the one you are probably more concerned about. This is the ‘serial’ abuser of your ad, somebody who comes back to your ad time after time, for whatever reason. This abuse can cost you a lot of money and even slide your ad out of the ratings.
How does it work?
Best Detective uses sophisticated tracking mechanisms to determine whether visitor behaviour is normal or abnormal. If suspicious activity is detected on any of the monitored landing pages, an email is immediately sent to the admin contact of your account. You can then decide to suspend the PPC campaign, notify the search engine, report abuse to an ISP and so on.https://forensicdetectives.in/best-detective/ provides a set of standard tabular reports showing the key visitor metrics and these reports can be used as supporting evidence in your communications with the Search Engine Provider, ISP, etc.
How easy is it to set up?
Once you have registered your web site with Best Detective it's a 3 step process:Log into the Member Section of the Best Detective site. Select Quick Start and register the landing page of your ad (or select a previously registered landing page).
Next, copy the one-line Best Detective Code Snippet and paste it into the <BODY> of your landing page. Upload the modified page to your web site. The person who maintains your website can do this for you. This is a once only task for each landing page.
To activate click monitoring, log into your search engine account and add a Click Detective campaign ID ?cd=<campaignID> to the end of the destination URL of your ad:
e.g. http://www.mydomain.com/myad.htm?cd=mycampaign
See also: How do I configure my PPC campaign for Best Detective tracking?
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Pricing
(US dollars) US dollars EC euros UK pounds
Select $/€/£
CD Starter
$39 per month,
including 2,000 monitored click-throughs
TopUp click-through, $10 each additional 2,000.*
CD Corporate
$59 per month,
including 10,000 monitored click-throughs
TopUp click-throughs, $10 each additional 10,000*
CD Enterprise
UNLIMITED monitored click-throughs
-Contact Us-
*Unused TopUp click-throughs are carried over to the following month
Prices do not include tax, where applicable.
How do I sign up for the 15 day FREE trial?
Simple. Just complete the Registration Form and supply some basic details of your web site and PPC advertising, which must be current and active to qualify for the free trial. We will validate your application and send you a username and password. Your application will be acknowledged immediately but please allow up to two working days for it to be validated. The free trial period starts from the first time you log in, not from when you first register.
How much does it cost?
There are three Best Detective packages to suit businesses of all sizes - CD Starter, CD Corporate and CD Enterprise. For prices, see panel at right.How do I pay?
When you decide to become a paying subscriber, we require you to nominate a personal or corporate credit card to which we will charge the relevant monthly subscription and top-up charges (if applicable).
Your monthly billing cycle is determined by the date on which you first activated your Best Detective subscription. Best Detective advance monthly subscription, plus any topup charges from the preceding month, will be charged automatically to your credit card on the same date each month.
Best Detective pricing packages include a number of inclusive monitored click-throughs. You will be notified by email if the inclusive number of click-throughs in your chosen package is likely to be exceeded. You then have the option of purchasing topup click-throughs or upgrading to a higher package. If you choose not to upgrade or topup, Best Detective will not report click-throughs beyond the inclusive number. Unused topup click-throughs are carried over to the following month.
Best Detective subscription and charges are expressed in US dollars. For customers outside USA, the amount shown on your credit card statement will be in your local currency at the prevailing exchange rate, as determined by the credit card company.
How long are my visitor stats maintained on-line?
Your visitor stats are maintained for a minimum of 90 days. However, you can create a local backup copy of the current database at any time.
How do Visitor Alerts work?
After a visitor has returned to a monitored page a pre-defined number of times over a given time period (default 3 times in any one day) the Best Detective Level 1 alert is shown. All alerts are optional - you don't need to show any visitor alerts if you choose not to. You can also choose to be notified by email when a visitor alert has been issued. It is also possible to monitor repeat clickers discretely without alerts, by means of Best Detective's real-time click-through reports if you prefer.The alert text is customization. The Best Detective standard Level 1 alert is shown above. The standard Level 1 alert is deliberately bland - many return visitors will have come back to your site for quite valid reasons (such as wanting to buy something from you!) and they will not be deterred by the fact that you are aware of them.
There are a further two levels of optional visitor alert. The standard Level 2 Alert lets the visitor know that the link is a monitored link and subject to access restrictions. The standard Level 3 Alert presents an "Access Denied From This Location" message (but allows the visitor to cut-and-paste the URL of the landing page directly into their browser's address bar).
What are your Terms & Conditions?
By agreeing to the free trail and/or becoming a paying subscriber to Best Detective, you implicitly accept Best Detective's Terms & Conditions (Ts&Cs). Please read the Ts&Cs (requires Adobe PDF Reader) before completing the Best Detective Registration Form.Downloads: Best Detective Terms & Conditions (PDF) | Adobe PDF Reader
Do you operate an Affiliates Scheme?
Yes. Please complete the Info Request form and ask for details of the "Best Detective Affiliates Scheme."
How do I configure my PPC campaign for Best Detective tracking?
Once you have inserted the Best Detective code snippet into your landing page and uploaded it to your web server you are ready to activateBest Detective tracking.
To do this you need to modify the destination URL of your ad in the Account Management section of your PPC account by adding a campaign ID on to the end of it. If you don't know how to do this, see instruction for the different search engines below.
Example of a destination URL:
http://www.forensicdetectives.in/best-detective/
Example of modified destination URL:
http://www.mydomain.com/myad.htm?cd=mycampaign
Instead of 'mycampaign' you could assign a meaningful campaign ID to each campaign - e.g. by source such as 'google', 'overture', etc or by category - e.g. 'shoes', 'redshoes', etc or both, like 'google:shoes', 'overture:shoes', etc.
Google Users: Log into your account and click the "Campaign Management" tab if it is not already selected. You need to locate the ad that you want to track by clicking the appropriate "Campaign Name" and then the "Ad Group Name" that contains your ad. You will see a list of keywords and, just above that list, an example of your ad as it would appear in the search results. Click "Edit". Leave the "Display URL" unchanged but modify the "Destination URL" as described above. Click "Save changes" and repeat this for every ad that you want to track.
Overture Users: Log into your account and click "Manage Precision Match" at the top of the page. Then, on the line below this, click "Manage Listings". In column 1, identify the keywords that are associated with your ad: clicking the keyword brings up the "Keyword Detail" window. Modify the "URL" for this keyword as described above and then press "Submit" to submit the changes.
HINT: If you have a large number of keywords that share the same URL (landing page), check the box alongside each keyword that you want to edit and then click the button marked EDIT LISTINGS at the top of the column. On the next page, click "Modify Listings" to bring up the Modify Listings window. Modify the URL for the first keyword and then click "Copy URL Down to All". Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Submit" to submit the changes for all keywords.
Other PPC: Please consult the user documentation for your PPC provider.
