As an Adwords Certified Partner, we spend a major chunk of our week handling client’s AdWords accounts.
A part of our process involves looking for anything that stands out as unusual.
Try this for unusual.
One of our clients saw an unusual increase in conversions. As much as we’d like to think this was a direct result of our efforts, it appeared too good to be true. And it was.
When we dug a little, we saw that one client received over 700 many-per-click conversions on one single ad.
Digging a little further clearly demonstrated that almost all of them came from one single IP address.
We contacted Google.
Their response was interesting. Note that although this is not the whole of their response, I have in no way changed their meaning:
“The fact that the system measured 717 many-per-click conversions for a single ad simply means that your conversion tracking code fired 717 times after a user clicked on that particular ad. I understand that you have data indicating that all 717 of those conversions came from a single user, and while our specialists are able to offer a suggestion as to how this may have happened, we ultimately are not able to speak to user behavior on your website.
From the AdWords side of things, you have confirmed that the conversion tracking code is properly installed on your conversion confirmation page. Therefore, one can either infer that a user actually did make the effort to convert 717 times, or else that the user may have been experiencing a browser issue while on your conversion confirmation page. In the latter instance, if the browser were to continually refresh for that single cookie, AdWords conversion tracking would have tracked a conversion for every refresh that occurred on your conversion confirmation page. If the browser tried to reload your conversion confirmation page 717 times, this would have resulted in 717 many-per-click conversions.”
The AdWords system is based on numbers. Basic attempts to carry out click fraud or impression fraud simply won’t work. Trying to trick the AdWords system is usually incredibly difficult.
Yet Google allow 717 browser refreshes from a single IP address to be counted as individual conversions.
If you can think of any legitimate explanation for why this might happen, please share it in the comments below. I’m all ears.
The only explanation I can think of is that more conversions make AdWords look better to advertisers who don’t know what they’re doing.
I’m astounded that the system can be manipulated so easily.
