Is Marchex Encouraging Click Fraud?

GoClick was acquired by Marchex (MCHX) some time ago. Legend has it that GoClick’s founder was quite the customer service guy, but now being a part of a publicly traded search company with a market cap of $500M, Marchex has to make GoClick churn out more of everything: more clicks, more revenue, more profits. And apparently, more mindless PR drivel.

That translates to more risk.

GoClick was the one company I had spent the most online marketing dollars with, partially because they allowed me to come up with numerous keyword-based campaigns at low costs. As such, this was largely a seemingly low-risk turnkey solution.

Or so I thought. At first, things seemed fine. Considering the 20 or so things I do at my company, I was not monitoring this daily, or weekly. Rather, once a month I’d check in. And when I did, I’d get a top-level view of things…

That all changed in April 2007 when I unearthed GoClick’s major click fraud issue.

There’s no need to hide that. I emailed GoClick and Marchex documented proof of it which led to a conversation with their VP of Advertiser Services Scott Greenberg, but ultimately their reaction was arrogant, followed by one month of inaction, which led me to write this post.

The Jig is Up
By late April, 2007, Google had proven too rich for my blood, my low CPC tests with Mamma.com and AdOn were concluded and as such, the only source of paid clicks was GoClick.

Unlike Mamma and AdOn - who would funnel all of their traffic through one URL, such as partners.mamma.com in Mamma’s case - GoClick was more transparent.

Looking at Google Analytics, I saw that initially their traffic came from sources such as searchportal.information.com and landing.domainsponsor.com, but that progressively it included sites like myspace-junk.info. By the time you read this, myspace-junk.info is long gone into the annals of web history, which is fitting because these sites stink and the intermediaries that profit from them like GoClick - or their parent Marchex - are no better.

Individually, sites like these did not send massive amounts of traffic, but cumulatively they did. According to my analysis using Google Analytics using a sample period, up to 40% of GoClick’s traffic came from such sites.

[click to enlarge]


Not All Parked Domain Name Sites Are Created Equally
At first glance, you sort of think such a site is nothing more than a domain parked URL that people accidentally land on, but come on, it’s one thing to go to atorney.com (instead of attorney.com), but theadopt.info? Who types that?

We’ve all heard about the billions dollar industry built on people’s inability to spell. It goes like this:

But, in my analysis/investigation. Something was off. Who mispells theadopt.info?

From there, I cross-referenced about 20 or so of these websites and did a Whois to see exactly who the page belonged to and more importantly, how long it was up and running.

What did that reveal? A perfect, typical example:
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Marchex’s Eastern Europe Unit?
Turns out that most, if not all, of these websites were set up very recently in Eastern Europe. Some had disappeared, but others, like theadopt.info are alive and well.

I don’t blame our boy Vasily Petrov for doing this, but I certainly blame, and I’m sure the courts would, companies like Marchex for turning a blind eye. When you consider that it’s been a month since these sites are up, you have to ask yourself: does Marchex encourage this?

The Big Picture
I also think that online advertising has enough momentum and a bright future not to have to resort to this. Yes, I am talking about the companies that Valleywag first talked about, like Orbitz, Bolt, and mainly a site like Heavy.com, which seems to hellbent on positioning itself as an uber cool and advertiser-friendly place. If indeed Valleywag is correct in its assertion, then this is anything but cool.

Who’s To Blame?
Then again, when a VC like Polaris comes by and plunks $20M in a company like Heavy.com, or when a company like Bolt sees new upstarts zoom past it, or when Orbitz can’t get clients as quickly as Expedia or Travelocity, maybe it’s not their fault. Maybe it is the system.

Bull. I don’t exactly try to pass for a holier-than-thou bloke but the instant I saw what was up I

a) cut off the poor quality sources of traffic

b) emailed the ad network in question

c) found alternative, ethical ways to drive traffic.

I encourage everyone involved to do the same. Such tactics make us all look bad, and give offline marketers and publishers a great tool against us.

Comments

[TopHealth:]

You are absoutely right Marchex is terrible. SAME THING happened to me. They said 160 clicks, my reports showed 30 clicks. And I made a special landing page JUST for them.

MARCHEX ARE CLICK FRAUDS AND LIARS!!!

Any good suggestions on who TO use?

2008 Aug 29 08:59 PM