Speaking of environment, i think more and more people are aware of environmental issues such as climate change and environmental conservation. I know i am. Just today, there is news on China taking a curb on plastic usage in the country. I had no idea that China alone is consuming 1 trillion of plastic per year. Imagine the total of plastic waste, all countries combined. No wonder Mother Earth is wrecking havoc like crazy.

Personally i think China’s move by charging the public for plastic bags and banning unnecessary use of plastics is the way to go. Malaysia too may benefit from similar acts. Well, maybe not a complete ban in plastic bags. *mom will kill me coz she’s using those for sealing food in the refrigerator. Maybe just a ban in shopping malls. This might push the people to opt for alternatives like using a green bag which will help in the ecology department for long term.

My pledges for a greener world made ahead is:

“I will decline plastic bags at shopping malls or stores but use a green bag instead”

Ps: If you didn’t know, Justlife was selling a really cute shopping bag the last time i went for a visit. It’s priced at RM25 and it’s meant as a green bag. Have no idea if they’re still selling it. I’ll check it out if i’m there.

Dear Nuffnang, why not have an environment related event? Then old bags like me could join in the fun. Old ladies cannot be seen partying in wild animal costumes :P *i’m kidding. I’m not old, i’m just wrinkly… same goes to i’m not fat, i’m just big bone.

Does it really works? I’ve tried almost all of them but it only works to a certain extend. Yeah, maybe you’ll have a traffic spike for that week… if you’re lucky. After that, then what?

Poor content will just get you that far. I should know. I’m da Queen. My traffic is so stagnant it’s depressing. It’s either i sux at blogging or i’m clueless and just lost. I heard someone say it’s the first. *wakakaka… -_-”! Ok, i sux but you’re worst alright.

I’ve recently read in the newspaper few days ago that nicolekiss is organising a sponsored trip to Thailand for bloggers with 1,000++ hits per day. I went O.o. 1,000++?!! It involves some of the top bloggers in our country. There goes my chance again.

How in the world can you get 1k plus readers per day? It’s all about contents… and what you’re willing to do for the sake of blogging.

So, have you

1) Drink snake blood and swallow live snake heart
2) Backpack across South East Asia
3) Obnoxiously vocal on politics and every other god damn thing under the sun.
4) Organize wriggly insects and worm cookout
5) Join beauty/modeling contest

No? Start already.

Hold on a minute, i need to practice my sword-swallowing stunt. It might generate more traffic to my blog.

Catch ya later, alligator.

I was at a bookshop a while ago and came across a book on click fraud. There was a section dedicated to click fraud detection. Mind you it’s not about how Google or other companies detect click frauds but it’s about how normal blogger or publisher like us can prevent third party sabotaging our sites with illegal clicks. I’m not sure how useful this would be for everyone but i’m sure for noobs like me, it would be interesting and maybe helpful. Who knows? You might find out that your annoying sister had been clicking your ads for fun. Or you could save yourself from wrongful allegations and a lawsuit. Well maybe.

1. Click fraud: what is it?

Click fraud occurs when a pay per click advertising link is clicked on for a malicious reason – in other words, by somebody (or a piece of software) that isn’t interested in the products, services on content the advertiser’s website.

2. Types of click fraud - and who carries it out

Affiliate fraud
Search engine affiliates are websites that implement results from a search engine onto their websites. Legitimate examples of this include the WSJ, which displays contextual PPC adverts from Overture, and Search.com, which uses search results from Google.

Affiliates like these receive a share of each click on a PPC advert from the PPC engine. Affiliate fraud occurs when an affiliates seeks to artificially increase the number of clicks on paid listings and so increase the revenue they earn. They do this by manually clicking on the links, paying other people to do this for them or using automated software to click on links. Typically they will target terms with high bids.

Competitor fraud
This occurs when one company clicks on a competitor’s advert to spend their budget with the longer term aim of making PPC advertising too expensive for them – and therefore removing a competitor from the search engine results.

Unintentional “fraud”
This happens when a piece of software clicks on a link without the intention of costing the advertiser money – for example, a search engine spider might follow a PPC link on a web page whilst crawling it. Well-designed websites will endeavour to avoid this and the better PPC engines will detect these clicks and not charge advertisers for them – but they do get through. Link checking software can also click on PPC links.

3. How to detect it

First of all you need to make sure you are recording the right data. Record the clicker’s IP address, time and date of the click, the keyword (of course) and the referring website (ideally the full search string from that site so you check this for strange searches). This data can be found in server logs or in good click tracking software.

You also need to record performance data about your advertising spend over time – especially the amount spent and traffic received – in a spreadsheet so that you can spot any sudden increases in spend. If you are tracking sales or enquiries (and you should be in order to judge the performance of your PPC advertising) you should also record this data, along with the cost per acquisition of each sale / lead.

Regularly examine this data and look for:

• sudden increases in spend (aside from seasonal increases in your sector)
• keywords that don’t normally spend a lot of funds
• suddenly spending well sudden increases in traffic from any one affiliate in the PPC engines network
• lots of clicks from one IP address
• clicks from IP addresses outside the country you are advertising in (you can look up the country an IP address is allocated to using www.dnsstuff.com. Note: free databases like this can sometimes be incorrect).

4. Automating the process

Of course doing this checking manually is time consuming – and if you do detect click fraud and persuade the PPC engines to provide you with a refund, you may find that the amount you receive back is worth less than the amount your time is worth. So you have to judge the financial value of a refund compared to the time you will need to invest in getting it.

One way to reduce the amount of time you spend checking for fraud is to use a third party tool to detect it and gather data (or, if you have the resources, build your own in-house tool). The number of companies offering tools to detect and record click fraud in increasing rapidly. Some of these tools only detect click fraud, others offer more features including ROI tracking and wider website analytics that includes data about organic search engine traffic. Some offer to take care of claiming refunds from the PPC engines, too.

These companies include:
Who’sClickingWho.com – click fraud detection
ClickRisk.com – click fraud detection
ClickDetective.net – click fraud detection
ClickLab – web analytics and click fraud monitoring
Nami Media – tracking and click fraud detection tools
TrackingROI.com – tracking and click fraud detection tools
KeyWordMax.com – integrated click auditing, bid management and ROI tracking

5. Reporting Click Fraud

If you think you have detected click fraud, clearly document the activity you are suspicious of in a spreadsheet including the keyword, IP address of the clicker, date and time of the click and any comments for that keyword (e.g. the click is from a foreign IP).

Write a brief email outlining the trend(s) you have spotted and send this to the PPC engine. Whilst you might feel like shouting at them, don’t – the pers
on you scream at in the email / on the phone will only be passing the query on to the team who investigate traffic quality, and the nicer you are, the more likely they are to go the extra mile to get you an answer.

6. Do the PPC engines care?

The serious PPC engines care a lot about click fraud. Google, Overture and the leading second tier engines have staff dedicated to investigating traffic quality and individual cases of click fraud. Google automatically detects some instances of click fraud and will not charge you for those clicks. Overture also does this, which is one reason why your click tracking software may show more clicks that Overture reports, as Overture is only reporting clicks you were charged for.

Of course the engines don’t discuss how they detect fraud – there is something of an arms race between the fraudsters and the engines – and their fraud detection systems aren’t perfect. Click fraud is a threat to their advertising business model and a concern for directors, shareholders and employees. One of the ways I measure the quality of a PPC engine and its future ambitions is how well they respond to queries about traffic quality – if they are serious about the PPC industry, they must be prepared to investigate clicks and, if necessary, stop providing results to affiliates who commit click fraud. Of course the attitudes of the engines are not always ideal and there needs to be more co-operation between engines to target repeat fraudsters. But things are, on the whole, improving.

Conclusion

Click fraud is like any other business risk; you should take appropriate steps to reduce the risk and gather firm data of any fraud. If you do have evidence of fraud, calmly and clearly present your data to the engines. Serious engines will listen to you and investigate on your behalf. What Do You Think? This article is being discussed at Duncan’s Official PPCA Blog.

The article above was published in 2005. There might be more ways of detecting it by now but it’s a starter. Just remember if you’re not doing anything wrong then have no fear. Gather evidence and stuff it in ‘you-know-who-big-fat-CEO’s-mouth’ and hope he chokes to death.

Sekian terima kasih.

You see, i used to religiously check my PR everyday since i gained PR2. I was intrigued. Then one day it went down to 0 but not all reading was 0. Some were 7. I was not sure what that was. I would guess it was internal PR? *please let me dream alright? Anyways, now even that had dropped to 0. Google is indeed human.

Anyhow, i know some said that PR is not everything. Having no PR doesn’t mean your blog is worth shit. It doesn’t means those with high PR have more quality than you. I know i know but i’m still a lil’ bit discourage and de-motivated.

Maybe it’s the many PPP or reviews i had been doing. Please forgive me for all the PPP jamming this blog. But i need to lil’ extra cash for my constant medication and parents’ medication too but let’s not get into that coz its boring personal stuff. Earning a low income really sux!

For now i’m trying to get myself motivated enough to maintain this blog and maybe start a new domain free of PPP just to gain Google PR for the sake of my egoistical piece of mind. Hopefully the PR would be a motivator enough.

Ps// I’m having a big headache deciding on the new blog. I am thinking “How the heck do people maintain more than 1 blog??!!! There’s not enough crap in me for 1 blog let alone 2…”