Kanoodle
click fraud
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Kanoodle click
fraud
Rumours have been spreading for several years, accusing popular PPC
program Kanoodle of click fraud. Kanoodle allegedly generates fake traffic
(robot-generated traffic) to its clients. According to internet marketer
rumours, robot-generated traffic is causing heavy financial problems to
thousands of businesses online.
We have looked
deeper into this, evaluated the authenticity of the Kanoodle traffic and
have found some shocking results, which have proved to be even worse than
rumours.
What Kanoodle
offers...
Kanodle offers its services to clients World-wide, starting at 0,05
$/click, which is not a high cost per click. The account interface is
attractive, easy to use, attracts thousands of clients World-wide.
Kanoodle is one
of the most popular pay per click programs on the planet.
The US-based
company offers a variety of PPC services, including: context target, local
target, behaviour target, keyword target. Keyword target services are
basic, your ads will be displayed on Kanoodle and its partner sites,
regardless of context.
The
Kanoodle PPC click fraud - rumours and reality
Thousands of
businesses complain about fake traffic generated by pay per click
programs, Kanoodle is high on the list with an estimated 25-50 % of
robot-generated traffic.
The news of
click fraud have been circulating ever since Kanoodle was launched.
Towards 2005-2006, the rumours have intensified, affecting the company's
image, that's about the time when they came up with addition
keyword-relevancy, category-related services (like the behaviour target
service, for example), re-built, modernized client accounts, for a while
they have even promoted a free sign-up with a 5 $ bonus.
To test their
services and investigate the Kanoodle scam-issue, we have marketed one of
our sites with Kanoodle. We have used the basic pay per click service,
called "Keyword target", which only cost us 0,05 $/click.
We have engaged into purchasing 1.000 visitors. Surprisingly, our account
has run out of funds in just a little more than 1 hour. After a deep
analysis with special software, we have found that:
we were only sent about 800 visits (instead of 1000 ordered)
all 800 visitors were robots
All visitors
sent to us were fraudulent clicks, Kanoodle has sent 100 % robot-generated
visitors/visits, none of them have done anything on our site, like human
visitors would have done. Not even a single one of the "visitors" had the
characteristics of a human visitor! Here are the characteristics that we
have found among our visitors:
average time spent on our site: 2-3 seconds
no other pages accessed
within the targeted site
primary fake traffic source by country: USA (over 90 %)
The Kanoodle fake traffic has eaten up all our funds, was absolutely no ROI (return of investment) with the Kanoodle PPC marketing campaign. In
conclusion, we have lost money and precious time, while we haven't gained
anything at all.
We have also
investigated the exact sources of where the robot-generated visitors have
come from. We have found a long list of spam sites, mostly search-engine
look-alikes. Most of them only displayed our site in their results for the
keywords we have chosen. Simply, whenever we have typed our keywords in,
our site would appear in the results.
Our Kanoodle
traffic quality investigation has concluded that the reality is far worse
than rumours. The Kanoodle spam traffic is reality, without any doubt,
thousands of businesses are affected by it daily. Clearly, the Kanoodle
scam is not just a myth, but reality. It remains unknown how many
businesses and in what proportions.
The Kanoodle
click counter, included in the account always shows a much larger number
of clicks, then other software. The company states that
However, Kanoodle still maintains a
high position among major pay per click programs, along with
Overture,
Google AdSense,
Miva,
GoClick and others. So far, Google AdSense and Overture have the best
reputation, because of the transparency in displaying links and driving
traffic.
It remains to be seen how long the scam will go on. Kanoodle's image has
been drastically affected and an increasing number of users are closing
accounts and leaving disappointed.
We have
contacted Kanoodle about the fraudulent clicks, without any result. The
internet is full of complaints, actually you will find more negative
opinions about Kanoodle than positive. Below is a list of links related to
this article...
Related information on other sites:
Fantomaster about the Kanoolde click fraud
http://fantomaster.com/fantomNews/archives/2005/04/27/kanoodle-click-fraud-case-study/
Clickfraudreport about Kanoodle's click fraud
http://www.clickfraudreport.com/archives/2005/09/kanoodle_and_cl.html
Searchenginejournal about the Kanoodle click fraud
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=2235
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