Is anyone else experiencing this problem? Found out through google analytics
that I was receiving 3 times as many clicks than usual from IP address
72.35.4.17 [link]
As you can see they have designed 51,772 websites with the same IP address -for the only purpose of having people click on Yahoo Search Marketing Sponsored Ads.
Would you classify this as "quality partners" of Yahoo Search Marketing?
What is interesting is that these bogus websites are advertising on google and not yahoo!!!!
What can I do?
Why doesn't Yahoo admit that their partner's are- these scam websites- instead they advertise their partners as CNN, ESPN, USA Today. What a joke?
If you have contacted Yahoo about his please advise.

Thanks.

I don't have a comment or answer to your query, but, isn't this the same type of thing as the Google for Domaineers rubbish that we see all to often?

Maybe Yahoo would just prefer Google to display all the nonsense... After all that is where the traffic is! - if Google don't mind poor results why should Yahoo care about making money from it.

Yahoo considers those legitimate "search" sites and displays search - not content - ads on them. I have not checked traffic and conversions from these sites specifically.

If there are so many on one IP address that would explain a large amount of traffic from that particular IP address.

When I was talking to Yahoo today they mentioned a recent policy change about sites that are all ads. I wasn't able to get any details on exactly what the policy change is.

The question in my mind about these sites is whether a "search" site that only displays "ad results" and no "organic results" is necessarily good or bad.

If a person using a site that only displays search ads is doing legitimate searches and is a real potential buyer there is nothing wrong with that traffic.

If those sites are being used to drive click fraud or funnel pay-to-read program traffic then they are definitely a bad thing.

Yahoo is going to be pretty busy with the Panama transition so it may be awhile before they can implement whatever that policy change is.

One thing about the traffic, too. A large increase in traffic is not necessarily indicative of click fraud or bad traffic. There are many legitimate reasons a site or particular IP address might triple their traffic such as:

New sites that weren't listed organically and now are.
Improved organic listing positions
More incoming links
Buying PPC traffic (or more PPC traffic)
Being mentioned in the media or on social networking sites

I routinely increase traffic to sites by 1000% or more so tripling it would be no big challenge.