Has anyone had the problem of being charged for clicks and not being able to find evidence of these clicks in their log files, or other statistics software?

I've noticed that some statistical programs don't pick up every visitor, but I've only noticed that because the log files have recorded other hits. Do log files pick up all traffic?

Maybe I'm just cynical, and this never happens.


Imran Hashmi
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[ Message was edited by: bhartzer 10/28/2005 07:07 am ]

do more research on "click fraud"

it happens, you got to be constantly checking your logs vs. the ppc service stats

google constantly refunds money for invalid clicks too.

I haved experienced both click-fraud and faulty analysis from software. The latter is just as bad as the former IMO. There is plenty of discussion on click-fraud, both on these forums, and else where, only a few answers, which boil down to

1) Collect data
2) Submit data to Google/Overture/whoever

I have been so underwhelmed with the analysis techniques of software available that I ended up (like many others) building my own solution that does the collecting of traffic data and then later developing aggregate/atomic/data-mining reports. It is time intensive, but will end up giving you views into your traffic you might have never conceived. It is also a much more powerful tool for detecting and tracking click-fraud, but this is just my experience. There maybe new tools that I don't know about (I do keep looking) that can handle some or all of this, but I just haven't seen it.

If you can roll your own SQL, pulling log files into a database via
Log Parser can give you new analysis tools at the drop of the hat, and it opens the door to more traditional data analysis/mining solutions.

HTH