We Work to Protect You in a Variety of Ways
Our systems
Click Protection System
Blocked Domains
Pricing Discounts
Blocked Continents
Click Filter Report
Our people
Dedicated Traffic Quality Team
Click investigation
Submit a Request for a Click Investigation
Click Protection System
Our proprietary Click Protection System is comprised of a complex
series of filters that work 24 hours a day to identify click fraud
and/or invalid clicks, clicks that we believe should not be billed to
our advertisers.
The Click Protection System tracks click and search patterns across many data points, including IP address, the time of the search, the time of the click, and user session information. In addition to this technology, we have an internal group of dedicated analysts who update the filters to address problematic new click patterns.
Blocked Domains
We understand that clicks from some partners may be more valuable to
you than clicks from others. Yahoo! gives you more control over your
campaigns by letting you specify partner websites or sections of a
website that don't meet your business needs and on which you don't want
your ads to appear.
As you know, with Sponsored Search your ads can appear in Yahoo! search results as well as search results throughout the Yahoo! distribution network. In addition, if you choose the Content Match option your ads can appear alongside content on Yahoo! or throughout the Yahoo! distribution network. Blocked Domains lets you specify sites on which you don't want your ads to appear, whether they're competitors of yours, or have products or content that you don't want associated with your brand.
Blocked Domains lets you block up to 250 domains. These can be an entire domain, a subdomain, or up to two subdirectories per domain.
Pricing Discounts
Our systems evaluate the quality of our partners' traffic when you are
charged for a click from that source and may discount your click charge
accordingly. Traffic quality from our partner websites is calculated
based on conversion rates and other measurements of their ability to
deliver quality traffic. We began discounting clicks on certain groups
of related keywords mid November in the UK and will continue to apply
discounts more broadly in the following months.
There's nothing you need to do to take advantage of these pricing discounts. Discounts are applied automatically based on Yahoo!'s pricing technology. Bear in mind however, that the amount of the discounts may vary between advertisers: some may experience a noticeable decrease in their overall cost-per-click, while others may experience only a small decrease in spend. We recommend that you keep a close eye on your price per click (PPC) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) rates which may be affected by this change.
Learn more about pricing discounts.
Blocked Continents
When you opened your UK account or upgraded to the new Sponsored Search
platform, the Blocked Continents feature in your account defaulted to
exclude traffic from continents other than Europe. If intercontinental
traffic is not important to your business, you may find that this
capability helps improve your overall conversion rate.
If intercontinental traffic is important to your business, you can choose to change your continent blocking settings.
Click Filter Report
The Click Filter Report, which launched in April 2008, provides you
with greater transparency on your click activity and filtering, it is
part of our overall effort to protect our advertisers from receiving
invalid clicks.
The new report is available in the Reports section of your account interface and provides information on the number of clicks on your ads that our Click Protection System has identified as invalid, and, as a result, were not charged to you.
You can run the report for your entire account or your individual campaign. You can customise the columns in your report to show data such as impressions, invalid clicks, invalid click rate, and average cost per click. If you have multiple accounts, the report can display data from all of your accounts simultaneously.
Dedicated Traffic Quality Team
Yahoo! is committed to constantly improving the quality of traffic we
provide to our advertisers, and part of that commitment is to have the
right people in place. This includes a dedicated team that drives all
of our Traffic Quality initiatives. Some of those initiatives include
combating click fraud, enhancing traffic quality, and delivery of
products and services that create more transparency and control for
advertisers. The team is also charged with enhancing our dialogue with
advertisers and publishers on quality-related matters.
Submit a Request for a Click Investigation
A search marketplace is only as good as the quality of its traffic.
So, not surprisingly, protecting our advertisers from invalid clicks or
click fraud is one of Yahoo!'s top priorities. Our Click Protection
System works constantly to catch invalid clicks or click fraud so that
you don't have to pay for them.
However you may also notice irregular traffic that you would like us to analyse. We have a team dedicated to click investigations, and you may submit a request for an investigation by following the steps below. Our team will then review the activity in your account and get back to you.
Follow these steps to open a click investigation:
- Log in to your account.
- Click the Customer Support link at the top right of the page.
- The Support Request form will pop up. In the "Type of Inquiry" pull-down menu, select "Traffic Quality."
- Enter the following subject line: "Click Investigation Request". In the body of the message, please include:
- The date(s) of the click activity within the last 60 days you would like investigated
- The specific keyword(s) associated with the clicks.
- Use the "Attachment" tab if you want to upload a screenshot or additional information, including your weblogs.
- After you've completed the request, click the "Send" button to submit.
If you have an Account Manager, please contact them directly providing the information outlined in the above steps.
We take all inquiries seriously, and will contact you as soon as possible. The length of investigations may vary, but we work to achieve a resolution within ten business days of your request. At any time during the click investigation, please feel free to contact your Account Manager or call our Customer Solutions team at 0800 169 9740 from 9AM - 5.30 GMT Monday to Friday.
