kuvopolis Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 I currently advertise with Facebook Ads. I have been noticing a gross discrepancy between the number of clicks on my ads according to Facebook and what Google Analytics reports. Google advised me to use the URL builder to create custom URLs, but it has not solved the problem. I contacted Facebook regarding this. After a couple of incompetent replies on their part, I finally got someone to tell me to provide them my logs and screenshots of the Facebook/Google reports. I provided these. After 4 days and a follow-up, I have received no further response from them. Either Facebook commits click fraud, or others use Facebook to commit click fraud. I believe the latter is the more likely option, but it is up to Facebook to keep this at bay (Google does). I suspect many others are having Facebook click fraud issues, but it seems like few are speaking up. Their BBB rating is A+, which I find laughable given my struggles. I figured this would be bigger news, especially with their IPO coming up. I do not know what recourse I have. I already spoke to a lawyer but I am too small of a potato for him ($10/day spent on Ads). If I twist Facebook's arms they might give me a credit for the fraudulent clicks, but then those clicks will likely be fraudulent as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 What do you consider as a fraudulent click? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kuvopolis Posted May 7, 2012 Author Share Posted May 7, 2012 Facebook says that I get about 20 clicks a day on my ads, whereas Google puts the number closer to about 5. I would call 15 of those clicks fraudulent. To make matters worse, some of these clicks come from Colombia, France, Italy, Mexico, etc, where I target the United States only. There was an article 3 years ago that addressed this, and said "Often the fraudsters have their art down to a science and their software clicks ads so fast and moves on to the next one that it doesn’t even hang around long enough for the underlying URL to resolve. Facebook still sees (and charges for) the click, but the advertiser’s server never registers a page view.". This is what I suspect is happening to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 If you are getting clicks from places other than you targeted, I'd start with that first personally. Are you seeing that from FB Insights or GA? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kuvopolis Posted May 7, 2012 Author Share Posted May 7, 2012 Google Analytics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 I guess it's possible that people are accidentally clicking the advert and then quickly closing it, before the request is sent to GA? Does your website ever hang while loading, again meaning the request never reached GA? Do you have any JS syntax errors in older/different browsers that could be breaking the site for a majority of users? I'm more inclined to trust FB's results over GA's, simply because GA is reliant on client-side scripting. I may not be right, but there's just a lot of different possibilities to check out before thinking FB are trying to defraud you. I would import a day's Apache access logs into a tool like AWStats and check for yourself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Actually, is the website you're talking about mediashindig.com? The first request took about a minute to load for me, but fter that it seemed fine cached or not. I'm guessing you're having intermittent lag problems..? Would explain the difference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kuvopolis Posted May 9, 2012 Author Share Posted May 9, 2012 Yes, www.mediashindig.com The site never hangs on me on either my work or home computer. I clicked on my ad to see if the ad was messing it up, but nothing extraordinary occurred. I will ask my friends if they have such a problem. I believe my home page is free of script errors on the newer browsers, I need to look into the same for older browsers. I will check my logs on AWstats. Thank you for the advice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Yeah it only did it to me once. Other web sites were working fine whilst I waited as well, so it wasn't down to my network. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scootstah Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 This is probably unrelated, but one of your Javascript libraries (jquery-ui-1.8.19.custom.min) you are requesting is a 404 - you didn't put the ".js" at the end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kuvopolis Posted May 9, 2012 Author Share Posted May 9, 2012 Thanks, scootsah, that may explain why I could not for the life of me get the JQuery UI stuff to work on the page. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kuvopolis Posted May 10, 2012 Author Share Posted May 10, 2012 Adam, from May 1 to 9 Google Analytics reported 92 hits from Facebook, where AWStats reported 134. Meanwhile, Facebook reported 166 clicks on my ads. But please consider that the Google Analytics and AWStats figures include many clicks that I received from friends on Facebook that accessed my site from other parts of Facebook (not the ads). So there is still a large overcount on the part of Facebook. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jessica Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 In the link your ad displays, is the url just the plain URL or the URL with a unique ID on the end? That way google analytics could separate out the friend clicks from the ad clicks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spiderwell Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 this is not uncommon, i have come across it myself at my work, it down to users closing the window before the page loads entirely, as far as I can tell. one thing is for sure, it isn't fraud. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 this is not uncommon, i have come across it myself at my work, it down to users closing the window before the page loads entirely, as far as I can tell. one thing is for sure, it isn't fraud. No it won't be fraud, although the access log would still have the request in it, even if they didn't hang around long enough for it to be sent to GA. I can't confirm this either way, but it's possible if the server's are intermittently not responding, that the request isn't being logged at all. I'm not too sure what to suggest kuvopolis, I would send FB the stats from your logs and keep a watchful eye for any issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kuvopolis Posted May 11, 2012 Author Share Posted May 11, 2012 Jesirose: on May 4, I used Google URL builder to create a custom URL. Before that, all the Facebook traffic was mixed together. As far as I know, my page loads pretty fast. And I cannot imagine that about 3/4 of the people who click on my ad are so disgusted with the site that they are clicking away so quickly (like 3 seconds). Regardless of whether or not it is fraud, Facebook's customer service is horrible. I cannot speak to anyone on the phone. The email response time is horrible and the answers are lifted directly from a script or help page. And now they essentially ignored my issue. I was spending $300/month on Facebook advertising. With a $100/month cable package I could get much better customer service. I need to find a better advertising network. Unfortunately, Google Adsense is too expensive for my keywords (like $2 a click). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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