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Ok, here is the situation:
We've got a keyword that doesnt get a lot of traffic but which has a really high bid, call it "neat stuff".
We generally get 30 or so clicks per month for Neat Stuff, but we pay close to $10/click. The keyword is specific enough that it is really worth that to us.
We dont spend nearly as much on Yahoo as Google, so I tend not to watch it as closely (my first mistake).
I log in recently and find that traffic for Neat Stuff keyword has gone up an order of magnitude and has done so for the past couple months. The traffic is very evenly distributed and coming from a variety of IPs - doesnt look too much like fraud to me (at least not dumb fraud).
I do see that the new traffic has a null source in my web logs. I open a Yahoo ticket and 20 days later they report that the traffic is coming from Consumer Choices
This site obviosly exists simply to show Yahoo search ads as an "affiliate". According to the numbers, this site was pushing 10x more clicks for that term than Yahoo itself was. So here are my questions/assumptions:
1) I'm assuming sites like this profit from showing Yahoo ads, right?
2) I cant conceive that this site could in any way be generating 10x more legitiate taffic than Yahoo for this term - so how are they making the traffic look "legitimate"?
3) Yahoo says taht the traffic is legitimate and wont refund a cent - am I crazy for thinking this coudlnt possibly be legitiate? Do I have any recourse with Yahoo?
4) Yahoo gives affiliates the ability to hide their source in my logs, and does NOT give me the ability to block all sites taht are not Yahoo (or at least not null) - this is great for everyone but me, the paying customer, is there anything I can do about this? Yahoo says when i see null sources, I have to contact them to find out who it is, but that can take 2 weeks.
Is anyone else seeing this kind of thing? It seems to me that Yahoo must know this is going on, but they have incentive not to do anythign about it - this episode alone cost me thousands.
Sneaky....
-dan m.
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