Traffic quality and fraud prevention

Accounting for fraud in statistics

You can view the number of filtered clicks and impressions in reports at the campaign level:

  1. Go to the Reports tab.
  2. Select By campaigns including IMS.
  3. Set a period and click Create report.

The report contains columns broken down by types of invalid traffic: GIVT (general invalid traffic) and SIVT (sophisticated invalid traffic).

  • Filtered clicks (IMS): The number of invalid clicks at the campaign level.
  • Filtered impressions (IMS): The number of invalid impressions at the campaign level.
  • Filtered viewable ad impressions (IMS): The number of invalid viewable impressions at the campaign level.

These indicators may change over time if certain clicks or impressions are invalidated by future filters. Read more about the Report on campaigns with “IMS”.

How to prevent fraud

  • Analyze your traffic and site visitors.

  • Do not click on the ads that you have placed on your site.

  • To prevent the unauthorized use of your ad tag on other sites, enable Dynamic Definition by REFERER.

  • If you find a suspicious traffic source, block it by its IP address or URL.

  • If you are buying traffic, pay attention to the following points:

    • Which resources will advertise your site and their traffic sources.
    • How you can check the placement of your ads on these resources.
    • How much traffic costs compared to other providers. If the price is below the market, find out what the provider provides for such a low price.
    • If the provider can provide detailed reports on traffic sources.

    Alert

    We do not recommend using the services of people or organizations that claim they can raise your CTR, clicks, revenue, and so on. The methods used by such services are often considered unauthorized. Moreover, these services might perform actions without your knowledge or consent. They often require you to share a portion of the additional revenue that could be earned from their actions.

How to analyze traffic

Connect Yandex Metrica

For Adfox partners, Yandex Metrica has special reports that allow to identify the most profitable traffic sources up to a search query. Learn more about Adfox group reports in Yandex Metrica.

Depending on the source, all traffic can be divided into several types:

  • Organic: Direct visits to the site by URL.
  • Affiliate: Clicks on links that are posted on commonly owned sites.
  • Referral: Clicks from advertising or e-mail campaigns.
  • Search: Traffic originating from search engine results.
  • Purchased: Traffic brought in for money or other benefits that the traffic provider or site visitors receive.

If you notice sharp spikes in invalid traffic, first check the purchased traffic sources:

1. Contact the traffic source and find out how users reach your site.

2. If the traffic source is suspicious, stop working with it.

3. Report this to Adfox support.

Use Yandex Webmaster

Yandex Webmaster allows you to understand which keywords users use to find your site. The service also lets you track the dynamics of organic traffic to your site compared to other similar sites and select search queries that can increase traffic to your site.

Segment traffic on the site

This lets you determine your site's audience: from which regions, with which devices, and for what purposes visitors come to your site. You can do this using additional reports in Adfox or Yandex Metrica.

If you notice anomalies in statistics that you can't explain, check the traffic sources. If necessary, block a suspicious traffic source and report it to Adfox support.

Traffic analysis allows you to identify the sources of invalid traffic as well as understand how to optimize the site. A detailed traffic analysis will also help you increase revenue: advertisers trust sites with high-quality traffic and are willing to pay more for advertising on such sites.

How to improve traffic quality

  • Focus on your users, not search engines. Your website, with all of its pages and elements, must provide value to users. If your site contains helpful information and is easy to navigate, you will attract a bigger audience and improve your website's visibility in search engines.

  • Create resources with original content or offer a unique service. This will increase the number of users who visit your site and help you expand your loyal audience. Always remember that it's the content that matters to users, not the ads.

  • Think carefully about how your resource is designed and whether it's easy to navigate. Make it easy for users to find the information they need or do what they visited the site for.

  • Increase the site loading speed. Users may not wait for pages to open and may instead switch to another resource.

  • Be honest. Even if you are able to attract users for search queries that your site cannot properly answer, you won't be able to retain those users.

  • Keep the end user in mind when designing your ad blocks: it should be clear to users that clicking on an ad block will take them to the advertiser's website, not an internal page on your website or app.

Contact support

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