Not click fraud, but search fraud with Adwords

Here's what I'm experiancing.

I've got about 15 keywords that have averaged roughly 50-150 impressions per day depending on the keyword. It's been that way for 2 years. Very consistant and very big money makers.

All of a sudden 4 days ago the number of impressions have jumped to about 3000 per day for all of the keywords. These keywords are not at all related and there is no reason for the jump.

Before the jump, I would get 10-30 clicks being in the top position. With all the impressions, over the last 4 days, I'm still getting only 10-30 clicks.

I've pretty clear that somebody in the natural listing is spamming these keywords. My fear has been realized. Because of the last 4 days worth of impressions, my click through rate has dropped so much that my adds have been pushed over to the right of the search results. I'm expecting my clicks to fall drastically (even though impressions are still through the roof).

Sent an email to Google support, and I get the company line that we watch for this type of things. Sorry...go screw yourself basically.

Any ideas on what I can do?

Google adding a new (or a few) sites to the search network (assuming you are not using the content network - in which case could be publishers as well).

Yeah....I'm not using content search. Only exact keywords.

I've been searching th web regarding this topic.

Aparently impression fraud is the hot new thing. Lot's harder to detect than click fraud.

I am sure this is what I am experiancing. Eventually my CTR will be so low that google will stop showing my adds. About that time, the perpetrator will turn their campaign back on.

I've got a real good idea who it is.

The problem is, from what I have read, there's nothing google will do about this.

I've paused my campaigns for now. Hopefully the impression fraud will stop sometime soon and I can turn my campaigns back on.

I suspect we'll be hearing a lot about this in the near future. Hopefully google will find a way to combat this soon.

Until then I'm screwed.

makes little sense... since all ads would get the same treatment and Google trends would show the ratio of impressions to clicks. Google can't be manipulated to this extreme.

Take this scenario.

10 sites are advertising for a keyword. The person with top position is getting good CTR (say 10%), but is paying a lot of money for the clicks. More than they want.

This person pauses their campaign for a week and fires up a bot to hit google with this keyword 200x more than normal for 7 days straight while never clicks an add. Every body elses CTR plummets.

The spammer activates their campaign with a lower CPC, but low and behold, they've still got top ranking but it's not costing them nearly as much.

Trust me. In can be manipulated and it is.

But since your performance is comparable ONLY to other paying advertisers all advertisers CTR plummet providing an ever proportional ratio. Thus the paused campaign did nothing but pause.

Trust me - A scenerio such as you discribed may find some idiot attempting it - but it will not work "UNLESS" they can target you "ONLY".