Sites artificially inflate pageviews and impressions. These charts show data that does not corroborate the traffic claims of the sample sites. For example large spikes in traffic usually are driven by large spikes in search volume -- if that traffic were from real humans (instead of bots).

1. Suspect Site Traffic &
Gray-hat Techniques
Dr. Augustine Fou
October 2013
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Augustine Fou

2. Large Changes in Traffic
Source: Quantcast
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Source: Compete
Augustine Fou

3. Traffic Firehose On/Off
Source: Alexa
Legit human traffic does not change rapidly; but bot traffic
(firehose) can be rapidly turned off and directed to other sites.
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Augustine Fou

4. Sell Fake Impressions
“Modernbaby.com and Interiorcomplex.com
Each of these sites peddles enormous traffic on the
exchanges. For example, on a recent day Modern Baby was
offering 19 million impressions via one exchange (quite the
baby boom) and Interior Complex 30 million [ad
impressions PER DAY] (the roaring housing market must be
back).” Source: Adweek – Suspicious Web Domains Cost Online Ad Business $400m per Year
Peak unique users
141k per month
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Peak unique users
115k per moth
Augustine Fou

5. gamemazing.com
Source: Alexa
Source: Google Trends
• No search volume to support the traffic (human users find sites via search)
• Such a dramatic drop in traffic is unusual for humans (looks like bot traffic
spigot was „turned off‟ when they were discovered)
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Augustine Fou

6. menshealthbase.com
Source: Alexa
Source: Compete
• Compete can only detect 100k/mo users (because it has a toolbar
component, it is less easy to game than the comScore tag)
• Alexa traffic volume is almost not detectable, search is 0.90% of traffic;
normal sites visited by humans should have a far higher ratio of search
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Augustine Fou

7. Families of Fraud Sites
6.6 million sites
with several identical
site address linking in
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Augustine Fou

8. Every Click Loads More Ads
A fresh set of
ads load for
each click to
view another
page or
image in a
list of things
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Augustine Fou

9. Search Doesn‟t Support Traffic
DreamMining.com
search interest
Source: Quantcast
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Augustine Fou

10. More Traffic Not Supported by Search
Glam.com
Evidence of traffic “juicing” not
caused by increase in search (i.e.
real humans looking for it)
Source: Alexa
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Source: Google Trends
Augustine Fou

11. More Traffic Not Supported by Search
Source: Quantcast
CollegeHumor.com
Evidence of traffic “juicing” not
supported by increase in search
(i.e. real humans looking for it)
Source: Google Trends
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Augustine Fou

12. Fake Views on YouTube
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Augustine Fou

13. Related Articles
Bad Guys Happily Rob Display Advertisers
By: Augustine Fou, July 23, 2012
Everything Fake (Display Ad Fraud, Search Click Fraud)
By: Augustine Fou, April 2013
Blacklisting vs Whitelisting
By: Augustine Fou, October 2013
Fake Profiles on Facebook
By: Augustine Fou, July 2013
How Display Ad Fraud Works
By: Augustine Fou, May 2013
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Augustine Fou

14. Dr. Augustine Fou – Digital Consigliere
“I advise clients on optimizing
advertising across all channels. One
aspect of this is detecting waste and
fraud; and then taking steps to mitigate
it.”
FORMER CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, HCG (OMNICOM)
MCKINSEY CONSULTANT
CLIENT SIDE / AGENCY SIDE EXPERIENCE
PROFESSOR AND COLUMNIST
ENTREPRENEUR / SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
PHD MATERIALS SCIENCE (MIT '95) AT AGE 23
ClickZ Articles: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-clickz
Slideshares: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-slideshares
LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/augustinefou
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@acfou
Augustine Fou