Yahoo Phantom Clicks - How to Get Refund?

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webtrend

New member
Feb 6, 2008
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My last month's (June) Yahoo stats look like this

Total Clicks Reported by Yahoo = 51,201
Unique Clicks (aka Real Clicks) reported by Prosper202 = 42,025
Invalid Clicks according to my calculation = 9,176
Invalid Clicks Reported by Yahoo (Traffic Quality Report) = 5,279

I am not sure what exactly Yahoo means by invalid clicks in their traffic quality reports. Am I supposed to get a refund for these? Should I dispute their number with my prosper202 number?

Can someone with more experience please advise me on how to approach this issue?

At an average CPC of $0.50, I am talking about anywhere from $2.5k-$5k refund here.

Thanks
 


What kind of server are you running on? Almost every story I've heard w/ people running prosper on anything but a dedicated reports big click discrepancies. I've had similar issues though not with Yahoo & I'm on a VPS. Check your server logs or try running with a redirect and see if you come up with the same, then take that to Yahoo.
 
I wouldn't say it's an official issue but I'd definitely start running some tests on your own. Besides those tests I suggested, maybe run a test campaign on their hosted version to see if you get the same. Who is your host?
 
The problem is that prosper reports invalid clicks as multiple clicks from the same IP within 24 hours.

Yahoo and Google may bill for those clicks if it falls within what they determine as usual surfing behavior.
 
Guys, thanks for your advice on prosper202. I will definitely look into it.

It will be a good idea to install awstats and look at my actual server logs.
 
P202 doesn't know whether it's on a VPS or a dedicated server, so by
"It certainly seems like it's not ideal to run on a VPS"
do you mean "low performance server"?

my 2c:

Minus security fixes P202 dev seems kinda dead at this point. Actually, regarding security updates, there hasn't been any even though dudes on IRC are always talking about finding vulnerabilities. Weird.

It looks like most people are using the premium *202 products. If anyone is doing any updates or any sort of dev for P202, I urge you to send me patches and/or pull requests on my GitHub:

lsd's prosper202 at master - GitHub

I'm also guilty of not pushing my own p202 changes up to the repository. I'll do so this weekend.
 
bluebuddha said:
P202 doesn't know whether it's on a VPS or a dedicated server, so by
"It certainly seems like it's not ideal to run on a VPS"
do you mean "low performance server"?
Click to expand...

Well yeah - P202 does of course not "know" what type of server it is on. We're talking strictly performance abilities of the type of server you're running it on. VPS servers aren't meant for high traffic or large numbers of mysql requests (for example) within short periods of time.
 
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