Making Money from Faking Google Analytics

[grynge]

Would anybody be interested in buying fake serp traffic to fool Google Analytics? Obviously this would useless traffic for conversions it would only be good for padding google analytics and other statistic packages.

There are several ways to do it now, and if I was to offer the ability to have 1000/10,000/100,000 unique per day google based serp visitors per day would it be worth it?
What would it be worth?

Would it be a static charge per lot or per day?

Would it be best to offer in lots of 1000 or a random number above 1000 eg.. customer 1 orders 1000 so they get 1105, customer 2 orders 1000 so they get 1056?

Would it be best to offer in packs of 1000 or discounts for higher numbers eg..
1000 = $10 per 7 days
20,000 = $9.50 per 1000 per 7 days
50,000 = $9.00 per 1000 per 7 days
50,000 = $8.00 per 1000 per 30days or month
or just stick to a single amount per thousand? (The figures above are not an indication of pricing just to show the differences between packages I am not sure what this kind of traffic would be worth)

Would you also want the ability to choose country of origin? google.com / google.co.uk / google.za etc etc

What about keywords should I charge more for certain keywords just like google does? Cialis, Viagra, Poker, etc etc

The more I think about it the more options seem to come to mind, is it best just to keep it simple?

Is it a crime? I can't see how it is? I am not the person tricking anyone just offering a service. People offer traffic all the time, this would just be a specific type of traffic

Are there any other types of options I should offer?

I ask this as I am in a dilemma do I tell the world about a couple of tricks I know before the rest of the world finds out, or do I make a bit of money off them first?

[DomainMagnate]

I know it can be done, but I'm curious about specifics. Is it that easy to fool GA with some fake referrer data on that purchased traffic? I thought it's a bit more complicated.

[grynge]

I have come across a couple of ways that don't seem to be out in the open, neither of which are the method you are talking about, one is very simplistic and the other is a bit more complicated, but from the tests I have done, the only way you can tell the difference is if you type the keywords into google and see what page the site is actually on. It fools every stats package I have. I can't make it work for other search engines serps only Google's serps at the moment.

[loanuniverse]

It is going to be a sad day when you can’t trust the google analytics referrals. When I browse the sites for sale and look at the analytics, I see websites with 1,000 visitors a day but only 50 of those visitors are coming from the search engines, while 950 are coming from referrals. It just so happen that the analytics page does not show what the referring site is.

To be honest while you are not doing anything illegal by providing this service, you know that the only reason for anybody to buy this service is to use that to mislead someone into buying the site using inflated numbers. At best, it is ethically murky.

[grynge]

loanuniverse, if you trust google analytics now, it's already a sad day for you. I'm probably not the first guy to work one of these out, the other I know has been used for quite some time. There are more reasons people buy useless traffic for whatever reason, not just to sell a site. This could also be used for those SEO's wanting to show their customers they got more traffic as well. Those people wanting to brag about their traffic numbers.

[Makeit]

grynge, I think you should charge (a little) in any case you are teaching some methods which many of us are not privy to. You can start with the rate bundle you have have come up with and see what the market/users demands lead up to. If not anything to gain as far as conversions goes but,at least one can be a bit knowledgeable to the fact that there is another method of inflating serps particularly important while evaluating say a site for sale and perhaps how to spot if someone is pumping this kind of fake serp.
Also you mentioned that sooner or later the world is going to find out anyway.So why not you be the first one.

[loanuniverse]

loanuniverse, if you trust google analytics now, it's already a sad day for you.

I would never rely on it solely, but I would trust it more than awstats or logs. I would expect to use it in tandem with other resources, and I would expect to see a breakdown of the referrals including the search/keyword combinations. You can then look at the search volume for that word and the ranking of the site for that word in the search engines. Same thing with the referral websites, if your report is saying that you are getting tons of traffic from an deep page in an unknown website.....

Never bought an existing website, only domains but I would check everything knowing that there are ways to game everything. My guess is you are doing something with the referrer, and created some script to send fake search engine referrers along with spoofed ips. Not that I am a technical person, but if it is something like that then it might be found out by whomever gets initially fooled when the fake traffic evaporates or fails to convert.

[grynge]

Never bought an existing website, only domains but I would check everything knowing that there are ways to game everything. My guess is you are doing something with the referrer, and created some script to send fake search engine referrers along with spoofed ips. Not that I am a technical person, but if it is something like that then it might be found out by whomever gets initially fooled when the fake traffic evaporates or fails to convert.

There is no spoofing of the ip's but it is using a real traffic to fake the google serp traffic for any site. The traffic is only good for statistics and would never click on anything let alone convert. It would last as long as I wanted the traffic to last.

[DomainMagnate]

I recently saw what I think are fake google analytics stats. Site has no alexa, only a few backlinks and according to GA gets over 100k visits per month! It actually did rank for the keywords that were there, but the keywords themselves don't get any significant amount of searches. It's actually quite strange looking - on its own all the figures seem resonable, but overall it all looks totally fake. Also when checking pageviews and traffic sources the numbers of visits didn't match - how is that even possible?

[JJ70]

This is not a type of enterprise I would like to be associated with. However I don't lecture on morals.

"Morality is a fiction created by a herd of inferior men to hold back the few superior men." Frederick Nietzsche.

I'm not saying I agree with above, just food for thought.

Would it be best to offer in packs of 1000 or discounts for higher numbers eg..
1000 = $10 per 7 days
20,000 = $9.50 per 1000 per 7 days
50,000 = $9.00 per 1000 per 7 days
50,000 = $8.00 per 1000 per 30days or month
or just stick to a single amount per thousand? (The figures above are not an indication of pricing just to show the differences between packages I am not sure what this kind of traffic would be worth)

Would you also want the ability to choose country of origin? google.com / google.co.uk / google.za etc etc

What about keywords should I charge more for certain keywords just like google does? Cialis, Viagra, Poker, etc etc

The more I think about it the more options seem to come to mind, is it best just to keep it simple?

These are standard business decisions that apply to any business. Generally speaking the larger amount you sell the less of a mark up you need. Price of your time/resources v sales margin.

The rest comes down to USP, the more variation you can offer can be often be better (not always). However for prices, margins strategy etc. I'd carry out a market and competitor analysis (even if it was a quick "back of fag packet" one). This will give you a reasonable idea of a sales strategy.

Note: UK slang Fag = cigarette not homosexual