Beware of this 404 click scam
 

I was checking one of my girlfriend's blogs' stats and noticed a weird pattern

She was getting lots of clicks to one of the older posts and these clicks would all exit on the same link on that post

That older post was a guest post submitted to her blog a long time ago.

The link, it turns out, is a dead link.

The dead link goes to a custom parked domain page with FOREX (among others) adsense links

Digging deeper, i checked her blog's referrer stats and all the clicks to that page was coming from a US PTC program (they require US IPs)

Since it's obvious whoever is doing this is engaged in CLICK FRAUD, I turned off all Adsense ads on her blog as a precaution.

Has this happened to you guys?

Since forex adsense clicks pay quite well (often over $5 per click), I assume this is quite lucrative. From what I can tell, these dudes hit up tons of sites for 'guest posts' wait some time to let the domain expire so they can park it (or something like that)

Pretty F'ed up way to make money because if the scammer gets dinged, the sites he used to 'camouflage' his clicks might get penalized too.

Is there a plugin that automatically Scans your own blogs for DEAD LINKS?

I've heard of screaming frog, but I'd like a WP plugin that does this automatically

Sorry to hear about the scamming.

Wow, a random guest posted a bullshit link; who would have thought that would happen?


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There is a version of that which is a lot worse and a bigger scam. Wondering if what you saw is that and you didn't notice all of it. Sounds like you know what you are doing so I am guessing it is a version of it.

I highly suspect this is deliberate. It's pretty clever. Use 'host' blogs as a cover for click fraud.

:1orglaugh