They were alerted today of an email phishing scam targeting some sellers on other Shopping.com markets with the subject line “Important NOTICE: Registration Suspension”.

This email is NOT from Shopping.com. The login page that you are being redirected to, as well as the email address that it has come from are also NOT part of Shopping.com

As a precautionary measure they are alerting all of our clients. Don’t become a victim of phishing, in which a fake site that mimics a legitimate site is set up to harvest login credentials. By following the tips below, you can avoid such a scam:

Be on alert of wording in emails that require urgent action, confirmation or information about a transaction.

Always view the webpage address you are on especially when clicked directly from an email.

Opt to manually type in a webpage address or use a bookmark.

Upgrade your browser version and enable the anti-phishing feature.

Remember, legitimate online services will not ask you for sensitive information via email.

All very sensible advice. At this time of year, these scams multiply to cover comparison sites, Google Adwords accounts, Affiliate marketing accounts etc, not to mention the usual fake bank notices.

At a pressurised time for e-tailers the temptation to click on a link from a genuinely good fake is easy to do – but take the extra bit of time to log in on what you know is the real page, saved from a bookmark or a typed in address. We have seen horrible things happen when advertising accounts are compromised so we hope that this does not happen to you.

However, unauthorised access to your Adwords account is very much a reality without undertaking some precautionary methods. Though some of the following points seem obvious, it is essential to always be aware of the risks, whether through phishing, malware, or unauthorised logins.

Below are a few prevention tips to keep your account safe:

Phishing Prevention

1. Don’t reply to, or click links within, emails that ask for personal, financial or account information.

2. Check the message headers. The ‘From:’ address and the ‘Return-path’ should reference the same source.

3. If on a secure page, look for “https” at the beginning of the URL and the padlock icon in the browser.

4. Use strong passwords. A strong password should be unique; include letters, numbers and symbols; and be changed regularly.

Malware Prevention

1. Keep your computer’s antivirus, spyware, browser and security patches up to date, and run system scans regularly.

2. Exercise caution whenever you’re prompted to download an email attachment, follow an instant-message link, install a plug-in or download an unfamiliar piece of software. Remember that crimeware can be disguised to resemble anti-virus software. Always research a company’s reputation before downloading its software or visiting its website.

Unauthorised Login Prevention

1. Secure and encrypt your wireless network.

2. Don’t leave your computer unattended. If you’re using a public terminal, make sure that you log out of all your accounts before you leave.

3. Assign a separate login to each user. Don’t share logins and passwords.

Recently, one client altered their needs, so that clicks were of paramount importance, replacing the previous necessity of a set cost per acquisition (CPA).

In accordance with this, we changed some of the campaigns in the account from CPA bids to CPC (Cost-Per-Click) bids.

A CPC bid refers to the amount that you are willing to pay for a click on your advert when the advert appears on Google or partner sites. A maximum CPA bid is the amount that you would be willing to pay for a conversion.

Consequently, we noticed a significant change in the performance of the involved keywords over a set time period.

The general trend in changing from CPA to CPC was a surge in impressions, clicks, click-through-rate and to an extent, conversions.

However, coupled with these changes was a surge in overall cost and cost/conversion.

Therefore, the bidding preference you implement can have an enormous effect on your campaign and how well it performs, emphasising the importance of structuring your account thoroughly to ensure you maximise your success.

A recent report by comScore has indicated a tremendous growth for search marketing, perhaps correlating in a significant boost to search engine marketing.

Between the twelve month period of December 2008 and December 2009, the global search market grew by 46%.

In fact, an estimated 131 billion search queries were carried out from the home and at work by people aged 15 and above.

This undoubtedly illustrates the level of interest in internet searches and the massive potential that search marketing holds, by enabling the advertiser to reach an audience of this magnitude.

In terms of countries, the United Kingdom was the fourth largest search market in the world, behind the United States, China and Japan.

In terms of search engines, Google retained the position as the outright market leader, handling 87.8 billion searches (accounting for 66.8%).

Again, in relation to December 2008, this year saw a 58% increase for Google.

As discussed within the previous blog post ‘Shop Safely This Christmas!’ the team at Gillissa outlined our discovery of an illegitimate advertiser using Google Adwords to advertise within the sponsored links section of Google’s webpage.

As a result, we notified Google of our findings and they dealt with the matter accordingly.

However, there are numerous rogue advertisers still operating on Google Adwords.

Recently, Google have outlined their desire to step up efforts to remove rogue advertisers and act more aggressively to prevent any repeat appearances within the Google Adwords system.

New technology enables Google to ‘blacklist’ all rogue advertiser domains, and subsequently ban them from Adwords account-creation level permanently.

Google spokeswoman Deanna Yick stated:

“We want users to have a high quality, relevant and safe experience when getting information from our ads”.

Indeed, removing rogue advertisers will enhance the user experience, as well as making the Adwords playing field more fair and viable for the legitimate advertisers.

Yick added “We constantly review and improve our quality systems and are now doing even more to protect users by being stricter with offending advertisers”.

Though Google claim that rogue advertisers make up a small minority of the Adwords total, it is without question that the Adwords experience as a whole will improve as a result of Google’s increasingly strict strategy implemented.

There was encouraging news for search marketing as a whole, based on a recent report devised by search marketing firm Efficient Frontier.

The statistical data provided claimed that retail clients spent 17% more on search engine markets in the fourth quarter than in the same period for 2008.

This is probably relative to the fact that Efficient Frontier also reported a ninety percent increase in retail-related search queries.

Though there was such a significant increase in searches, conversions did not follow such an impressive positive trend within the same period of time.

Evidently, in such harsh economic times, people are searching online for retail bargains, and, based on the conversion levels reported, such bargains were not found.

From the acquired data, Efficient Frontier provided a trend, indicating that they anticipate 2010 to see advert spending growth somewhere in the region of 15-20%.

In addition, further research shows that Google increased its share of total search spending for the final quarter of 2009.

Google accumulated 74.5% of total outlay, Yahoo 20.4% and Bing 5.1%.

These values were almost identical when relating to capturing search advert clicks, ultimately confirming Google’s status as the runaway leader in the competition for leading search engine.

Making sure that the obvious negatives are removed right from the start of your active advertising is always best. Brainstorm the possible contextual uses of your broad match keywords. Remember that broad match “hat” may result in your adverts showing up for searches for with “helmet”, “cap”, “boater” etc.

Not much use to you if you don’t sell these products.

Even if with the obvious negatives removed, running Search Query reports is a good thing to do, a minimum of twice a month is recommended. As well as providing an insight into “long tail” keywords which may be of use to you, these reports will show you the myriad of user searches containing odd, tangental or even downright bizarre keywords that have been used to trigger your adverts.

Make sure that any of these useless terms are then properly applied to your negative list. That also is a bit more complex than it first seems.

Give us a call if you need help with the right approach. We’d be glad to offer assistance.

Various predictions like IMRG have stated that for internet retail during this time, Christmas 2009 would mark the greatest growth in internet sales, highlighted further by the widely-anticipated ‘Manic Monday’ on the 7th of December.

Taking all this information into account, more people will be shopping online in this period than ever before.

Therefore, there is a greater importance for consumers to be wary of the dangers of internet shopping, and not fall for the numerous traps out there.

In fact, only yesterday, the team at Gillissa encountered a problem, which we duly notified Google of.

Immediately, our attention was drawn to the fact that for a search query, two adverts within the sponsored links section had identical headlines and descriptive text.

An unusual sight in itself, we decided to explore the two adverts further.

By clicking on the adverts, we found that the link offered a redirect from the display URL to websites with completely different domain names.

Instantly, we knew this website was dubious as Google does not permit the use of redirects.

Furthermore, all of the multiple sites created for the adverts were almost identical in presentation and layout, with duplicate content.

Pricing in US dollars yet advertising in the United Kingdom, the websites all contained atrocious forms of spelling for the simplest of everyday words.

Exploration to the shopping cart presented more evidence that this particular website/s was not legitimate.

We discovered that the websites did not have viable SSL certificates, and had obtained a variation of an SSL certificate that can be easily obtained within a matter of minutes.

With all this evidence, it is safe to assume that is website was attempting to commit fraud, rather than advertise products competitively.

Hopefully the factors we found can save you from being a victim of fraud!

To find out more ways of avoiding illegitimate websites, please use the following link: 

 http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/features/2253684/safe-shopping-online-christmas-4896657