Facebook and click Farms

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Isy
Posts: 433
Joined: Tue Jul 19, 2011 3:48 pm
Location: France

Facebook and click Farms

Post by Isy »

Hi everybody,
I m just running a special offer for the 1st week of august on our FB page (Boosted Post) and paid 13€ for a week. At the beginning I targeted only the Uk since they are our customers base but decided to do a test and widen the audience and introduce spain, portugal, france, germany, italy, belgium and a few more... A some stage I realised something was odd. I got a wave of clicks from Portugal and overnight it looked like the whole country of Portugal was clicking on our Special Offer.... Weird....
So I started googling a bit and found this article: http://bit.ly/1lCD6M9

Conclusion: by adding Portugal in my audience, I stumbled accross a Click Farm! So I delete it from my target straight away!

Here's more about Click Farms:
https://youtu.be/oVfHeWTKjag

Have you come accross this situation on FB Boosted Post?
Plse do tell
TIA
Isy
Last edited by Isy on Sun Jul 17, 2016 1:20 pm, edited 9 times in total.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger !
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Mouse
Posts: 7277
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 6:47 pm
Location: Balearics
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Post by Mouse »

Interesting...and something I had no idea about.

I too boosted a post and paid around the same price as you Isy. I targeted UK, Holland and Germany. I got an awful lot of males of Arabic descent. I thought that very odd and ended up taking it up with Facebook. They checked (or so they said) and told me there was nothing untoward.

Mind you it was a post about my neighbours donkey!!

I wasn't that pleased with the result so I won't do it again, though would be interested in your experience.....next time I may boost the page rather than a post.

Mousie
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Isy
Posts: 433
Joined: Tue Jul 19, 2011 3:48 pm
Location: France

Post by Isy »

Mouse,

I am surprised at the results you got since you targeted Uk, Holland and Germany and not countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia ...where click farms grow like mushrooms!

and I can understand that unlike the donkeys next door, you were not happy with the results. In your shoes, I would not either.

I added in my original post the first video I came accross. That gave me food for thought.

As for me, 13 euros got me
- 5439 reached/141organic
Countries:
28% Uk
25% Portugal
5% Italy
4% Spain
4% France

- too many fake"Likes": 50

1 unsollicited rating (5 stars from somebody who never stayed with us), and I can't get rid off it (The button feature"I don't like this review" in FB works only if you want to delete a rating with a review) It bugs me because next to a review we got a couple of weeks ago from a previous guest, the 5 stars rating from this total stranger looks so fake and odd.

A tiny bit of activity on my website but no booking or enquiry.

So, for that reason,I am not planning to pay FB anymore.

and I m still stuck with the only availability left: 1st week of august (which is odd, since it s the first to go usually).

Isy
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger !
Musetta
Posts: 1892
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2006 6:11 pm
Location: Campania, Italy/NJ, USA
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Post by Musetta »

I had a simmilar result after I paid to "boost." Mine was limited to USA and certain, very specific interests...the profiles of the people who "liked" just did not fit. There's a certain "type" that seems interested in my place, organically...and these profiles just seemed extremely unusual candidates to "like" a hr in Italy. There pages and interests had zero to do with Italy, travel, etc.
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