A Simple Way to Detect Bot Traffic in Voluum (33)
Although
In order to do that, I either needed to have some PHP server side scripts or a second campaign from where I could filter my traffic, ending up in a chaotic mess of stats.
Here's how I could get rid of all the headaches of additional scripts and additional redirects.
Requirements:
- Enable Custom Conversion tracking in
- Use at least one landing page.
- Create your own offer for bot traffic.
Benefits:
- Detect both JS capable and incapable Bot clicks
- No additional delays in your landing page loading speed
- No need to create separate scripts to track your data (like passing parameters from one camp to another)
- Live Bot detection Always ON!
If you are using Voluum and want to have a bot detection setup in place, try implementing the following setup.
Step 1: Enable Custom Conversion tracking needed to detect JS capable Bots.
Login to your voluum account and create a custom conversion event
Give a name and a value to your custom conversion event then move to Step 2. (screenshot below)
Step 2: Add 2 Multi-offer links to one of your landing pages.
http://xxx.trackvoluum.com/click/1 - Sends the bot click to the 1st offer in list (our bot detection offer)
http://xxx.trackvoluum.com/click/2 - Sends the real visitor to the 2nd offer in list (our real offer)
Because the browser engine will read our lander’s HTML from top to bottom, in this example I’m placing the hidden link right after the opening body tag <body>
<a href="http://xxx.trackvoluum.com/click/1" style="font-size: 6px; color:#423c15; position: absolute; left: -900px;">Click Here</a>
In addition to that, to minimize fake clicks towards our real offer, we will set our lander’s call to action link behind a java script function, so that bots that cannot process java will not be able to land to our real offer.
Here’s an example on how our cta code should look like and the java script function that contains our 2nd multi-offer link.
<a href="javascript:void(0)" rel="noreferrer" onclick="exit_offer();PreventExitPop = false" class="claim">
<script type="text/javascript">
function exit_offer() {
window.onbeforeunload=null;
window.location = 'http://xxx.trackvoluum.com/click/2';
}
</script>
This offer will fire only the custom conversion that we created on Step 1 without interfering to our campaign’s conversions. This means that each for each lp click that generates a custom conversion, it is coming from a bot that can parse java script, if no custom conversion is fired then this bot cannot parse java.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<script type="text/javascript">
function getToken(variable)
{
var query = window.location.search.substring(1);
var vars = query.split("&");
for (var i=0;i<vars.length;i++) {
var pair = vars[i].split("=");
if(pair[0] == variable){return pair[1];}
}
return(false);
};
var goal = "http://xxx.trackvoluum.com/postback?cid="+getToken("cid")+"&et=continue";
function redir(){
window.location.replace(goal)
};
</script>
<body onload="setTimeout(redir, 200);">
</body>
For a copy of the Landers and Bot offer used in this guide follow this link.
After sending some traffic to your campaign with a similar setup as described above your stats should look like this.
In case you might have any question or need assistance on the above setup, feel free to ask below.
That's really clever, I'm impressed 
You'll be happy to know that we're working on a fully fledged solution for bot and fraud filtering/reporting in
I m gonna try this now!!!!
That's a share worth its weight in platinum! 
Thanks so much for taking the time to illustrate the entire process!
Amy
Very cool thanks for sharing.
Excited to see the
Interesting approach with the custom conversion events.
Thanks for sharing this method ;-)
Hi Platinum,
Adding the code to the bottom (REAL CTA Button) doesn't seem to work. Here is a screenshot, where am I going wrong?
Step 2:
Is this how you setup?
Thanks!
@birdman as a good practice, first you should move javascript function at the bottom of your html page just before the </body> closing tag.
I've included some notes in the screenshot below where you can see a real lander example on how the hidden link, the cta button and the script are setup
https://prnt.sc/ig4gfb
Also, when configuring landers in such setup, you need to set the number of offers to 2 when creating the lander (example below)
https://prnt.sc/ig4h9m
Please note that if you don't set your lander's number of offers to 2, both offers the JS Parse detection offer as well as the real one will receive an equal amount of traffic.
Let me know if you need further assistance
Thank you very much for this thread!
Looks really cool. Will try today.
Hey Platinum,
I changed up my lander so it has 2 offers now instead of 1. Major mistake on my part. However; I still cannot seem to get this to work.
I wrote this dummy lander for you to replace your own
Download: DummyLander HTML Code
Looking forward to your reply,
Aras
P.S. Is it normal to get a 404 Error for the BotJS Conversion page?
@birdman when testing the flow of the above setup, kindly make sure to visit your lander through your campaign link. If you’re visiting it from just your lander’s url, none of your tracker’s data is being utilized. Therefore you will receive an error 404 when clicking on click 1 or 2 as the tracker won’t know where this click os coming from.
Also, make sure to append the the click id at the end of your landing page URL. This is one is really important, as here it is where we are grabbing the clickid we need to fire the custom conversion back to our tracker.
PS: Will take a deeper look to the dummy lander once in front of my PC
this is very nice, but i have a question? Should i make this every time when start new campaign or once created i can use this bot for all my camps? Thanks
Originally Posted by chervenkov
Also, about the JS Parser offer you need to create it only once and then use it on all campaigns you’d like to.
When can we see this bot filtering/reporting in voluum?
Thanks for the tip!
for some reason I can't set it up, is someone willing to help me via skype?
Thanks
Originally Posted by redirectad
Hi platinum, I'm trying to create a LP that will only redirect users to offer and filter out the Bot traffic. this is what I did:
That's the LP (took it from the example):
<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function getToken(variable)
{
var query = window.location.search.substring(1);
var vars = query.split("&");
for (var i=0;i<vars.length;i++) {
var pair = vars[i].split("=");
if(pair[0] == variable){return pair[1];}
}
return(false);
};
var goal = "http://track.voluumurl.com/postback?cid="+getToken("cid")+"&et=continue";
function redir(){
window.location.replace(goal)
};
</script>
</head>
<body onload="setTimeout(redir, 200);">
<a href="http://track.voluumurl.com/click/1" style="font-size: 6px; color:#423c15; position: absolute; left: -900px;">Click Here</a>
<a href="javascript:void(0)" rel="noreferrer" onclick="exit_offer();PreventExitPop = false" class="claim">
<script type="text/javascript">
function exit_offer() {
window.onbeforeunload=null;
window.location = “http://track..voluumurl.com/click/2”;
}
</script>
</body>
That's my
And this is the result:
I'm sure I'm doing something wrong I just can't figure out what.
@redirectad it looks like you are somehow merging different landers & scripts and links in the same landing page.
The following code belongs to the Custom Bot Offer we are using to post custom conversions back to our tracker.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<script type="text/javascript">
function getToken(variable)
{
var query = window.location.search.substring(1);
var vars = query.split("&");
for (var i=0;i<vars.length;i++) {
var pair = vars[i].split("=");
if(pair[0] == variable){return pair[1];}
}
return(false);
};
var goal = "http://xxx.trackvoluum.com/postback?cid="+getToken("cid")+"&et=continue";
function redir(){
window.location.replace(goal)
};
</script>
<body onload="setTimeout(redir, 200);">
</body>
http://track.voluumurl.com/click/1 and http://track.voluumurl.com/click/2 are added to our landing page where in the guide example, click/1 is a hidden link to the Bot offer and click/2 is our real offer. One thing to note is that I have set the real offer click link behind a javascript function in order to avoid dumb bot clicks to the real offer.
To make things easier, I have included a copy of clean landers and custom bot offer in this link
Please take a look at the template materials in the above link and let me know if there's any thing you still need assistance with.
I got it now!
Thank you very much for your help!!!
Any update on when this will be available?
As an aside to all of this extra work,
For those who would like to put our solution to the test, we offer a 30-day free trial, allowing you the opportunity to see just how easy it is to have
For the STM audience, we are about to pull the curtain back on a VERY a special promotion. If you'd like to be inb4 the masses, let's chat!
Cheers all,
In
Just put that little script on your lander and Binom shows you a column with bot percentage directly in your stats.
Its really easy to implement and you have the stats directly in your tracker.
I am not sure if I am doing this right. Can this set up be used for split testing offers and landing pages? Do I set this up on every landing page that I am split testing? Also I am testing 4 different offers, when I set the offer to 2 in voluumfor the landers, it will only allow me to add 2 offers when setting up the campaigns. I am unable to add the other offers that I am split testing.
Originally Posted by thien425
Let me know in case you might face any difficulties setting this up.
I don't know how to use the flows feature in
Originally Posted by thien425
I'm afraid your setup is not correct, so let's fix it together.
First, you need to create a separate new lander where you configure click/1 and click/2 as instructed in the original post. When creating this new lander in your
Second, when whating to split test multiple landers and offers using this method, simply create a custom flow. You can create a separate path for each real offer then add landers you are split-testing on each path. The following screenshot should give you an idea how it should look.
As you may notice on the side of each offer the rotation weight percentage information is not visible, this because on our landers each offer has it's own click link.
Let me know if you'd need further assistance on this.
So I only need to create 1 lander and configure click/1 and click/2 on only that lander? Or do I configure click/1 and click/2 for every lander I'm split testing. I am still not clear on that. But by your screenshot it looks like the same setup as what I did. It probably didn't look like it with the screenshot that I posted. Check the screenshot below, looks similar to yours when I use that one. I configured click/1 and click/2 on every lander. Offer 1 is the bot offer and offer 2 is my real offer. Then I created a separate path for every offer I am split testing and I added all of my landers in each path.
Originally Posted by thien425
Drive some traffic to this campaign then read the results. You will be able to see that some placements are clicking on the hidden link as well and if a custom conversion fires, that will tell that the bot that clicked on the hidden link is able to process javascript.
How i can use it for direct-linking offers? Thanks
i have a question about if the bot only visit the page and didn't click anything . how can we tell those bots ? the pop traffic sell on cpm type. so even if the bot just view the page we still need pay the money. @platinum
After running for a day, i realise that a placements have 1 visit and 13 clicks, but the BotJs did not indicate anything.
So i decide to conclude it as a 100% bot site.
Originally Posted by alpha7776
Can you show us a screenshot of
Amy
Originally Posted by alpha7776
Originally Posted by alpha7776
1st metric
Are the clicks to the hidden link (to fake offer) where any type of bot can click on, but humans don't (obviously because it's a hidden link). So anytime you see a click happening in the hidden link, it means that it's not clicked by a real visitor.
2nd metric
The second metric (BotJS custom conversion) is used to test if clicks that happened in the hidden link are coming from basic dummy bots that can read and process basic HTML tags only or advanced ones, that are able to process javascript as well as fill in forms.
As Amy mentioned, please share a screenshot of your stats here so that we can help you to better read your stats.
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