Search engine eZanga aims to gauge whether clicks are friendly or fraud

If you use the World Wide Web you know Google, Yahoo and most likely Bing. You may also be familiar with AOL, Ask, AltaVista, Dogpile and any of a handful of other search engines. Most users typically find what works for them and stick with it.

The same holds true for businesses advertising on search engines. But there's a twist, as not all Web site traffic is the same. There's good traffic, which is real people looking for real things. And there's the bad traffic, which is people clicking on advertising links not to shop or buy but simply to deliver clicks. This results in ad budgets being depleted with less-than-optimal results. It's called click fraud, and it's one of the Web's blemishes.

Enter eZanga.com (www.ezanga.com). It's a search engine determined to weed out as many bad clicks as possible. This results in good search engine results, happy customers and happy advertisers.

EZanga has been around since 2003. Founder Rich Kahn said he initially attracted users by offering chances to win prizes -- $1,000 a month and 10 T-shirts.

"If you came to the site you got your entry for the day," Kahn said.

He built traffic this way and bought traffic from some smaller search engine competitors along the way. Today, eZanga has about 5 million unique users a month doing about 10 billion to 12 billion searches.

"Our ideal customer is somebody spending (advertising dollars) on Google, Yahoo or Bing. They understand the game and they're looking for more traffic," Kahn said. "They come to us, they deal with one person and get their needs met."

The secret to eZanga's success is an internal system called Traffic Advisor that identifies and reduces click fraud, Kahn said.

"There are new types of click fraud coming out on a regular basis," he said. "We stay ahead of the curve."

Kahn said eZanga uses Click Forensics (www.clickforensics.com) to verify its results.

"We send them data and log streams," he said. "They look at the data, send us the results, then we look at it and write new filters to block the (new fraudulent click sources.)"

"Click fraud is not solved -- with a 'd,'" Kahn said. "If somebody comes up with a solution to eliminate click fraud, they'd be a billionaire."

Kahn hasn't abandoned the contest-as-incentive facet of the business; the company has spawned a new site focusing on it. HopOnThis.com combines contests with searching with social networking, letting users share photos, videos and blogs.

Kahn said HopOnThis is already the 25th most-visited social networking site, even though it is still in beta testing.

"We'll roll it out in the fourth quarter," he said, adding that another upgrade to eZanga is in the works. "We take user feedback and use it to make the site better."

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