Advertising in Search Engines of the Spanish Contract Cheating Websites: Analysis of Traffic, Costs and Keywords

Abstract

The contract cheating websites have become a sort of necessary collaborators in the dishonest practices carried out by university students worldwide and in recent years its presence has increased significantly. Our study, based on data extracted from SEMrush, analyses traffic, online advertising and the marketing keywords used by 36 Spanish companies dedicated to the sale of academic essays and dissertations through the Internet. The results obtained show the increase in visits received by these websites in the last year, while emphasizing the higher rate of traffic received through online advertising compared to organic traffic. Our contribution concludes with a series of general recommendations that we understand can help addressing the problem.