Fraudsters target fence-able goods — items they can easily turn around and resell. That simple fact means one of the cheapest fraud-prevention research techniques available doesn't come from a fraud tool at all. It comes from SEO.
The core idea
SEO research is built to answer one question: what are people actively searching for and wanting to buy? That's precisely the same question a fraud team needs answered — because the products consumers want most are also the products fraudsters most want to steal and resell.
Where to look
None of this requires a paid tool. Two free sources do most of the work:
- Search engine keyword tools — reveal actual search volume for products and categories
- Amazon's bestseller and "Gifts & Wish Lists" — real purchase and wishlist data on what's most wanted
Products that show up repeatedly across both are the ones most worth flagging for tighter review — high consumer demand is also high fraud demand.
Specific tools worth starting with
- Google Keyword Search Tool
- Wordtracker
- Trellian Keyword Discovery
- Amazon's Gifts & Wish Lists section
Putting it into practice
This costs almost nothing but time. The practical first step is simple: ask your product managers whether they're already running this kind of demand research for marketing purposes — if so, a fraud team can piggyback on the same data and cross-reference it against the catalog to see which high-demand products deserve a second look before they ship.