Google Click Fraud Prevention
Google constantly adding to three-stage system for detecting invalid clicks, those are proactive real-time filters, proactive offline analysis, and reactive investigations. IP addresses of computers clicking on ads are very useful data points. A simple use of IP addresses is determining the source location for traffic. That is, for a given publisher or advertiser, where are their clicks coming from? Are they all coming from one country or city? Is that normal for an ad of this type? Although we donâ??t use this information to identify individuals, we look at these in aggregate and study patterns.
This information is imperfect, but by analyzing a large volume of this data it is very helpful in helping to prevent fraud. For example, examining an IP address usually tells us which ISP that person is using. It is easy for people on most home Internet connections to get a new IP address by simply rebooting their DSL or cable modem. However, that new IP address will still be registered to their ISP, so additional ad clicks from that machine will still have something in common. Seeing an abnormally high number of clicks on a single publisher from the same ISP isnâ??t necessarily proof of fraud, but it does look suspicious and raises a flag for us to investigate. Other information contained in our logs, such as the browser type and operating system of machines associated with ad clicks, are analyzed in similar ways. These data points are just a few examples of hundreds of different factors we take into account in click fraud detection. Without this information, and enough of it to identify fraud attempted over a longer time period, it would be extremely difficult to detect invalid clicks with a high degree of confidence, and proactively create filters that help optimize advertiser ROI. Of course, we donâ??t need this information forever; last year we started anonymizing server logs after 18 months. As always, our goal is to balance the utility of this information (as we try to improve Googleâ??s services for you) with the best privacy practices for our users (( Using data to Help Prevent Fraud )).
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