Click Bot Click Prevention methods

What does google do?

[tomld2]

I am wondering if Google has an fraud prevention in place for their adsense program? Such as protection to prohibit someone clicking on 10 ads in a 1 minute?

If so, what are their fraud terms?

If not, what do you consider an acceptable level to prevent click abuse? Such as 2 clicks a minute per IP max or? What's your preference?

Thanks
Tom

[alika]

Yes. G has a fraud prevention program. Several has come here saying that they have been kicked out from the program due to "fraudulent clicks."

But no, G does not say how it monitors and detects fraudulent clicks. They don't want to give ammunition to those who will try to game the system.

My preference? To NOT even think of a preference for click abuse. Don't click on the ad. Period.

[dvduval]

Having read through the forums and having been a publisher for a while now, I can tell you that Google has some great methods for catching fraud. It is apparent they have some incredible algorithms that track many different factors. However, they are not going to make it public how they do this. I have seen one instance personally where someone clicked about 13 times on ads from the same page, and I did get credit for most or all of them. Others have reported seeing clicks valued at $0.00, which means they were counted as fraudelent clicks. I'm sure a few clicks will get through, but Google can definitely see a pattern of behavior, and I think they have caught people who thought that it would be easy to get away with few clicks each day, etc.

[tomld2]

Aside from an advanced algorithm, what would you consider a good standard equation for crediting/preventing clicks? Such as 2 clicks a minute, 1 click every 10 seconds, etc. Maybe even a limit per day/hour/site etc by IP. The reason I ask is I am creating a private text network to advertise my & my associates products across my network of content sites. I of course want to be as far and accurate as possible. Any suggestions for a fraud equation?

Thanks
Tom

[dvduval]

You should probably setup an adsense tracking script, so you can personally monitor traffic by ip. I'm sure you could setup you own algorithms to ban by ip. I don't think there is a clear answer to your question, because we don't how many sites are involved, the average number of page views per visitor, etc. If you are into statistics, take a look at Standard Deviance. You could ban ips that varied more than x% from the standard deviance per day, per week, etc.

[Teknorat]

In theory they do but when you have accounts that look like this you have to wonder: (actual numbers and profit censored) [geocities.com...]

[richmondsteve]

dvduval wrote:

Others have reported seeing clicks valued at $0.00, which means they were counted as fraudelent clicks.

Actually, those are invalid clicks. An invalid click isn't necesarilly fraudulent. I had a channel with 5 clicks for $0.00 [webmasterworld.com] (msg #28) and AdSenseAdvisor explained the $0.00 click phenomena in the same thread (msg #15).

[tomld2]

I understand advanced algorithms taking many variables into effect is the best way to go. But aside from that, what would you recommend as a bare minimum to prevent fraud clicks. Basically a simple equation such as 5 clicks in 1 minute, or something similar. What would you recommend?

[Never_again]

What would you recommend?

We're not going to recommend anything. This is a forum to discuss Adsense, not creating a fraud prevention system. Speculation about Google’s fraud detection is purely speculation and not a productive exercise.

[tomld2]

So you speak for the entire WW user base? I think what is not productive is posting senseless responses for no other reason than to be negative. But that's just my opinion. I think discussing fraud prevention techniques in an industry which includes adense is infact very productive to those interested in participating in a positive manner.

[richmondsteve]

Perhaps this thread would be more appropriate in the Tracking and Logging [webmasterworld.com] forum (or one of the other forums?) since it's about fraud detection/prevention techniques for a software development project unrelated to AdSense. Just a thought.