Stopping click fraud

Stopping click fraud - helping webmasters sleep nicely.

[Pauloogle]

Is there not a possiblility to give webmasters using adsense more peace of mind by alleviating click fraud from the adsense iframe.

For instance - would it not be possible to get the remote host of the person clicking the ad? Usually even if a person is using a proxy, it can be bypassed and the actual IP can be retrieved.

Ok lets say this CAN be done - i.e. the IP address of a person who has clicked an adsense ad can be logged by adsense.

So now adsense are logging clickthrough IP's and whatever else they choose. Now all they need to do is offer adwords or adsense publishers the following account option:

Allow the same IP to click on my ad's XXX times per day.

Now via the iframe they would check the ad ID, the user's IP and if that IP has exceeded his daily click ratio - only "charity" or free ads will be shown to this user on this particular domain etc etc.

Sounds plausible to me - why can it not be done? It would alleviate click fraud, make us webmasters sleep better and take the onus off google to completey control click fraud by giving the advertisers and webmasters more say.

Think about it - if someone has clicked on an ad 25 times in one day the adwords guy has spent enough money and the website owner has made enough money off this IP,so why not block it for the day either from the adwords account or the webmaster's adsense account.

Just a thought.

Paul

[jomaxx]

The thing is that YOU as a webmaster don't want Google seeing excessive clicks on your site, but Google don't have any interest in restricting their own knowledge of how certain users or certain websites behave. They loooove data and I'm sure they prefer to see everything and let the chips fall where they may.

They probably do have "innocent behaviour" filters and "potentially fraudulent behaviour" filters and so on, but there is really no knowledge of how they work.

Anyway it's possible for webmasters to track clicks on their own sites, and you could in theory build something exactly like this for yourself, using PHP or SSI. In fact maybe it already exists.

[Pauloogle]

I think they will actually draw more advertisers this way. Wouldn't you as an advertiser feel safer by being given this control - effectively being able to stop click fraud on your ads? Google should be able to see that in the long run it will pay off for them as more publishers will regain confidence in the program.

Not all webmasters have the knowledge or time to implement their own versions.

[abbeyvet]

Not everyone has a static IP anyway.

[europeforvisitors]

Wouldn't you as an advertiser feel safer by being given this control - effectively being able to stop click fraud on your ads?

Google likes to gather data, but it doesn't necessarily want to share that data. And Google probably feels (rightly) that fraud detection and prevention are Google's job, not the advertiser's.

Google should be able to see that in the long run it will pay off for them as more publishers will regain confidence in the program.

Are you talking about advertisers or publishers? Different creatures, different needs. (FWIW, I don't think Google has to worry about publisher confidence; there's no shortage of publishers who want to belong to the AdSense network.)

[Pauloogle]

I meant advertisers. It's been a long day... :)

[blue_eagle]

google is smart enough to avoid such problems if everyone uses static ip. Since not everyone does, it is being a problem for them too. Even if they use a static ip, they can make fraud clicks on your web site. So avoiding fraud clicks with analyzing ip numbers is not always enough. I guess they use some other technics like how often clicks are generated, cookies, browsers, etc..

[travisbickle]

Everyone should understand that Google has dual loyalties in this matter. They want to protect their advertisers from fraud but on the other hand the more clicks they get the more growth they get. They are very much on that Wall Street growth treadmill as a public company.

I am NOT saying they look the other way on click fraud but too much vigilance may kill the golden goose.