Online Advertising Survival: Combating Click Fraud - University of ...

called Tech Talk, which features articles written by Google engineers and other experts.Following numerous class action lawsuits, Google’s stance towards fighting click fraudappears to be changing.12.2 Fraud Detection TechnologiesMost search engines have systems in place to identify click fraud. For instance, Googleis able to detect rapid, successive clicking from the same IP address. The problem occurswhen more advanced technologies are put in place to cloak IP addresses in order tocircumvent these systems. Both Google and Yahoo employ layers of filters to detectpatterns that could signal possible click fraud and have the ability to determine the sourceof the dubious clicks. They claim to be able to detect the majority of invalid clicksregardless of techniques used by the fraudsters.12.3 Blocked IP AddressThis is a filtering technique whereby an incoming click’s IP address is compared with alist of blocked IP’s. If the click is found to be originating from the same IP address asone flagged on the list, it is deemed as invalid and is logged as a fraudulent click.As a test of the search engines filtering techniques, a Marketing Experiments Journalresearch brief attempted click fraud on certain Google Adwords. The brief showed thatthe higher cost per click campaigns were more susceptible to fraud and that Google’sfiltering was ineffective in filtering out invalid clicks, resulting in a click fraud rate of29.5% 57 .57 Marketing Experiments Journal, Click Fraud – Our Research,http://www.marketingexperiments.com/ppc-seo-optimization/click-fraud.html, Retrieved May 11, 200848