As one of my many new year's resolutions I was doing some house cleaning on my sites and stumbled upon this post I wrote back in 2007 about Google's IP Exclusion tool.I think it's a topic that needs to be revisited. I've seen consistent increase in competition and CPC's across my client base for the last several years and in order to be sure costs don't increase as well, you … [Read more...]
Adwords Click Fraud Fighting Tool – IP Exclusion
Google has just added a nifty tool to its Adwords tools portfolio, the ability to block IPs from seeing (and clicking) your ads. In your Adwords tools section you will see a link for 'IP Exclusion' which will allow you to put in IP addresses that you want to block from seeing your ads. You should see something like this: This is no doubt a response for the long time … [Read more...]
Google Releases Clickbot Clickfraud Study
According to Google Clickbot.A is the name of a botnet that Google's Click Quality and Security Teams investigated last year. Using our findings, we published "The Anatomy of Clickbot.A" - a detailed case study on botnet-based click fraud for the benefit of the technical research community. Clickbot.A is an example of a botnet operator attempting a click fraud attack against … [Read more...]
Google to Offer more Click Fraud protection
CNET.com is reporting that next month Google will allow advertisers to block specific IPs. Beginning next month, Google plans to give advertisers the ability to prevent their pay-per-click ads from being shown to competitors suspected of repeatedly clicking on the ads to drive up their cost. This will be a great tool for those who suspect their competition is clicking on … [Read more...]
Is Click Fraud Really Less Than 2%?
On Monday Andy Beal had a good piece about his talks with a Googler on the topic of click fraud and how they say the actual click fraud that an advertiser sees is %1 or lower. Now in theory this is great but is it really an accurate statement? I don't think so and here is why. I am not 100% sure that Google's invalid click detector works flawlessly. It can't. And won't … [Read more...]