How is click-fraud detected?

Which methods do Google (and other PPC companies like Adbrite and CommissionJunction ) use to prevent click fraud ??

Thank you

how do we know?

xrobot said:

Which methods do Google (and other PPC companies like Adbrite and CommissionJunction ) use to prevent click fraud ??

Click to expand...

Your thought? There are probably over 1 million things they use to detect fraud. You just have to test if they ban you. good luck

excuse me... I forgot to say "in your opinion"

Algorithms and shit that people smarter then you came up with.

any smarter answer ?

They track information that is sent by the web browsers very closely such as user agents, referers etc..., then also use cookies to see where you have previously been in they're system. They might also use javascript and ajax to report information to their servers. Tons of ways they can tell if click fraud is going on.

Somebody with three posts has a plan! Yes, there is gold in them dar clicks! Only problem it's guarded!

cyrix said:

That track information that is sent by the web browsers very closely such as user agents, referers etc..., then also use cookies to see where you have previously been in they're system. They might also use javascript and ajax to report information to their servers. Tons of ways they can tell if click fraud is going on.

Click to expand...

ok but these information can be spoofed... or not ?
For example I could create a robot that send click using IP different, changing header in the request, deleting cookies, disabling javascript, etc


p.s. excuse me for my english

xrobot said:

ok but these information can be spoofed... or not ?
For example I could create a robot that send click using IP different, changing header in the request, deleting cookies, disabling javascript, etc


p.s. excuse me for my english

Click to expand...

Oh noes, then you'll have a high EPC, which then your dead ;O 1% is acceptable, youll have to flood your website with traffic. BUT there's a prob... That's also against Adsense's TOS.

They have statistic about ip address n country, user agent, referrer, how long visitor stay etc. Don't forget, some proxy are detectable, and some ip are marked as proxy.

they read your posts and know all the methods

I don't want play fraud with uncle G
I want to know only what method Google use for click fraud

click fraud? did you mean go to the local library and click your own ads?

Click fraud might be detected in many ways. As suggested already there are checks in place that include the overall CTR, your IP, referrer, time spent on a page, UserAgent by means of specific probes that do not rely on what the browser "claims" to be in the server env variable, cookies, flash LSO, recently silverlight and the likes.

To better the odds of identifying your "uniqueness" there might be checks on your monitor resolution, pixel depth, plugin capabilities and the ubiquitous click motion javascript bits to determine if the mouse movements are likely "human" or not. Moreover it's easy by means of a few lines of js to test which websites you visited already (css color trick) so that the likelihood of identifying two people with the SAME values becomes very thin...

These are all valid techniques to generate the so-called evercookies. It's also evident that a LSO cookie works seamlessly across different browsers on the same machine. With that being said (there would be many other things to say...) G is not god as many people here -that evidently don't know what the hell are talking about- claim. And -of course- can be tricked. Many of these statements about G remind me a lot when Oracle started advertising their DBs as "Unbreakable"... LOL. As always the great Sheep Effect ensues...

Of course G has world-class engineers and tricking them is not THAT simple that every noob fresh of understanding a few lines of js and what cookie and a session are can do it, right away, on command... With that being said, it's far from impossible.

Great use of analytics (google) from reffering sites, how genuine is your organic search: say you have a bot that writes "sex" and gets the 3rd result clicked" google sees that you just search "sex" and enter site. (just example),

Google bots are maybe the closest to artificial intelligence in the world.

I recommend not to do click fraud and everything would be fine! Common guys!

Based on referers, cookies and mostly "BEHAVIORS" (high bounce rates)