TechWag

Probably the most interesting thing to read is the article from Search Engine land this morning on using Geolocation to determine click fraud. While most of the reports that people get do not in any way shape or form include the IP address of the person who is clicking on the ad. Matching out the logs on the web site against what is in Google analytics.

The supposition though that there is no way for a person to do massive lookups against the IP address the geolocation though they got it a tad bit wrong, there are companies that do this, and do it quite well. They state:

Naturally, it’s likely not feasible to automatically perform an ARIN lookup with each visitor to your website before delivering up data, because it would take too long. So, there are a few companies out there who are aggregating and caching the network data and either providing lookup tables or web service lookups to those who wish to deliver location-specific content or who are using the data for reporting or fraud detection purposes. Source: Search Engine Land

Then they go into a great list of companies that make the exact software that works either over the internet, or works on a local system to digest the logs. The cool part is that there are also some cool ways to match out data not just in the sytem, or on line, but using document differences to track dropped loads on the web site.

Not all visitors will load the whole page, and people who have been running around the internet clicking on ads might only be there for seconds, if all your ad clicks are coming from people who are there seconds on the site, then the advertising campaign does not go well. The initial thing to be sold, or the web page to be seen was probably just someone tapping someone else’s or your own advertising budget.

This is something that the search engine land article did not cover. But by using geolocation, time on site, and other analytics tools, you can pretty much so figure out who and where the drive by’s are coming from, and how much of your advertising budget they are sucking away in lieu of real customers.

Now arguing that point with the advertising provider might be something different. Or the advertising campaign is nothing but branding and it does not matter how long they were on site. The real issue is what are you advertising for, and how does the greater issues of time on site, geolocation, and advertising budget fit into the game plan.

Adding this to the mix, makes the search engine land article much more powerful, and much more fun for those who are statistically inclined in the office.

Tags: web 2.0, award, data mine, Cool Tools //