Ummm.

Could someone translate the above into plain English?


Thanks,
FarmBoy

It means they're stepping up their efforts to shoot down the ad-clicking bots.

Thanks net (not nut) meg. Thanks sounds like a good plan which should be good for all on the AdSense and AdWords sides.

FarmBoy

G is stepping up their game re: fraud as the rise of malverts and other cash sucking games have inspired a near revolt by advertisers tired of pouring cash into a less than responsive black box. This should have been done ages ago, but better late than never.

When do you think they will stop SERPs scrapers? Is that even possible?

I have been betting (for my thrd year now, so I already lost) that Google would stop showing serps for non-logged in users... having introduced login through the back door. Whatever they have done, rank checkers seem to continue to thrive. That's not a comment on Rank Checking btw, but I woudl assume it is an ancillary but related issue for Google is my point.

Exactly what tangor said - this should have been done ages ago. They buy themselves huge jets - go into all kinds of other businesses but cannot do something simple like this...absolutely disgusting...should have been done 10 years ago.

Now that AdSense has real competition (Facebook Audience Network) they are like "crap" publishers have real alternatives. The timing is spot on. Trust me, those dispplay advertisers are loving the ROI on Facebook. As someone who manages 3 Facebook campaigns for clients it absolutely destroys Google's display network in terms of quality of clicks and cost per lead/adacquisition...whatever your goal is. Truthfully, it's so good it's keeping up the with value of Adwords which I never thought would be the case. However, once prices spike for advertisers, the ROI will decline a bit, but should only get better for publisher earnings.

Facebook is new, over time the two will fade as competition stretches and splits ad dollars. Trust me Facebook has it's challenges too, the more ads they show the less people enjoy their profiles and the masses will easily move on from Facebook if displeased. It's all about monopoly, Google owns the hottest search engine and allows their ads to travel while Facebook owns the eyes of a lot of people who give up scary amounts of information but that doesn't ad up to double the ad dollars to spend.

Good move, way overdue.

So these botnets, are they mainly used by unscrupulous publishers who can eventually get the boot or are they just trying to attack and undermine Google's network by targeting random web sites who use Adsense?

So you trust in press releases or posts from a multi billion dollar company which was financed by intelligence agencies in 1998? Well I think you have no choice, eat or die.

Botnets and viruses were coded long ago by anti virus companies so people will be forced to buy their stuff and the CEOs (chief stealing officers) of those "so called anti virus companies" became rich and powerful. Keyword: fear
Spread fear and again spread fear and this is what they do at this very moment. But we don't have to fear the botnets.

I'm not sure if this is the case here, if it is, it is all a big lie and deception.

I will never trust greedy multi billion dollar companies. It does not matter what they tell me, their lies, deceptions and greed are beyond understanding of a human being. They feel like GOD this moment, but their time is short. They kill off too many mom and pop businesses. Their greed will end soon.

Grow your own food, this is the best advice I can give you so your children will be able survive.

The evil is NOT a botnet, the evil is a multi billion dollar company. I wonder why they don't see it? I think their eyes were blinded so they can't see the truth.

[edited by: SEOPTI at 3:02 am (utc) on Feb 12, 2016]

@SEOPTI, please, tell us what you really think! Don't hold anything back!

(I like conspiracy theories as much as anyone)

Malvertising has been around almost as long as adsense. When it was 10% and under everyone looked the other way, but these days damage is significantly greater. G is late to the fight, but glad they are finally there. (Adblockers were there 10 years ago, just go recent new traction with the growth of malverts that peel personal info an trash systems)

And yes, it is a billions dollars industry of fraud and deceit on top of "business" ... only not yours or mine. :)

I used to see an Adsense estimated earnings adjustment for click fraud at the end of the month, when the numbers rolled over to 'total.' I now see see these adjustments almost in real time, with only a slight delay in report time.

It means they're stepping up their efforts to shoot down the ad-clicking bots.

Reasonable reply in a sentence.

But that begs the question, are they really doing that as well as they might? Possibly there is some self-interest in not hunting down the bots to the full extent that is now possible.

And for SEOPTI's comment about growing your own food to help children survive, I have lots of sympathy with that viewpoint especially with the idea behind it. An alternative solution might be to provide your children with the very best education you can. At least that way they might be able to scramble to near the top of the pile when it all goes pear shaped. Not a solution for humanity but we all have to look after our own.

Am I the only one who thinks this means it will be even harder to gain click revenue? The collateral damage will be real clicks not counting out of sheer fear. I would suspect this has been the biggest reason a majority are doing worse at adsense. Better safe than sorry doesn't mean anything positive for a publisher. Booting the botnets is great, if you're using adwords. I doubt this is an exact science. I'm cynical at this point. However, maybe the clawbacks at months end might be lesser, but that's not news worthy for me. If anything, this post is Adwords, not Adsense.

Sadly, I'm firmly in the 'it's just another sound and fury public relations release' camp.

Google is constantly fighting botnets, they've regularly (sort of an annual PR parade the troops effort) given interviews and/or given a peek into the 'command centre'. And while I expect they've been winning every 'battle' - eventually - they are increasingly losing the 'war'.

Today we're further reinforcing our existing botnet defenses across our ad systems through a new feature that automates the filtering of traffic from three of the top ad fraud botnets, amongst those we are monitoring and defending against.

Ummm, three of the top. There's a drop in the bucket, dear Liza...

Together these three botnets are comprised of over 500,000 infected user machines.

Not exactly the world's largest botnets. There's a tiny drop in the bucket, dear Liza...

Yes, it is a good thing that they are fighting the good fight. Because they'd be out of business in a year if they didn't.
Yes, they are severely on the defensive and being hammered, though not - yet - being rolled up.
Yes, they are losing so badly that core customers are testing other options in increasing numbers, which is behind the increased PR effort and touting of minor (as in pretty much ongoing day to day) success as some sort of significant breakthrough.

Part of the problem is that Google relies heavily on automation and neither AdWords advertisers nor AdSense publishers are properly vetted. That would cost greatly plus it would cut into the trash revenue streams that Google has always relied upon for a significant amount of revenue (running with a foot over the line has been in play since close to if not the beginning, i.e. gaming, pharma, 'impressions').

Another significant part is that most webdevs haven't a clue about blocking basic bots let alone stopping the advanced versions (or the third world high value manual click farms). Read the AdSense forum sometime and the sad tales of clawbacks. Yet, G is only identifying a fraction of the fraudulent clicks...
Note: just as Google Analytics is only identifying a fraction of the bot traffic hitting sites.

I have played (by which I mean conceived, deployed in test environment, never released active payload to wild; plus trolled the dark web for intelligence and inspiration; plus burned the candle at both ends over research papers...) in the botnet ad fraud arena. Partly for fun and partly to get an idea what to look for as part of my bot defences. Some of the stuff is virtually impossible to detect - even knowing what is coming - as it actually mirrors browser users.

It's a nasty online world out there. And not about to get nicer anytime soon.