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Today I was discussing things with Mark Barrera and we were talking about blocking IP addresses of clients on Google Analytics so visits to their own site would not count.  This is really simple to do with Google Analytics. In your Google Analytics account, you can enter up to 4 IP addresses to "block", doing so asks analytics to not track or record any visits from those IPs.

This way a client that spends a lot of time on their own site won't skew the data from the site.  This is a great idea and if you use analytics you should be blocking any IPs you regularly visit your own site from.  If you don't know your IP just visit whatismyip.com and they will tell you exactly what IP you are on.

Now this got me thinking about how sometimes adSense publishers get in trouble and are accused of clicking on ads on their own site.  Clearly this is a problem when some do it simply as fraud to steal money from advertisers, yet I think many new publishers are simply curious about who is advertising and sometimes they might even have an interest in actually buying from the advertisers on their sites.

So my thought is why not let publishers self block IP addresses?  Just as you can put in your own IPs into Analytics, you could put in your IPs into you adSense Account and simply have google not count clicks from you own IP in adSense.  Clearly there is no technology hurtle to be overcome here.  This would be good for everyone as far as I can see.

First publishers could click on ads with no fear on their own site (provided they blocked their own ips) and easily see who is advertising and what they are selling.  This would also help with competitive ad filtering so publishers could keep track easily of who's ads were showing and what was being sold.

Second advertisers would experience less accidental click fraud.  I myself have clicked an ad or two on occasion, I have never done so intentionally yet we all loose track of the cursor on occasion.  Some times you are just clicking to get the wheel in your mouse to work and oops of you go.  Any way it would be a simple way for Google to help protect advertisers.

Third publishers over time would actually on occasion buy from their own advertisers.  I have plenty of ads on my sites that in no way compete with me, they are similar but not direct competition for what I sell.  If I could check out those advertisers from time to time, well who knows I might buy a thing or two.  With over a million publishers out there that is a pretty big demographic to sell stuff to.

In any event I just can't see any down side to this in theory Google is already tracking the IP of its' publishers.  So why not, what good reason is there for Google to not do this?  The only reasonable options are

1.  No one at GooglePlex has thought about this

2.  Google figures some click fraud is good for revenue

So what do you think about this idea of letting individuals submit their own commonly used IP addresses and just not having their clicks count on their own ads?  Of course only the honest publishers would use this, so what though that means the honest people are protected and as for the scam artists they are already trying to work the system.  This wouldn't give them any type of advantage.

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: google, goog, adsense, click fraud, ecommerce, pay per click, ppc, search engines, search marketing

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