Ip addresses

1- I am curious to know if Google looks at IP addresses

2 - I know of one company who has 3 different sites selling the same product all on one server yet has different IP addresses and appears their campaign has now been cut down drastically.

It was my understanding from some in the know that Google did not reference IP addresses

Anyone comment on this?

They do look at IP. That is one way they geo-target by location so ads only appear in the relevant area. Of course it's not perfect, and some people's IP shows as "not set" in analytics programs.

...and so of course they look at IP addresses in order to determine if you are violating their terms of service by running multiple ads from the same company on the same keywords.

And they also look at IP address to target you ads geographically.

google lost over 1 billion in advertising due to people playing around with the clicks. they now have a special team tracking down the clicks people are making to increase their revenue in adsense.

2) If that company were to use the client center to manage the campaigns for each site separately then it would be ok. We manage adwords for several clients and there are some keywords that actually do overlap, and technically they are competing with each other, but they are separate clients...don't know how Google would distinguish between this and illegitimate usage.

Excerpts from Google Adsense TOS :

Invalid Clicks and Impressions

Clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest. Any method that artificially generates clicks or impressions on your Google ads is strictly prohibited. These prohibited methods include but are not limited to repeated manual clicks or impressions, using robots, automated click and impression generating tools, third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf, and click-exchange programs, or any deceptive software. Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited. Failure to comply with this policy may lead to your account being disabled.
Encouraging clicks

In order to ensure a good experience for users and advertisers, publishers may not request that users click the ads on their sites or rely on deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks. Publishers participating in the AdSense program:

* May not encourage users to click the Google ads by using phrases such as "click the ads," "support us," "visit these links," or other similar language
* May not direct user attention to the ads via arrows or other graphical gimmicks
* May not place misleading images alongside individual ads
* May not promote sites displaying ads through unsolicited mass emails or unwanted advertisements on third-party websites
* May not compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behavior
* May not place misleading labels above Google ad units - for instance, ads may be labeled "Sponsored Links" but not "Favorite Sites"

Hope this helps.


AVP