Google takes down 1.7 billion ads for violating policies

Google took down 1.7 billion ads that violated the company’s advertising policies, more than double the amount of bad ads we took down in 2015.

So according to Google, if you spent one second taking down each of those bad ads, it’d take you more than 50 years to finish. So how did they do this? First, Google expanded its policies to better protect users from misleading and predatory offers.

For example, in July Google introduced a policy to ban ads for payday loans, which often result in unaffordable payments and high default rates for users. In the six months since launching this policy, Google disabled more than 5 million payday loan ads.

Second, Google beefed up its technology so that it can spot and disable bad ads even faster. For example, “trick to click” ads often appear as system warnings to deceive users into clicking on them, not realizing they are often downloading harmful software or malware.

In 2016, Google systems detected and disabled a total of 112 million ads for “trick to click,” six times more than in 2015.

Here are a few more examples of bad ads Google took action against in 2016:

More than 17 million bad ads for illegal gambling violations were also taken down in 2016.

“Some of the most common bad ads we find online are ads promoting illegal activities or products. Although we’ve long had a policy against bad ads for pharmaceuticals, last year our systems detected an increase online. We disabled more than 68 million bad ads for healthcare violations, up from 12.5 million in 2015,” read a statement from Google.

Similarly, Google saw more attempts to advertise gambling-related promotions without proper authorization from regulators in the countries they operate. They took down more than 17 million bad ads for illegal gambling violations in 2016.

Another, 80 million bad ads for deceiving, misleading and shocking users were alsoo taken down. In 2016, Google systems also detected and disabled more than 23,000 self-clicking ads on our platforms, a huge increase year over year. Almost 7 million bad ads for intentionally attempting to trick Google’s detection systems were also taken down

In 2016, Google also reported a rise of tabloid cloakers, a new type of scammer that tries to game systems by pretending to be news. Cloakers often take advantage of timely topics—a government election, a trending news story or a popular celebrity—and their ads can look like headlines on a news website. But when people click on that story about Ellen DeGeneres and aliens, they go to a site selling weight-loss products, not a news story.

To fight cloakers, Google took down the scammers themselves, and prevent them from advertising with Google again. In 2016, Google suspended more than 1,300 accounts for tabloid cloaking. Unfortunately, this type of bad ad is gaining in popularity because people are clicking on them. And a handful of scammers can pump out a lot of bad ads: During a single sweep for tabloid cloaking in December 2016, we took down 22 cloakers that were responsible for ads seen more than 20 million times by people online in a single week.

Around 6,000 sites and 6,000 accounts were also suspended for attempting to advertise counterfeit goods, like imitation designer watches. More than 5 million payday loan ads last year and another 8,000 sites promoting payday loans were taken down.

Google took action on 47,000 sites for promoting content and products related to weight-loss scams and more than 15,000 sites for unwanted software and disabled 900,000 ads for containing malware were also brought down.

“Publishers and website owners use our AdSense platform to make money by running ads on their sites and content, so we have strict policies in place to keep Google’s content and search networks safe and clean for our advertisers, users and publishers. When a publisher violates our policies, we may stop showing ads on their site, or even terminate their account,” said Google.

In November, Google expanded on these policies, introducing a new AdSense misrepresentative content policy, that helps them take action against website owners misrepresenting who they are and that deceive people with their content.

From November to December 2016, Google reviewed 550 sites that were suspected of misrepresenting content to users, including impersonating news organizations. They took action against 340 of them for violating its policies, both misrepresentation and other offenses, and nearly 200 publishers were kicked out of our network permanently.

“In addition to all the above, we support industry efforts like the Coalition for Better Ads to protect people from bad experiences across the web. While we took down more bad ads in 2016 than ever before, the battle doesn’t end here. As we invest in better detection, the scammers invest in more elaborate attempts to trick our systems. Continuing to find and fight them is essential to protecting people online and ensuring you get the very best from the open web,”concluded the statement.