Identifying Incoherent Search Sessions: Search Click Fraud Remediation Under Real-World Constraints
Runze Zhang, Ranjita Pai Sridhar, Mingxuan Yao, Zheng Yang, David Oygenblik, Haichuan Xu
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2025 · Day 1 · Crime, Scams, and Fraud
In the highly competitive landscape of online advertising, search engines operate on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, where advertisers compensate the search engine each time a user clicks on their ad. This symbiotic relationship, however, is constantly threatened by **click fraud**, a malicious activity where automated bots or scripts simulate legitimate user clicks on advertisements. This talk, presented by Runze Zhang from Georgia Tech in collaboration with Microsoft, delves into a novel approach to combating this persistent and evolving threat by identifying "incoherent search sessions."