Pay-per-click system and method that determine whether a requested link to a merchant website is legitimate or fraudulent
AssigneeBrite Smart Corporation
InventorPatrick Zuili
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
This invention improves upon existing pay-per-click arrangements periodically generating a code associated with the search-engine users. This code, preferably in the form of a serial number, is compared to the user of the website, such that by observing a metric like the number of clicks for a given period of time, be it a short time or a longer period, such as a day or a week, the system can automatically determine if certain clicks are illegitimate. This allows the pay-per-click company to more fairly invoice the merchants, thereby preventing fraudulent over use.
Claims16
In a pay-per-click system including a search engine to list merchant websites in an order according to incremental compensation for click-through to the websites, a method for determining whether a click on a link is legitimate or fraudulent, the method comprising:
- generating on a side of the search engine a code to associate with a user of the search engine who clicks on one of the merchant websites, the code uniquely identifying a device being used by the user;
- returning the code to the device;
- generating another code when the one of the merchant websites is clicked again by the user from the device;
- concatenating the another code to the code previously generated;
- and
- determining whether the requested link to the merchant website is legitimate or fraudulent by examining a duration between two visits to the one of the merchant websites in the code.
In a pay-per-click system including a search engine to list merchant websites in an order according to incremental compensation for click-through to the websites, the system comprising:
- a device being used by a user to use the search engine;
- a server hosting the search engine that generates a code to associate with the user who clicks on one of the merchant websites, the code uniquely identifying the device, and returns the code to the device,
- wherein the server is configured to generate another code when the one of the merchant websites is clicked again by the user from the device, and
- wherein the another code is concatenated to the code previously generated, and the one of the merchant websites determines whether a requested link to the merchant website is legitimate or fraudulent by examining a duration of two visits to the one of the merchant websites in the code.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.