The Google AdWords Blog wrote a blog entry introducing us to the Google click fraud team and describing some of the most common questions and concerns on click fraud. Here are some of the highlights from the post.

• They analyze IP address, duplicate clicks, and various other clicking patterns to detect click fraud.
• If you want to report click fraud, use this form.
• Typical click fraud “investigation can take 3-5 business days.”
• Spikes in traffic can come from changes to daily budget, maximum CPCs, ad distribution preferences, the content network or bad tracking.

Also see Google Pushes Back On Click Fraud Estimates, Says Don’t Forget The Back Button from us last month which covers how the head of Google’s click fraud department did a deep dive recently on other filtering and related issues.

Related Topics: Google: AdWords | Legal: Clickfraud

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz