Fraud & invalid traffic · also called General invalid traffic
GIVT (general invalid traffic)
GIVT is invalid traffic that routine checks can catch, such as known crawlers, data-center addresses and browsers that declare themselves as automated.
GIVT is the easy-to-spot part of invalid traffic. Under the MRC standards it covers traffic that can be found through routine, list-based or simple rule-based filtering: search-engine spiders and monitoring tools that announce themselves, visits from hosting-company IP ranges (data-center traffic), non-browser user agents and pages pre-loaded by software that nobody actually saw.
Much GIVT is not malicious. A crawler indexing a lander is doing its job. It simply must not be counted as a person or billed as a click.
For a search arbitrageur GIVT is the minimum hygiene. Search engines strip it out automatically, so it rarely earns anything. But it still costs money if the traffic source charged for it, and a feed channel with a lot of obvious non-human activity looks careless to a feed provider. Basic pre-click filtering removes most of it before an ad request is ever made.
A common trap is a vendor report that shows a very low IVT rate but only measures GIVT. The harder and more expensive problem is SIVT.
Think of it like this
GIVT is the bouncer checking names against a printed banned list: quick and reliable for known faces, useless against a convincing fake ID.
Related terms
SIVT (sophisticated invalid traffic)
SIVT is invalid traffic designed to look like real people, which can only be found with advanced analysis that compares many signals at once.
Invalid traffic (IVT)
Invalid traffic is any click, search or ad view that does not come from a real person with genuine interest, whether caused by bots, fraud or honest accident.
Data-center traffic
Data-center traffic is visits that originate from servers in hosting facilities and cloud providers, where programs run, not from homes or phones where people browse.
Bot traffic
Bot traffic is visits and clicks made by software instead of people, ranging from harmless crawlers to programs built to imitate real users.
MRC (Media Rating Council)
The MRC is a US non-profit industry body that sets standards for media measurement, including invalid traffic, and audits and accredits the companies that measure it.
Pre-click filtering
Pre-click filtering checks each visitor the moment they arrive and withholds the search ads from those judged invalid, before any click can be charged.
Sources: MRC Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Standards Addendum (June 2020 update)