Google has revealed that it removed 780 million “bad” adverts globally last year. Adverts were removed if they promoted counterfeit products, used deceptive tactics to get users to click on them, made misleading claims or otherwise broke Google's advertising rules. Looking deeper into the various kinds of bad adverts, the search engine revealed that 1.4 million apps that broke Google's guidelines were removed, as well as 12.5 million adverts that broke rules related to medical products and 17 million that used deceptive tactics such as pretending to be system warnings. Google has pledged to continue its crackdown on bad adverts this year, saying: “In 2016, we're planning updates like further restricting what can be advertised as effective for weight loss, and adding new protections against malware and bots.” Bad adverts are identified by an algorithm and by a team of over 1,000 human reviewers.Â
