Definitions for common terms in lead validation, bot detection, ad fraud, and CRM data quality.
A physical or virtual operation, usually overseas, where cheap labor or automation generates clicks, form submissions, likes, or reviews at volume. Hard to spot because the traffic looks vaguely human.
Clicks on a paid ad that were never going to turn into anything. Often a competitor draining your daily budget, a bot farm running a script, or an incentivized network getting paid per click. Your CPC still ticks up the same way.
What you paid, on average, for every lead a campaign produced. Total spend divided by lead count. If half those leads are junk, your real CPL is double what the dashboard says.
Whether the contact records in your CRM actually reflect real people you can call, email, and sell to. Bad data silently breaks forecasts, burns rep hours, and skews every report built on top of it.
An IP that belongs to a hosting provider (AWS, DigitalOcean, OVH) instead of an ISP serving homes. Normal people rarely browse from one. Bots, scripts, and cheap VPNs live there.
A throwaway inbox from a service like Mailinator, Guerrilla Mail, or 10minutemail. Anyone can grab one in seconds, use it to download your gated PDF, and never read another word from you.
Looking at the email's domain for signals that say whether it's real. Does it have MX records? When was it registered? Is it on a known disposable list? Is it one of 400 lookalikes spun up last week?
Ad industry term for clicks that aren't from a genuine, interested human. Covers bots, accidental taps, incentivized clicks, and coordinated fraud. Split into GIVT (easy to spot) and SIVT (the kind that makes it past basic filters).
A running risk score for an IP based on what it has done elsewhere. Known botnet member? Open proxy? Tor exit? Datacenter range? Abuse reports on record? All of that rolls into one number.
A number attached to each lead that says how likely the submission came from a real buyer. Built from identity checks, behavior on the page, and what the network says about where they came from.
Ranking leads so sales works the good ones first. Classic scoring looks at fit (job title, company size) and intent (pages viewed, emails opened). Modern scoring also asks whether the person actually exists.
Checking that a submitted lead is a real person with working contact info. Email exists and can receive mail, phone is reachable, IP and behavior look human.
A lead marketing has decided is warm enough to hand to sales. The label only means something if the upstream funnel filters out bots and fakes. Otherwise reps end up chasing ghosts.
The DNS record that tells the internet which server handles mail for a given domain. No MX record means that address literally cannot receive email, no matter how good the username looks.
A proxy that routes bot traffic through a real home internet connection, often without the homeowner knowing. Makes the request look like it came from a Comcast customer in Atlanta instead of a server rack.
Revenue earned for every dollar spent on ads. A clean way to compare campaigns, as long as the lead count in the denominator is actually real. Fake leads make bad campaigns look good.
One data point that feeds the score. Things like IP risk, domain age, how long the user spent on the page, whether they pasted the email or typed it, time of day, form completion speed. Stacked together, they tell a story.
A lead a rep has looked at and agreed is worth pursuing. When junk keeps getting promoted to SQL, conversion rates tank and nobody trusts the pipeline number on Monday.
Watching how fast submissions pile up from the same IP, device, or email pattern. Forty signups in ninety seconds from one /24 block is not your newsletter going viral.
The final call on a lead after all signals are tallied. Usually something like Legitimate, Suspicious, Likely Bot, or Definite Bot. That label decides whether the lead hits the CRM, a review queue, or the trash.
Spotting when a visitor is hiding behind a commercial VPN like NordVPN or a corporate tunnel. Not always bad. A VPN on a free-trial signup from a disposable email is a different story.
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