Case Study
Siphon
A real-time traffic verification and filtering engine. Protects ad spend by detecting bots, VPNs, and bad clicks, blocking or redirecting low-quality traffic instantly before it hits your landing page.
Overview
What is Siphon?
In plain English
Imagine you pay $5 every time someone clicks your Google or Facebook ad. If half of those clicks are automated bots, competitors checking your landing page, or hidden VPNs, you are wasting half your ad budget. Siphon analyzes visitors in real time and blocks or redirects bad clicks before they load your site.
The client needed a scalable verification engine capable of scoring high-volume visitor streams. The goal was to build a system that acts as a gatekeeper: visitors hit a tracking link or plugin-enabled site, Siphon verifies their risk profile against custom rules, and then instantly redirects fraud traffic away while letting clean human users land safely.
Threat Analysis
Traffic Categorization
Siphon evaluates each request against MaxMind and Udger databases to classify visitors into four distinct risk profiles.
Clean Traffic
Real, verified human visitors using standard residential or mobile connections. Granted full access to landing pages.
Low Risk
Standard users with minor flags. Logged for analytics review but permitted through by default unless strict rules are active.
VPN and Proxy
Visitors hiding behind VPNs or data centers. Categorized as medium risk. Rules can flag, prompt, or redirect them based on customer setups.
High Risk / Bot
Automated scrapers, known bot networks, VPN lists, or repeat offenders. Blocked instantly or redirected to low-cost pages.
Key Features
Verification and Control Features
Built as a comprehensive portal, the system distributes configuration control across three distinct dashboard profiles.
Global system threat threshold configuration, MaxMind and Udger library updates, agency account management, and global fraud indicator syncs.
Manage multiple client accounts under one profile, create verification campaigns and tracking URLs, define client-specific blocking actions, and view consolidated traffic score reporting.
Real-time human vs bot traffic analytics, domain integration management for WP/Shopify plugins, detailed visitor log lists with individual scoring flags, and exportable audit reports.
Key Engineering Challenge
Tight timelines and bad data logic.
The client needed a major release milestone delivered in a short time frame. This included stable analytics, accurate Facebook/Google Ads link generation, and a fully functional filter system — all at once.
The Problem
Inconsistent scoring and tracking gaps
The existing legacy codebase had critical tracking bugs where visitor scores were calculated incorrectly, letting bad bots slide through while blocking real users. Campaign URLs were failing to pass proper tracking parameters to Google and Facebook ad suites, leading to attribution losses across all client campaigns.
What I Built
Refactored scoring engine and fixed parameters
I audited the IP lookup logic, fixed threat level calculations, and unified scoring databases. I refactored the URL parser to correctly structure incoming UTM queries, guaranteeing campaign tracking accuracy. SQL queries were optimized to handle visitor data intake without blocking the server.
- ✓ Delivered milestone on time
- ✓ Fixed all traffic scoring calculation gaps
- ✓ Attribution reporting matched Google and FB Ads exactly
Technology
Platform Technologies
A focused stack built for speed, accuracy, and seamless integration with ad platforms and CMS systems.
Core backend handling all traffic scoring, routing, and session logic in object-oriented PHP.
Persistent storage for visitor logs, threat scores, campaign data, and client configurations.
IP geolocation and ISP classification database used to identify high-risk data center ranges.
Bot and user agent detection database for classifying automated scrapers and known bot networks.
Comparison baseline to validate traffic scoring accuracy against known clean traffic sources.
Responsive portal dashboards with dynamic filtering and real-time log views across all panels.
Custom WP plugin for seamless client-side integration without code changes on client sites.
Custom Shopify integration enabling traffic verification directly on ecommerce storefronts.
Interface Walkthrough
Platform Screenshots
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