With digital advertising opportunities with Google Ads exceeding hundreds of billions of dollars annually, it is little wonder that click fraud is becoming a big problem throughout the marketing industry. Due to this type of fraud, over 50% of advertisements miss out on reaching their target audience, costing you a lot of AdWords money. You can also lose the opportunity to convert visitors into customers.
Additionally, the fraudulent clicks can distort your analytical data and cause you to make marketing decisions that could damage your business in the long term. That is why it is essential to be vigilant and undertake Google Ad fraud detection when running pay per click (PPC) advertising campaigns and ensure that such fraudsters do not get the better of you.
What is Google Ads click fraud?
Google Ads click fraud is an illegal technique that involves clicking on pay-per-click advertisements. The purpose is to generate fraudulent charges for advertisers. The people engaging in this type of fraud generally are:
Business competitors: To dislodge their rivals from search engine ranking positions higher than theirs, they attempt to disrupt their advertising campaigns by driving up the PPC expenses to meet their budget cap for the day. The ad then turns off and prevents further clicks. That wastes their daily PPC advertising budget since they do not get the return on investment and the traffic they would have got normally. Unless the rival engages in Google Ad fraud detection, the business competitor could get away with usurping their clicks, traffic, and ranking position.
Professional fraudsters: They make use of automated software programs and bots. By targeting high-value keywords, they generate fraudulent clicks. The purpose may be to deplete the ad budgets of businesses or to steal their contact information.
Click farms: Some unscrupulous businesses use click farms to generate multiple clicks and fraudulently inflate the online engagement they get.
Business owners: Some business owners assign their staff to click on their advertisements to obtain revenue from their clients.
Proven ways to stop Google Ads Click fraud in 2022
You can do the following to prevent Google Ads click fraud:
Use Google’s Traffic Quality anti-click fraud program: Its automated detection systems use machine learning and complex algorithms to catch invalid clicks in real-time before advertisers get charged. Additionally, the Traffic Quality team constantly monitors and analyzes traffic and removes suspicious clicks.
Use internal reporting to collect essential information: To undertake Google Ad fraud detection, check the IP addresses that repeatedly arrive at your site. The clicks are suspicious if there are a lot of click timestamps (a record of when someone clicked on your ad and visited your site) but no action timestamps (a record of the actions they took on your site). Clicks from the same device, internet browse, and software indicate a single source, pointing to click fraud.
Exclude suspicious IP addresses from your Google Ads campaign using the IP exclusion feature. You can exclude up to 500 IP addresses per campaign. You can also exclude postcodes if the fraudulent clicks come from a specific location.
Use specialized keywords and phrases: Along with finding specialized keywords that your competitors do not use, work on improving your ad copy, ad format, and landing pages. That can set your PPC campaigns apart from your rivals.
Use click tracking tools: There are various click tracking tools that you can use to monitor who is clicking on your advertisements. With these tools, you can find out whether your competitors are clicking on your advertisements to sabotage your marketing.
Use Google Ads’ campaign and account performance features: With these, you can monitor the number and percentage of invalid clicks. Be sure to check these against the costs and send a support ticket to Google. That way, you will not have to pay for invalid clicks.
Use the remarketing campaign method: In a remarketing campaign, only people who have previously visited your website and bought or downloaded your products will get to see your advertisements. That will automatically weed out the fraudsters.
Use anti-click fraud software: It will be well worth the investment. With this software, you can detect click fraud and add everyone sending invalid clicks your way to a blacklist.