How to prevent fraud click from competition?

[YMYL]

Hey!

I'm getting fake clicks on my Google Ads, which eat my daily budget.
How can I block bots and prevent from losing money?

 

[Panther28]

Never used them, but I get recommended them in my ads. clickcease.com

 

[Chris Newman]

One can add the fraud click IPs into blacklist, but that is just a drop in the ocean. And fraud click busting services are not of much help, because the fraud clickers themselves hire professionals who do the fraud click. One has to bear with it & just keep accounts ready to keep launching campaigns, so the one exhausts the funds that the fraud clickers use to hire professionals who do the fraud clicks. You just need to outbeat them this way.

 

[TheVigilante]

I hear Adwords removes the clicks deemed as fraud after a few days have you checked this?

I know they take click fraud very seriously

 

[VitalyProkofiev]

All the above, plus click fraud them back, if their ROI go down they will be forced to lower CPC and you'll all be even.

Unless you are in one of those "threshold accounts dominated keywords" where nobody pays for ads anyway, in that case i don't know

 

[shadowhunter55]

Clickcease is the best solution if you are running legit camps.

 

[shottem]

Google's algo strong to hurt us but they cant protect our investment

 

[maxpower999]

All the above, plus click fraud them back, if their ROI go down they will be forced to lower CPC and you'll all be even.

Unless you are in one of those "threshold accounts dominated keywords" where nobody pays for ads anyway, in that case i don't know

do u know where i can find these people?

 

[Bregallo]

block countries where your customers don't live. you can also block IP ranges. all this in side your google ads account

 

[Alexandr24]

One can add the fraud click IPs into blacklist, but that is just a drop in the ocean. And fraud click busting services are not of much help, because the fraud clickers themselves hire professionals who do the fraud click. One has to bear with it & just keep accounts ready to keep launching campaigns, so the one exhausts the funds that the fraud clickers use to hire professionals who do the fraud clicks. You just need to outbeat them this way.

Hello, Raj! I have actually created an account just to ask you about this 'click fraud' problem, as I am also encountering it. Could you please tell me what do you mean by 'professional fraud clickers'? Do they use some scripts/tools to keep changing their IPs or are they manually doing this full-time? Thanks!

 

[Chris Newman]

Hello, Raj! I have actually created an account just to ask you about this 'click fraud' problem, as I am also encountering it. Could you please tell me what do you mean by 'professional fraud clickers'? Do they use some scripts/tools to keep changing their IPs or are they manually doing this full-time? Thanks!

Professional fraud clickers are like a blackhat "company" that advertisers hire to fraud click "out" their competitors. They are quite effective, as they keep using fresh IPs & fingerprints on an ongoing basis, hence Google Ads fraud click prevention system also is unable to catch up.
There are ONLY 2 options available :-
1) Keep adding suspicious IPs to the block IPs in campaign (not effective due to reason explained above).
2) Gather all such IP details and appeal to Google Ads with reasons as to why you feel those clicks are fraud clicks (sometimes, I repeat sometimes Google Ads may give a credit for those).
People are suggesting clickcease , etc as a "solution" : NO WAY ... NO such services can stop fraud clicks happening to a Google Ads ad : all that clickcease, etc do, is to prepare a fraud clicks detailed report to submit to Google Ads for a possibility of Google Ads giving some credits.
So, bottom line is : Fraud clicks if happening in Google Ads, CANNOT be prevented.
The only practical way out is to get a good idea of which competitors are doing the fraud clicks and you fraud click them back and also keep draining their budgets. But, again that depends on how much profits you make from your campaign(s) & other logical factors which would determine how aggressively you want to proceed that way.

 

[satyr85]

If fraud clicks are done by some average joe - click fraud and similar services may work.

If fraud clicks are done by pro guy... you would have to blacklist IP ranges where your customers come from.

Lets say ads clicking software is operating on Vodafone 4g router - you would have to block whole Vodafone IP ranges.

Lets say ads clicking software is operating on backconnect residential/4g proxies - you can't do anything, too many IP ranges to exclude.

 

[Alexandr24]

Professional fraud clickers are like a blackhat "company" that advertisers hire to fraud click "out" their competitors. They are quite effective, as they keep using fresh IPs & fingerprints on an ongoing basis, hence Google Ads fraud click prevention system also is unable to catch up.
There are ONLY 2 options available :-
1) Keep adding suspicious IPs to the block IPs in campaign (not effective due to reason explained above).
2) Gather all such IP details and appeal to Google Ads with reasons as to why you feel those clicks are fraud clicks (sometimes, I repeat sometimes Google Ads may give a credit for those).
People are suggesting clickcease , etc as a "solution" : NO WAY ... NO such services can stop fraud clicks happening to a Google Ads ad : all that clickcease, etc do, is to prepare a fraud clicks detailed report to submit to Google Ads for a possibility of Google Ads giving some credits.
So, bottom line is : Fraud clicks if happening in Google Ads, CANNOT be prevented.
The only practical way out is to get a good idea of which competitors are doing the fraud clicks and you fraud click them back and also keep draining their budgets. But, again that depends on how much profits you make from your campaign(s) & other logical factors which would determine how aggressively you want to proceed that way.

Thank you for your answer, Raj. Therefore, the only way out of this is to bury my competitors, too? As my objective is to make profit on my niche, you are saying that there is no actual way to prevent competitor fraud clicks if they will keep doing it?

You have also specified that I should find out which competitors are doing fraud clicks. How could I find this out?

Thanks!

 

[satyr85]

Thank you for your answer, Raj. Therefore, the only way out of this is to bury my competitors, too? As my objective is to make profit on my niche, you are saying that there is no actual way to prevent competitor fraud clicks if they will keep doing it?

You have also specified that I should find out which competitors are doing fraud clicks. How could I find this out?

Thanks!

You can't find who is doing fraud clicks, you can't be 100% sure. Yeah, only way is doing clicks to your competitors.

Edit:
Check who's ads are mostly seen for given keyword. Probably this company is not facing fraud clicks but its only probably. You would need bot for this.

Bottom line:
Google could do alot to prevent fraud clicks, they dont do enough. Google turn blind eye on fraud clicks, why would they give back billions USD saying - hey bro, this click was probably fraud.

I was working in the past with company facing fraud clicks, it was sad experience to see company going downhill just because someone wanted to spend less on adwords.
Competiors got what they deserved and whole situation was resolved in quite funny way.

 

[Alexandr24]

& fingerprints

Also, I get that somebody can switch their IP and click, but what do you mean by fingerprints?

 

[Chris Newman]

what do you mean by fingerprints

Google "browser fingerprint", "device fingerprint" and read a few articles and you would get a good idea.

 

[hao.]

Google "browser fingerprint", "device fingerprint" and read a few articles and you would get a good idea.

is it User Agent related? with the same technique you use to rotate IP's you can use to rotate UserAgents, browser languages, disable geolocation, disable mic and camera, all of these can me randomly switched

 

[Impulse]

Thank you for your answer, Raj. Therefore, the only way out of this is to bury my competitors, too?

As a reminder, negative SEO discussions are not allowed on the forum, so you can't discuss methods to bury your competitors here.

You can't find who is doing fraud clicks, you can't be 100% sure. Yeah, only way is doing clicks to your competitors.

Edit:
Check who's ads are mostly seen for given keyword. Probably this company is not facing fraud clicks but its only probably. You would need bot for this.

Bottom line:
Google could do alot to prevent fraud clicks, they dont do enough. Google turn blind eye on fraud clicks, why would they give back billions USD saying - hey bro, this click was probably fraud.

I was working in the past with company facing fraud clicks, it was sad experience to see company going downhill just because someone wanted to spend less on adwords.
Competiors got what they deserved and whole situation was resolved in quite funny way.

@satyr85, you can't encourage these activities here.

 

[satyr85]

As a reminder, negative SEO discussions are not allowed on the forum, so you can't discuss methods to bury your competitors here.

@satyr85, you can't encourage these activities here.

Please delete my post if you find it inappropriate in any way. Its not my intention to encourage such activities.