I am actively getting click farmed by a competitor

I am actively getting click farmed by a competitor.
- Clickcease is installed and I wouldn’t say it works well for this.
- Google hardly credits back invalid clicks and is useless on calls.
How do I stop this? It is draining my budget day/day.
Someone with experience and or knowledge, I would greatly appreciate any suggestions or guidance you have

Might be because I've seen people providing services to eat up competitors money from Google Ads.
Everything is possible.

linda held said:

Ik word actief bestookt met clickfarming door een concurrent.
Clickcease is geïnstalleerd, maar ik vind niet dat het hier goed voor werkt.
Google vergoedt ongeldige klikken nauwelijks en is nutteloos bij telefoongesprekken.
Hoe kan ik dit stoppen? Het put mijn budget elke dag weer uit.
Ik zou het zeer op prijs stellen als u, iemand met ervaring en/of kennis, suggesties of advies zou kunnen geven.

Click to expand...

It was exactly the same for us; we were at the top of the rankings for a long time, which is why we became a target. The first thing that helped was dropping slightly in the rankings, causing another party to be attacked instead. Since then, we’ve set up a comprehensive system. What industry are you in?

You can start by checking your Click Logs for repeated IPs locations or unusual click patterns and then adjust your targeting and exclusions based on what you find.

If the clicks are coming from competitors, one approach is to use very tight location targeting, monitor the traffic in Analytics, identify where the attacks are coming from, and exclude those areas assuming they’re not using residential proxies or bots.

If they are, constantly changing IPs can bypass those exclusions. Tools like ClickCease or ClickGuard don’t fully solve this either, and even the reports they provide don’t necessarily help you get the ad spend refunded by Google.

I’m not sure how appropriate it is to say this, but you could also respond in kind and try to make them feel the same pressure.

Gather an IP list if you can, then exclude in campaign level + use AI to look up approximate location data and exclude it as well.

You can start by checking the IPs, locations, devices and click patterns in your logs and then tighten targeting and add suspicious IPs to exclusions because sometimes automated rules can help catch unusual spikes faster.

linda held said:

I am actively getting click farmed by a competitor.
- Clickcease is installed and I wouldn’t say it works well for this.
- Google hardly credits back invalid clicks and is useless on calls.
How do I stop this? It is draining my budget day/day.
Someone with experience and or knowledge, I would greatly appreciate any suggestions or guidance you have

Click to expand...

Id honestly track the clicks and look for patterns like the same IPs, times, locations, hostnames etc. then send that data to Google, blocking random IPs can sometimes make things worse if theyre rotating them.

You can try check your Google Ads location and network settings first and also compare the bad clicks with your real conversions because sometimes the pattern is easier to spot there than in the click data alone.

Yes, If they’re rotating IPs, blocking alone won’t help much and check the click patterns and target the common source with exclusions.

valac1993 said:

Might be because I've seen people providing services to eat up competitors money from Google Ads.
Everything is possible.

Click to expand...

Wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve heard of people offering this as a service

Pcoen90 said:

It was exactly the same for us; we were at the top of the rankings for a long time, which is why we became a target. The first thing that helped was dropping slightly in the rankings, causing another party to be attacked instead. Since then, we’ve set up a comprehensive system. What industry are you in?

Click to expand...

Yeah, sounds very similar to what I’m dealing with. I’m in the [your industry] industry. What system did you put in place?

AdRankAce said:

You can start by checking your Click Logs for repeated IPs locations or unusual click patterns and then adjust your targeting and exclusions based on what you find.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I’m digging through the logs now to find any patterns before blocking anything

TRAutomat said:

If the clicks are coming from competitors, one approach is to use very tight location targeting, monitor the traffic in Analytics, identify where the attacks are coming from, and exclude those areas assuming they’re not using residential proxies or bots.

If they are, constantly changing IPs can bypass those exclusions. Tools like ClickCease or ClickGuard don’t fully solve this either, and even the reports they provide don’t necessarily help you get the ad spend refunded by Google.

I’m not sure how appropriate it is to say this, but you could also respond in kind and try to make them feel the same pressure.

Click to expand...

Exactly. The rotating IPs are the problem. I’m looking more at location and traffic patterns now

jaxsem said:

Gather an IP list if you can, then exclude in campaign level + use AI to look up approximate location data and exclude it as well.

Click to expand...

Good idea. I’m putting together the IP list and looking for common locations too.

SilentAurora said:

You can start by checking the IPs, locations, devices and click patterns in your logs and then tighten targeting and add suspicious IPs to exclusions because sometimes automated rules can help catch unusual spikes faster.

Click to expand...

That’s what I’m doing now. Comparing IPs, locations, devices and timing.

EggyWall said:

Id honestly track the clicks and look for patterns like the same IPs, times, locations, hostnames etc. then send that data to Google, blocking random IPs can sometimes make things worse if theyre rotating them.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I’m trying to find the pattern before blocking anything. I’ll send the data to Google too.

Social Butterfly said:

You can try check your Google Ads location and network settings first and also compare the bad clicks with your real conversions because sometimes the pattern is easier to spot there than in the click data alone.

Click to expand...

Good point. I’ll compare the suspicious clicks with conversions as well.

AdTarzen said:

Yes, If they’re rotating IPs, blocking alone won’t help much and check the click patterns and target the common source with exclusions.

Click to expand...

Exactly. Rotating IPs make it difficult. I’m trying to find the common pattern behind them.