If you’re advertising online, it’s likely you’ve encountered click fraud.

Fortunately, there are ways advertisers can use to identify and prevent click fraud. Google has ramped up its efforts to identify click fraud.

In this post, we’ll help you understand click fraud, how fraudsters do it, and what you can do to prevent it in your account.

What is Click Fraud?

Click fraud or invalid clicks is a tactic in which human and bot users repeatedly click on an online ad with an aim of achieving illegitimate results for the ad, the publisher, or even the advertisers themselves.

Since more consumers are now making purchases online, advertisers are increasing their ad budgets to meet their digital demands.

However, most advertisers are concerned about the effect of click fraud on their budgets. In fact, click fraud and bot activity are among the top concerns for many brand marketers in the US.

Types of Clicks You Should Be Concerned About

Manual Clicks to Increase Publisher Revenue

You could be at risk of this type of click fraud if you’re running your PPC campaign on the Google Display Network. Google earns a profit when an ad running on your campaign and hosted by a third party is clicked.

 This is because all third-party websites that host Google ads are connected to the Google AdSense program. These websites become partners into the program and they get a 60 percent cut of the ad spend Google receives from content searches.

For instance, if a webmaster runs a number of ads on their website and they tally about $100 ad spend through clicks. They will pocket about $68 of that ad spend if they are an AdSense partner.

Manual Clicks to Increase Your Ad Spend

Competitors who want to drain your ad budget usually do these types of clicks.

Assuming you’re higher in PPC results than your competitor, your competitor might decide to click on your ads repeatedly to increase your costs so that you’re unable to continually advertise for those search terms.

Software Automated Clicks

Fraudsters have built complex click fraud systems that use invalid IP addresses and web sessions, also knowns as bot farms.

These automatic invalid clicks usually target data stored in cookies. Usually, these bots will look at browser history, demographic information, purchase history, as well as, other data points before they target a certain ad.

Other Motives for Click Fraud

Beyond increasing ad revenue fraudulently and harming competitor ad performance, click fraud can also occur due to:

Vandalism

Click fraud can also be done as online vandalism. Some fraudulent users may want to disrupt or harm a publisher or advertiser, even when they won’t get any financial gain. This can be due to personal or political feuds.

Frame Publishers or Advertisers

A publisher’s competitor may commit click fraud with the aim of getting them into trouble with an advertising network. And since most advertisers depend much on advertising revenue, even a temporary disruption can be very damaging.

How to Prevent Click Fraud

No matter how sophisticated a click fraud can be, you can easily track it once you discover it’s happening.

Most often, clicks tend to originate from the same IP address and you can easily manage it after spotting it. But it is crucial to be aware of the warning signs to look out for. They include:

● Increased number of ad clicks without conversions

● More clicks but a higher bounce rate

● Reduction in page views despite having a higher traffic

Here are some ways you can prevent your future campaigns from falling prey to fraudsters:

Use Click Protection Service

There are a number of third-party services, software and plug-ins options you can use to reduce click fraud. These options vary in quality and price but are effective if you can afford them.

Software available includes the detection of potential click fraud, automatic tracking of click, the blocking of fraudulent clickers and bots.

A quick search of click fraud service will give an idea of the services available.

Exclude Fraudulent IP Addresses

You can actually add IP exclusions in Google ads if your internal reporting mechanisms can collect data on IP addresses. Through this, the excluded IP will be denied access to your future ads and so they can’t click them.

Avoid Low-Quality Websites

Many low-quality websites are more likely to be associated with click frauds. Sites that are more established are likely to have processes in place to prevent click fraud.

To reduce the chances of click fraud, ensure that your website placements are related to your product or service.