Is Click Fraud In Google Ads Losing You £££s?

Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the most effective advertising tools in a marketer’s arsenal. Over 7 million advertisers use PPC every year, investing over $10.1 billion in this strategy. There is a good reason for this as research suggests PPC is one of the top three generators for conversions and it’s estimated that every $1 spent on Google Ads returns an average revenue of $2.

So, while PPC offers many benefits, there are a few drawbacks too. One of these is click fraud. So, just what is click fraud and is it losing your business money?

What Is Click Fraud?

Click fraud is an underhand tactic to try and inflate the number of clicks on a pay-per-click advert. There are several reasons why someone might do this.

Competitor Sabotage

For a start, a competitor may want to sabotage a business to drive up their rival’s advertising and marketing costs.

By inflating the number of clicks, they may eat up their competitor’s budget caps for the advert very early on in the day so that potential customers do not see the advert. Consequently, they may choose their product/service over their competitors.

Advertiser Profit Drive

Advertisers that publish your Google Ads on behalf of your business may try to increase the clicks on your adverts in order to generate more revenue for themselves. These clicks will not lead to any sales conversion for the business. Instead, these clicks will just eat up budget spend, losing the business money.

Why Is Click Fraud So Prevalent?

With this type of fraud being so easy to do and so troublesome for businesses, it does seem surprising that there hasn’t been tighter regulation around PPC. However, it is important to remember that search engines will still see an increase in revenue regardless of whether the click is genuine or not. With this, it is easy to see why search engines don’t crack down on click fraud problems.

How To Identify Click Fraud In Your Google Ads Account

If you go into your internal reporting system, you can find critical information which will help you to identify potential fraud.

The essential information to look for includes;

• User agent and IP address – This can help you to determine if the IP address clicking on your advert is the same person. If you see a repeat IP, with the same repeat agent, then it is likely to show click fraud. With this information, you can understand the device being used to access your site and the IP address owner too.
• Click and action timestamp – Another way to identify click fraud is to look at the click timestamp and the action timestamp. An action timestamp is when someone completes an action on your site. With click fraud, a click timestamp (when someone clicks on the ad) will appear but no action timestamp. This is because the focus is to click on the ad; there is no desire to interact with the page.

If you notice click fraud on your site, then you can contact the Google Ads Support team.

Can You Eliminate Click Fraud?

There are several ways to reduce the chance of PPC fraud. These include;

• Setting IP exclusions – blocking fraudulent IPs
• Use remarketing campaigns – targeting only interested parties
• Adjust your ad location – if you notice fraud from a specific geographic region
• Consider Facebook and Twitter ads instead – due to specific targeting options.

Receive A FREE PPC Audit

If you’re looking for help with your PPC strategy or eliminating click fraud, we can help. We offer a free PPC audit that can help you to get more bang for your buck. Find out more by filling in our quick contact form.