Many advertisers within the digital marketing world fear click fraud but the question is – is this really something to worry about?
Pay Per Click advertisers often make the assumption that they are a victim of click fraud, often when their costs are exceeding their expectations but in most occasions, this assumption is incorrect.
How and why does this occur?
Here are a few examples of what Search Engines may consider being invalid clicks…
Most commonly, it is competitors that are carrying out fraudulent clicks. Competitors could attack you in this way to attempt to use up your daily budget so your ads don’t show, making their ads more likely to convert. It is also typical that ad publishers attempt to generate more money for themselves by clicking on the ads displayed on their own sites.
You may have heard of the term ‘Click Farms’. Despite being a rare form of click fraud, this is the name given to a group of individuals who are hired to click on advertising to stimulate web traffic. In paid search, this has a hugely negative impact on advertisers.
Click fraud is not always manual clicking, like the examples above. Automated clicking tools, robots and other deceptive software could drive invalid clicks to Pay Per Click ads.
Occasionally, clicks may also be unintentional or accidental rather than malicious.
What does Google do to prevent click fraud?
Each Search Engine has their own methods of combatting this issue, Google’s being impressively efficient. Google examine each click and their advanced system identifies any invalid clicks.
If you feel that some fraudulent clicks have escaped Google’s automatic detection, you should get in touch with Google’s ‘Click Quality Team’ who investigate suspicious traffic to determine if any invalid click activity has occurred. You may be eligible for the refunded credit.
Does this interfere with my account data?
Definitely not. Data from invalid clicks is automatically filtered and discarded from the information displayed to us – this means all data is genuine and accurate so we can optimise worry-free.
