Explaining Google AdWords Policies and Invalid Clicks Issues

Invalid clicks are clicks generated by prohibited methods. Examples of invalid clicks may include repeated manual clicking or the use of robots, automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Invalid clicks are sometimes intended to artificially or maliciously drive up an advertiser's clicks or a publisher's earnings. Sources of invalid clicks may include:

•Manual clicks intended to increase your advertising costs or to increase profits for website owners hosting your ads

•Clicks by automated tools, robots, or other deceptive software

We closely monitor these and other scenarios to help protect advertisers from receiving invalid clicks.

How Google Combats Invalid Clicks

The security of Google AdWords advertisers is important to Google. Our proprietary technology analyzes clicks and impressions in an attempt to determine whether they fit a pattern of use that may artificially drive up an advertiser's clicks.

The goals of our system are to automatically identify clicks generated by unethical users and automated robots and to filter out these clicks before they ever reach your reports. However, if we believe you've been charged for invalid clicks in the past two months, we'll apply a credit to your account.

Google has three powerful tools for protecting clicks on AdWords ads:

Detection and filtering techniques:

Each click on an AdWords ad is examined by our system. Google looks at numerous data points for each click, including the IP address, the time of the click, any duplicate clicks, and various other click patterns. Our system then analyzes these factors to try to isolate and filter out potentially invalid clicks.

Advanced monitoring techniques:

Google uses a number of unique and innovative techniques for managing invalid click activity. We can't disclose details about the software, except to say that we're constantly working to expand and improve our technology.

The Google Team:

In addition to our automated click protection techniques, we have a team that uses specialized tools and techniques to examine individual instances of invalid clicks. When our system detects potentially invalid clicks, a member of this team examines the affected account to glean important data about the source of the potentially invalid clicks.