Identifying and Reporting Invalid Clicks

Identifying Possible Invalid Clicks

Google has dedicated a number of resources to protect advertisers against invalid clicks, including automatic filters and a team of invalid click specialists. In addition to our invalid click detection system, a variety of AdWords features and reports can help you monitor your account's activity.

• Optimization: Your first line of defense against invalid click activity is to optimise your blog so that your ads receive only the most targeted clicks and impressions. Keep in mind that conversion rate is often the best indicator of successful advertising identifing correcting low in your account will also help identify potential areas of invalid activity.
• Google Analytics: google analytics is a free tool that helps you monitor various aspects of your AdWords account, including conversion rate, visitor behavior, and campaign performance. To more accurately track only AdWords clicks, you may want to consider using auto-tagging, one of dozens of features and reports Google Analytics provides to refine and monitor traffic to your ads. Keep an eye out for sudden unexplained increases in traffic or a number of clicks from a single source. (However, remember that there are many legitimate causes for traffic increases and multiple clicks from a single source, as explained above.)
• Invalid click columns: You can also directly see number of percentages are pending that have been classified as invalid and automatically filtered from your account, by adding invalid click columns to your data table on the Campaigns tab. To add these columns, click Columns in the toolbar above the table. Download the data by clicking in the toolbar.
• Billing summary: You aren't charged for invalid clicks, and they don't affect your account statistics. If our further proactive click analysis shows that invalid clicks have escaped automatic detection, you'll receive a credit for those clicks. These credits will appear on your Billing Summary page and will be labeled "Adjustment - Click Quality."

Reporting Invalid Clicks to Google

If you believe that your account reports reflect clicks that are more extreme than ordinary user behavior or that exhibit strange patterns, first investigate whether they may be due to one of the common reasons for click increases listed previously. Then, check to see if these clicks are included either in an Invalid Click report run on your account or as click quality adjustment credits on your Billing Summary page (see points III and IV above for instructions). If not, please contact us via the click quantity form for help in English, or via the general AdWords contact form for help in all other languages.

Your request will be sent to Google's team that investigates invalid click activity on a case-by-case basis. To expedite their time-intensive investigation, please include the following information in your description of the issue:

1. The campaign(s), ad group(s) and/or keyword(s) associated with the suspicious clicks
2. The date(s) and time(s) of the suspicious click activity
3. Any data in your weblogs or reports that indicate suspicious IP addresses, referrers, or requests
4. Where your ads appeared when they received the suspicious clicks (e.g., the URL of the Display Network webpage)
5. A paragraph describing the trends in logs and/or reports that led you to believe that the click activity is invalid

The verification and research process can be time consuming and we appreciate your patience while our investigation team reviews your account. Please allow three to five business days before we respond.