11:08 AM
Aaron Manogue
Recently we had a client who we run a large Adwords campaign for that asked us, "Why are all of these credits to my account appearing on my statement for Google Adwords as "Invalid Clicks"? An "Invalid Click" is defined by Google as:
So since we clearly aren't going through and clicking on our own ads to run our cost up, what does this mean? Clearly there are certainly going to be instances that people click the ads and accidentally double click them or maybe they click the ad and then bookmark your page, meaning the cookie that Google puts into their browser on that page turns into a "click" each time they go back to your page.
But then there's the darker side of it all. Our client sat down with us and went over his Adwords invoice and there were typical "invalid click" credits to his account for $.10-.60 at a time. These are obviously from the innocent double clicks or something of that nature. Then we spotted a few credits that seemed extremely suspicious to us. Two credits between $100-150; a considerable amount of money especially considering daily budgets are rarely set any higher than $50-100/day.
This meant that someone, more than likely a competitor, was purposely going and clicking our clients ads hundreds even thousands of times in order to reach their daily budget, thus shutting down the ads for the day. They could have been doing so in many ways: paying someone to sit there and click the ads (Yes, there are companies out there that pay people to do this), sitting there themselves and doing it, or paying for a bot to go through and automatically click the ads until they don't appear anymore.
The client was very upset by this (and rightfully so) and wanted to know what action he could take to figure out who it was and take further action if necessary. Google offers little help on this end due to privacy laws in finding out who or what (bots) was causing the invalid clicks. Basically we were left with the following answer from Google (This is only a synopsis of what Google sent us):
"Invalid click activity consists of any clicks or impressions that may artificially inflate an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings, and for which we decide not to charge the advertiser. This includes, but is not limited to, clicks or impressions generated by a publisher clicking on his own ads, a publisher encouraging clicks on his ads, automated clicking tools or traffic sources, robots, or other deceptive software"
But then there's the darker side of it all. Our client sat down with us and went over his Adwords invoice and there were typical "invalid click" credits to his account for $.10-.60 at a time. These are obviously from the innocent double clicks or something of that nature. Then we spotted a few credits that seemed extremely suspicious to us. Two credits between $100-150; a considerable amount of money especially considering daily budgets are rarely set any higher than $50-100/day.
This meant that someone, more than likely a competitor, was purposely going and clicking our clients ads hundreds even thousands of times in order to reach their daily budget, thus shutting down the ads for the day. They could have been doing so in many ways: paying someone to sit there and click the ads (Yes, there are companies out there that pay people to do this), sitting there themselves and doing it, or paying for a bot to go through and automatically click the ads until they don't appear anymore.
The client was very upset by this (and rightfully so) and wanted to know what action he could take to figure out who it was and take further action if necessary. Google offers little help on this end due to privacy laws in finding out who or what (bots) was causing the invalid clicks. Basically we were left with the following answer from Google (This is only a synopsis of what Google sent us):
"WHO IS CLICKING ON YOUR ADS : We are not able to release any information on the users that are clicking on your ads. However, if you have access to your site's web logs, they will often contain information on the IP addresses of the users that are clicking on your ads. You can obtain this information from your webmaster.
HOW GOOGLE DEALS WITH INVALID CLICKS : The security of AdWords advertisers is a top priority for Google. Please be assured that we will continue to monitor all clicks on your ads to prevent abuse. For more information about the steps we take to combat invalid click activity, please visithttp://www.google.com/adwords/adtrafficquality/overview..html"
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