How to Spot Click Fraud on Your PPC Ads

Spotting and preventing click fraud on your PPC ads isn’t actually that tricky, if you know what you’re looking for. But it helps to understand; what is click fraud…

Put simply, click fraud is the act of someone (or something!) clicking on your ad in an effort to deplete or divert your PPC ad spend. This can be as part of an organised campaign (possibly part of organised crime), or it can be repeated exposure to bots of web crawlers. Google refers to this under the catch all title of ‘invalid clicks’, which covers everything from accidental clicks to vindictive clicking.

Over the past few years there have been several recorded incidents of organised ad fraud, which have been dealt with by some of the advertising platforms. However, it is widely acknowledged that the big players, Google, Facebook et al, do the bare minimum to combat the practice of click fraud.

So, knowing how to spot click fraud on your PPC ads means you can keep tabs on what’s going on yourself. Understanding is, of course, the first step in click fraud prevention. So, if you’re running a PPC ad campaign, keep an eye out for these tell tale signs of click fraud or ad fraud.

1. Watch for unusual peaks in clicks

Usually tell tale sign number one that you’ve been visited by the click fraud fairy is an unusual surge in clicks. These may also be over a short space of time, or at an unusual time of day.

It could be particularly obvious if you haven’t done anything to your ad campaign for a while. If you’ve not adjusted your bid, or done any serious tweaking, ask yourself why the unusual spike in clicks on your PPC ad?

And if you’re wondering what constitutes an unusual peak in clicks, it will of course depend on your product and service. Anything above twice as much traffic might look a bit fishy. But there can be other reasons why your traffic might spike. For example, if your product or service is suddenly in the public eye, or perhaps you’re running an awareness campaign elsewhere.

If there is a reason for the surge in traffic, but things seem a little off, you can always check the other signs of click fraud on your ads.

2. Big bounce rate

A high bounce rate is never a good thing when it comes to PPC ad campaigns. But if you’re looking for tell-tale signs of ad fraud or click fraud, this could be a red flag, especially when combined with other factors on this list.

OK, so firstly, what is an average or acceptable bounce rate for your common or garden PPC ad campaign? Although it’s hard to pin down an average across all industries and sectors, anything under 50% is deemed good.

Once you start seeing bounce rates over 70% it might be time to start looking at your site closely. However, this might be down to your PPC ad targeting or your landing page rather than invalid clicks.

If you spot that your PPC ads have seen a spike in clicks, along with a surge in bounce rates, it might be time to ask some serious questions.

3. Duplicate IP addresses

Historically, seeing lots of duplicate IP addresses was an obvious way to spot if you’d been a victim of click fraud. And of course, seeing lots of the same IP addresses on your log is definitely a red flag when it comes to spotting click fraud or ad fraud.

Modern ad fraud techniques are a little more sophisticated than just using the same computer to click on an ad multiple times. Using VPNs, browser or device hijacking and virtual IP addresses means that even if your ad has been clicked fraudulently, it may not be evident from the IP.

Yes, this is something to watch out for, but isn’t necessarily the first thing you’ll spot. In fact, you can see multiple clicks from the same IP address for genuine reasons, such as shared or public networks.

4. Unusual locations

Hang on, we’ve never had a purchase from Kazakhstan – why so many clicks now? Yes, the global marketplace means that we can buy and sell all over the world. But when it comes to spotting click fraud, lots of clicks from distant or obscure lands could be an alarm bell.

You might have heard of click farms, which are locations where multiple devices are used to click on, well, anything really. These click farms can be used for boosting social likes, or damaging marketing budgets, whatever you want to use them for really…

The popular perception of click farms is that they’re found in developing countries, like Bangladesh, the Philippines, Pakistan and Nigeria. However, the truth is more complex (isn’t it always?)

Click farms have been busted in the USA, Europe and Thailand. But… And here is an interesting development: App developers in Asia have recently been sued for creating apps which click on ads from users mobile phones. In short, you don’t need a click farm to bulk click on PPC ads any more!

5. High clicks/Low conversions

Seeing more clicks but not seeing the corresponding conversions? This might be an obvious indicator of click fraud on your PPC ads. A surge in ad clicks really should mean a similar surge in sales, especially if you’ve had a consistent ratio of clicks to sales previously.

Again, keep an eye out for other factors we’ve looked at on this list, such as locations, IP addresses and bounce rates. If you’re seeing that click surge and no sales, plus one of the above, then you’ll need to take some course of action to avoid falling victim to click fraud.

Take a look at our recent blog about how to improve your click through rate, and improve your conversions.

Click fraud and ad fraud prevention

If you’ve looked at your PPC ads and it’s pretty clear that you’ve been paying some fraudster to click on your links, then you’ll probably be wondering what you can do about it…

Once you’ve spotted click fraud on your PPC ads, the first steps to take are to limit your exposure. We always recommend adjusting the times that your campaigns are running, and limiting the geographic exposure of your PPC ads. This isn’t always 100% effective though, with fraudsters using increasingly sophisticated methods to get around marketers efforts to target specific markets.

Although Google and the advertising networks do offer some sort of coverage against invalid clicks, it is pretty basic. Another issue is that, even though they do identify and refund if you’ve been a victim of some invalid (fraudulent) clicks, this is usually too late. By then you’ve lost the sale and the refund for the click can’t make up for the lost effect of your marketing.

The most effective and proactive way to guard against invalid clicks (aka click fraud or ad fraud), is by using anti-click fraud software. This makes sure click fraud prevention is handled automatically, and smartly, with a dedicated service watching your back 24/7.

ClickCease is designed to protect your PPC ad campaign and minimise the chances of those clicks happening in the first place. Block bots and web scrapers, click farms and any other non-genuine source of clicks. The only way to find out if it really works is to check it out yourself, so try our 14 day free trial and see for yourself…