Big Brother Google Series
Put the violin away. google Doesn't care. Part III
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Stop The Bleeding
Just do a search for click fraud protection for Google Ads. You’ll find about 5 companies that do this and have plenty of features to help protect your account from being rang up like a cash register by the competition. Most of these companies seem to operate on the same technology which is to hook into Google’s template system (the system that stores all your setting/information/reports in Google Ads) giving greater control and better information back to the user.
Many zero in on the location the click fraud occurred and some of these interfaces such as Click Guard can even flag devices used to perpetuate click fraud. The device ability is critical.
What To Look For In Click Fraud Protection
The interfaces I have reviewed (interface program tied into Google Ads to prevent click fraud) all have many features but the most critical you need to concern yourself with (besides the core features they all share like IP blocking/etc) are:
- Evaluation mode which is free or cheap – This puts the interface in reporting mode which tells you what kind of clicks you are getting and where they are coming from along with suspect clicks. It’s a great way to see if you even need to pay for click fraud protection in the first place.
- Device Flagging – Being able to stop click fraud at the device level is critical as anybody can move around with a phone and/or turn airplane mode on/off and voila! New IP address. By tying the fraud into the device it prevents this.
- Warning Notice – Once you have configured what to stop and the threshold to block clicks then you can create a custom warning message that can let fraudsters they are being logged and to tell visitors that they might of accidentally clicked on your ad multiple times and give them a direct link option
- Click limitation – Click fraud isn’t the only reason you may be burning money on your ads. Sometimes legitimate customers keep on going back to your website via the ad which rings up costs. By limiting clicks by device/IP address you can prevent intentional fraud and wasteful clicking.
- No Fingerprint Blocking – You really should never want site visitors that are using a browser that’s ancient or more likely a browser designed to hide the device that’s using it. If it doesn’t have a fingerprint (like a privacy browser) then it doesn’t need to be clicking on your ad unless you have a porn site.