They've always been there, they are there today and they will always be there.
They may come from click farms (companies that click on Google Ads, sometimes paid by your competitors), your competitors and their employees or bored people who happen to click on your ads.
This is a problem that Google is well aware of and has been fighting for years to at least minimise the damage.
In the Google Ads account, you can add, both as a view and as a column, how many invalid clicks your campaign has generated.
Google's definition of an invalid click:
Clicks on ads that aren’t a result of genuine user interest, including intentionally fraudulent traffic and accidental or duplicate clicks.
Google relies on a multi-layered approach to protect advertisers from invalid traffic.
Here are a few examples of what Google might consider to be invalid clicks:
Manual clicks meant to increase your advertising costs or to increase profits for website owners hosting your ads
Clicks by automated clicking tools, robots, or other deceptive software
Accidental clicks that provide no value to the advertiser, such as the second click of a double-click
Well, Google detects these and does not charge advertisers for these clicks.
But there is more... much more.
Google does not detect them all. Recently, a new customer had a huge problem with invalid clicks, and I opened a ticket with our direct support at Google. Here is Google's response:
Google often labels double clicks as "normal"; while a company that is paying for ads doesn't see it that way.
Moreover, with VPN systems, dynamic IPs, etc., it's quite easy to simulate human behaviour to fool Google and burn through a company's daily Google Ads budget in a short time.
The solution?
After 10 years managing Google Ads accounts, and after several companies contacting us about this problem, we have developed 3 layers of protection for our clients' accounts.
We have the first layer, which is the Google Ads control that all Google Ads accounts have; a second layer, which is our internal layer; and a third layer, which acts as a safeguard for the second layer.
So, we analyse, block and filter absolutely everything so that our clients' ads are available to those who are really looking for them.
Here's a screenshot of a customer who contacted us in February with this problem. In March, we avoided over 700 invalid clicks and blocked over 500 fraudulent IPs, saving our client over €600, and we had 42% cleaner Google Ads traffic.
Specialising in Google Ads, as you can see, is a combination of software, knowledge, contacts, filters, time, analysis and study.
This is why we exclusively offer Google Ads account management and Google Ads-based consultancy, to always be at the forefront of the necessary knowledge, in all aspects and at all levels.
On to the next conversion with Google Ads (without invalid Clicks!)
Dean.