Plain-language explanations of common Google Ads and fraud-protection terms.
Clicking an ad — manually or automatically — without genuine interest, to drain the advertiser's budget or inflate publisher revenue.
Carried out by competitors, bots or click farms. Google filters some automatically but not all, so extra protection is needed.
All clicks and impressions that carry no real user intent — bot traffic, accidental clicks and fraud.
Google splits it into General IVT (GIVT) and Sophisticated IVT (SIVT). SIVT is hard to detect and causes the real budget loss.
Site visits and ad clicks generated by automated software (bots) rather than humans.
There are good bots (like Google's crawler) and bad bots (click bots, scrapers). Protection must tell them apart.
Google Click Identifier — a unique click ID appended to the URL when a Google ad is clicked.
Critical for matching a click to a visitor and for conversion/refund operations.
The average amount you pay for one ad click.
Fake clicks burn budget directly via CPC. Fraud damage is bigger in high-CPC industries.
IP addresses belonging to server providers (AWS, OVH, Google Cloud, etc.) instead of home/mobile internet.
A normal customer doesn't click ads from a datacenter IP; this is a strong bot/automation signal and is usually blocked.
Tools that hide the real IP by routing traffic through another server.
Not illegal by itself, but raises the suspicion score when used to mask location during repeated ad clicks.
Search terms you don't want your ad to show for. Once added, your ad won't appear for searches containing them.
Match type matters: Broad, Phrase, Exact. The most effective way to cut irrelevant, budget-wasting searches.
Reporting a fraudulent click back to Google as "low/no value".
Unlike IP exclusion (500 limit), it has no cap and works across all campaign types including Performance Max.
A distinguishing signature built from browser and device traits (screen size, plugins, automation signals).
Used to catch traces left by bots and automation tools (Selenium, headless browsers).
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