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How do you prevent click fraud in Google Ads?
Posted by on February 6, 2026 at 10:47 pmI’m curious what methods people actually use to prevent or reduce click fraud.
Do you mostly rely on Google’s system, use third-party tools, or focus on things like geo, schedules, and keyword tightening?
Interested in what’s worked for you in practice
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1 Reply
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Honestly? Most people rely way more on **Google’s system** than they realize.
Google *does* filter invalid clicks and you *do* get credits back sometimes — it just happens quietly, so it never really feels satisfying or transparent.
Some people add tools like **ClickCease / Stop Click Fraud**. They can help cut down obvious stuff (repeat IPs, super blatant patterns), but they’re not magic. If someone is even semi-competent and using rotating IPs or residential traffic, no third-party tool is going to fully stop it.
What’s helped more for us in practice is boring stuff:
* Stick to **pure Search** only
* Avoid **Search Partners** and **Display** unless you’ve proven they convert
* Tighten keywords + negatives aggressively
* Be realistic with **geo** and **schedule** (late-night traffic is usually trash in a lot of verticals)Blunt truth though: if someone *really* wants to drain your budget, they can. The tools already exist. When it happens, you usually notice fast — spend spikes, CPC jumps, no real engagement, weird patterns.
It tends to show up most in **super competitive niches**, especially when lead sellers / aggregators are bidding on the same terms. At that point it’s less about “preventing fraud” and more about spotting it early and reacting.
That’s been our experience anyway.
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Unless you know and can see you’re specifically being targeted by click fraud, you don’t need any tools. They’re snake oil. 99% of advertisers don’t have an issue with click fraud, especially not on Google Search (since you mentioned keywords).
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TBH, all three.
Google CAN block some things but they don’t try to block all that they could. Their geofencing restricting is pretty sloppy and their calendar/time blocks slip sometimes.
Still and all, yes, you want to use their geofencing and scheduling tools because something is better than nothing. And yeah, you want to keep a close eye on keywords and regularly update and maintain your negatives.
For the third party tools part, I own such a service and while we’re effective, that has more to do with letting the client set their own rules that Google and other ad platforms don’t offer. Rate limits are an obvious example. Otherwise, I’ll reserve comment on that due to obvious bias. We recommend taking the steps you can do on your own BEFORE you use a service like ours and if your measures aren’t cutting it, then look into 3P help.
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I mostly rely on really super good conversion tracking + maximize conversions (the click fraudsters don’t convert) + CloudFlare to challenge all requests from outside my country (CloudFlare is crazy good at this).
My conversions are:
* Phone calls over 60 seconds
* Email signups that made it to the end of a 6-step multi-page lead form
* E-commerce sales that send dollar amounts back to GoogleI have zero issues with fraud
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Turn off search partners. Anything else is asking for account suspension.
Explored click fraud tools on and off for various corporate inhouse jobs since 2008. Nothing really jumped out as logical to use
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That’s the neat part… you don’t!
Seriously though I’ve found every third party tool to essentially be one step behind, and deliver zero value.
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Turn off display and search partners is a decent start.
Beyond that you really have to use first party data to bid for not click fraud.
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-strict region targeting
-redirect for anyone who visits anyways
-Blocky region blocker for those who don’t listen.
Still get about 1000 clicks from China per month, Google claims they aren’t affecting my results. no idea why they care to even visit as I can’t offer them anything.
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I just dont use Google Partners and display. Majority of the fraud comes through them. Regular search has very little fraud
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Turn off search partners & pmax. I have one client who swears by Clickcease. I don’t know if they still do it but they used to send a report to Google, and EVERY time Google would say, we already got those, you were never charged for that…etc. My POV was if it’s that good it should be getting refunds from Google & never saw a penny come back
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