Click fraud or invalid clicks on Google Adsense is not new to bloggers and webmasters because it’s something many bloggers have been accused of by Google.
Imagine a situation where you were making considerably good income out of Google Adsense revenues and suddenly your Google account is disabled for invalid clicks.
Put yourself in a situation where you unknowingly end up owing Google thousands of dollars in Adwords campaigns, while your account is on a couple of hundreds of dollars budget.
Click fraud is most common in pay-per-click advertising where the publisher is expected to earn money when the ads are genuinely clicked.
Click fraud and Google AdSense
Click fraud is nothing more than a technique that’s hated by most advertising companies because it is deceptive and can cost advertisers thousands of dollars.
The activities of the Click fraudsters usually occur when adverts providers (e.g Good Adsense) notice massive clicking of an online advert that offers no real impact to the advertisers.
This means that the advertisers will be incurring massive bills on the adverts without even getting any return out of the campaign.
Most online advertising companies, especially Google Adsense, don’t joke with invalid clicks and it can lead to your account being disabled or suspended because you have already agreed not to make any click on the adverts (it’s usually in Terms & Conditions).
SEE ALSO: Why RevenueHits Is A Good Google AdSense Alternative
How To Prevent click fraud
Actually, there is no easy way to prevent the occurrences of fraud click on your website. Most advertising companies are also aware of the fact that it’s almost impossible to prevent click fraud but there should be a limitation to it.
In order to reduce the risk of being a victim of fraud clicks, below are reliable measures you can take now:
Step #1]. Set limitation on the Adwords
To help prevent your Adsense from being invalidly clicked, you can set limits on the amount you are willing to pay for the click. The limitation clause will enable you to ensure that you don’t go overboard in your budget. You can also set how much you are willing to spend on your adverts daily.
Google offers resources that will enable you to get the most out of your advert campaign and if properly explored, you will surely be able to record some successes. You can also decide on the kind of websites you will like your adverts to appear on.
Say, for instance, if your ads campaign is about banking and finance, you wouldn’t want your ads to appear on websites that will offer no impact.
Step #2]. Check your competitor activities
If you are running Google Adsense on your website, your competitors can rely on fraud clicks to get you out of the business especially if they know your existence relies on the income you are making on Google Adsense.
It’s always good to keep an eye on your competitors they may be the ones trying to get you out of business by abusively clicking on your ads. There are some websites that offer click tracking reports that can help you keep track of your click-through ratio and where those clicks came from.
Step #3]. Monitor your online campaigns
This is another measure that you can take to reduce the probability that fraudulent people will ruin your online business by wasting your advertisement budget.
There are tools on the Google Adwords account that can help you track your campaign. One of these tools shows you the percentage of clicks rated as invalid.
As a Google AdSense Publisher, you can also link your website Google Analytics with your Google AdSense account so that you can be able to monitor how well your website is doing. Also, you can monitor visitors’ behaviours and how they interact with the content on your website.
Step #4]. Target specific locations
Another way to get the most out of your Google AdWords campaign and reduce the risk of click fraud is to make sure that your campaign targets specific countries.
For instance, you might probably get good results from your ads campaign if you can target countries in the Western world rather than the developing world.
It was recently reported that ads campaign that has local targets are considerably doing well than others with no specific targets. You can always choose in which country you want your adverts to show and it’s advisable not to include poor countries that can’t even afford your services anyway.
Step #5]. Target the right websites
Attracting the right potential customers through your online Google AdWords campaign could be made easier if you can target the right websites.
You can tell AdWords to display your ads campaign on certain popular websites rather not so popular websites. Also, make sure you are using the right keywords so that you will be able to have the opportunity to get your advert displayed on the right websites.
Some of these not-so-popular websites offer no real impacts; they are sometimes specifically set up to make money through Google AdSense and they will do anything to get the ads invalidly clicked.
