Are my ads getting fake clicks?

[aristotle]

A couple of weeks ago I began noticing discrepancies between my Adwords Campaign reports and what i see in my logs. Because my landing page is an article about a specialized topic with low search volume, the page doesn't get much traffic, and so it's easy for me to check log entries for individual visits against the Adwords reports, which can be segmented to within a given hour.

So about two weeks ago i began seeing clicks reported by Adwords during hourly time periods for which my logs showed no human visitors. Since then, I've been seeing 1-3 cases of this almost everyday.

I don't think my server has been down during this time, unless it was for very short periods, certainly not down enough to account for what I've been seeing. So now I'm wondering if these discrepancies are due to fake clicks.

I'm not losing any of my own money, because I started my Adwords account with a $100 coupon, and then got another $50 credit later as incentive for creating a new ad group, and I still haven't spent most of that money. But i still find it a bit annoying to be charged for bogus clicks, if that's what's happening.

So has anyone else ever noticed this kind of discrepancy, and if so, what conclusions did you reach as to the cause?

[toidi]

Fake clicks ran me out of adwords. I shut of affiliates and that helped some, but it didn't stop competitors. Google was no help but this was quite a while ago, so maybe they are more helpful now?

I have been thinking of starting back up but i can't get rid of the bad taste.

my vertical is very local and there are new advertisers showing up all the time. Almost none of them stay with adwords for more than a year, if that long, so i suspect the fake click problem still exists.

[Nutterum]

If the vertical is very local - geo-restrict it as much as possible. Custom IPs of competitors and several campaigns with different cities/regions(if applicable) not being targeted by the ads can narrow where the fake clicks are originating from. Once you know - exclude those. It will not solve your problem but it will lessen the negative impact.

On average (niche dependant!) 15% of all clicks are bounces. If you see higher amounts even after ad copy and landing page optimization then you keywords might be misleading. If you are absolutely sure that you have good copy and landing page and keywords and still see 60-70% bounce rate, then you might think about the device your visitors are coming from. Despite what Google is preaching about mobile, the conversion rate from there is still quite poor for many services and I`d recommend placing -200% CPC for mobiles.

Do not count bounced clicks as fake ones immediately as there is more than one reason for the poor performance of your ad campaign. Test first then again and then some. If all does not work out for you, then your service is not recognised as something worthy of purchasing/engaging over the internet.

Oh as a side tip: try looking for your business in other relevant local regions and check how the businesses perform there. This will be a good indicator whether you are doing something right or wrong.

[Nutterum]

I am sorry for the double post but my original post was aimed for @toidi more than @aristotle .

As for the OP`s case - this might be a case of forced-fake clicking. But if it is done through someone from the competition then you should see a bit more impressions in your Webmaster Tools for the relevant keywords as well. If that is the case - bummer. I have not encountered it myself but have heard a few stories. Some people just stop - and re-enable the campaign at odd hours just to mess with the script or the human doing the fake clicking, though I can`t tell whether that was successful.

[aristotle]

toidi and Nutterum -- Thanks for the replies

Nutterum -- I'm not talking about bounces. In the cases I've seen, my logs show that no human visitor even tried to come to my site. Nobody bounced from the site because they were never on the site to begin with. So these are not bounces.

[Nutterum]

Well in that case as far as I know Google reimburses the funds. At least they did in my case back in 2013. I tried digging in more into the subject but outside of the spam bot net computer networks selling "crush your adwords competition" scams I did not encounter any eligible reports, complaints or official responses.

To be honest if this happens for my adword accounts I`d be on the Google support hotline 24/7 until they resolve the problem for me...and I firmly believe they will.

[aristotle]

Nutterum -- You seem to be making the false assumption that Google always has the ability to detect and correct this type of problem.

[Nutterum]

Oh, no! Far from it. I just believe that more often than not, they do a good job handle-ing that type of problem as ads are their main revenue stream.

[engine]

I've seen these discrepancies, but never been too troubled by them until they get beyond an acceptable level.

There are so many different reasons for those discrepancies. Fraudulent clicks are the worst issue as it's very tough to prove. When its low volume, as you indicate, it's much easier to chase down, but it's much harder to do anything about.

Even though Google has improved its detection, it's not going to ever be 100% perfect. I would regularly see refunds which, at one stage, started to get to become alarming.

There has to be an understanding that fraudulent activity will go on. The question really is, is it beyond an acceptable level for that campaign? One advertiser pulled the plug on it as it had reached the point where it wasn't cost-effective. They wanted to stop all the ads and take a breather. Some weeks later they came back and experimented again. The ads worked fine for a while, and then the apparent false clicks started to climb again. Once again, they pulled the plug and have not yet returned.

As i said, make an allowance, and if it's beyond acceptable levels, make the decision from there.