What Google Ads Advertisers Actually Need to Know

If you’re running Google Ads campaigns, you’ve probably been approached by companies selling click fraud protection software. They’ll show you alarming statistics about wasted ad spend, competitor sabotage, and bot networks draining your budget. But before you sign up for another monthly subscription, it’s worth understanding what’s really happening—and where the actual risks lie.

What Google Already Does

Google has a significant commercial interest in maintaining advertiser trust, and they’ve invested heavily in fraud prevention. According to Google’s own Ad Traffic Quality documentation, they employ:

Over 200 automated filters running in real-time to catch invalid traffic before you’re charged
Machine learning algorithms analysing numerous data points per interaction
A dedicated Ad Traffic Quality Team of PhDs, data scientists, and researchers
Manual reviews of flagged anomalies (though these can take days to weeks)
Partnership with HUMAN (formerly White Ops) as an additional verification layer
Automatic credits for invalid traffic detected after invoicing

Google’s official position is clear: “You won’t be charged for invalid clicks or impressions as they provide little or no value.” When they detect fraud after billing, credits appear on subsequent invoices.

This doesn’t mean Google catches everything—they acknowledge “no filter is perfect.” But it does mean there’s already a substantial layer of protection in place before you add any third-party tools.

The Evidence from PPC Agencies

Ten Thousand Foot View, a PPC management agency with hands-on experience of click fraud protection tools, published a detailed analysis of whether third-party protection is worthwhile. Their findings are instructive:

“Based on our own experience, both Google and Microsoft already capture extra clicks and prevent them at source or credit them back. This is evidenced by the vast majority of refund requests coming back with no credit or a very small credit.”

In other words, when agencies submit evidence of suspected fraud to Google, they typically get minimal refunds—not because Google is being stingy, but because their systems have already caught and credited most of the invalid activity.

The 500 IP Limit Problem

Most click fraud protection services work by detecting suspicious IPs and adding them to Google’s exclusion list. But there’s a fundamental limitation: Google caps IP exclusions at 500 addresses per campaign.

This matters because:

A serious click farm can rotate through thousands of IP addresses
500 IPs might block a small competitor, but won’t stop organised fraud
Click fraud services work around this by rotating out “older” IPs—essentially a game of whack-a-mole
Microsoft Ads is even more limited at just 100 IPs per campaign

Worse still, IP exclusions aren’t even available for Video campaigns, Hotel campaigns, App campaigns, Performance Max, Smart Display, or Demand Gen campaigns. If you’re running PMax (and Google is pushing everyone toward it), third-party IP blocking simply doesn’t work.

Where Click Fraud Actually Lives: The Display Network

Here’s the crucial insight that most click fraud vendors don’t emphasise: the fraud problem varies dramatically by campaign type.

Search Campaigns: Lower Risk

On Search, fraud is limited to competitors clicking your ads out of spite or curiosity. There’s no profit motive—nobody earns money from clicking your search ads. Google’s systems are quite effective here because they control the entire environment.

Display Network: Where the Money Is

The Google Display Network is fundamentally different. Publishers earn 68% of revenue from clicks on ads displayed on their sites. This creates a direct financial incentive for fraud.

WordStream’s analysis of GDN campaigns found that reviewing one account showed ads appearing on over 48,000 different placements, with “more than 90% of them fake.” Click farms exist specifically to exploit this model—they create low-quality sites, join AdSense, and generate fraudulent clicks to pocket the revenue.

The problem compounds when you use conversion-based bidding. Sophisticated fraudsters now submit fake form completions, which Google’s algorithm interprets as successful conversions—causing it to serve even more of your ads to the fraudulent sites. It’s a feedback loop that can drain budgets rapidly.

Remarketing: The Safe Middle Ground

Here’s where it gets interesting. Remarketing campaigns—where you show display ads only to people who’ve previously visited your website—are largely immune to click farm fraud. The logic is simple: bots and click farm workers have never visited your site, so they’re not in your remarketing audience and never see your ads.

This is solving the problem at source rather than trying to filter it after the fact.

The Performance Max Problem

Google’s Performance Max campaigns deserve special mention because they’re increasingly pushed on advertisers, yet they’re particularly vulnerable to fraud:

PMax is a black box that includes Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Discovery
You have limited visibility into where your ads actually appear
Google doesn’t provide complete placement data—one agency blocked every reported placement for two weeks and fake leads persisted
IP exclusions don’t work on PMax campaigns
Third-party click fraud tools are essentially ineffective

For lead generation businesses in particular, PMax can be problematic. Multiple industry analysts recommend sticking to standard Search campaigns with Exact and Phrase match keywords for cleaner traffic.

Practical Recommendations

Rather than paying for third-party click fraud protection—which often involves intrusive JavaScript tracking that creates GDPR compliance obligations—consider this approach:

Use Search campaigns for intent-driven traffic. Google’s native protection is generally adequate here, and there’s no publisher profit motive driving fraud.
Use remarketing for Display. Your first-party audience data provides natural protection against click farms since fraudsters can’t be in an audience they’ve never qualified for.
If you must prospect on Display, hand-pick placements. Rather than automatic placements across millions of unknown sites, manually select legitimate publishers (weather sites, reputable news outlets, industry-specific sites you trust).
Be cautious with Performance Max for lead generation. The lack of transparency and control makes it vulnerable to fraud that you can’t easily detect or prevent.
Monitor your Invalid Clicks column in Google Ads. Add this column to your campaign reports to see what Google is already catching and crediting back.
Use conversion tracking wisely. Don’t fire conversion pixels on easy-to-fake actions like page views. Track genuine business outcomes—completed purchases, verified leads, or at minimum actions that require real engagement.

The Bottom Line

Click fraud is real, but it’s not equally distributed across campaign types. The biggest vulnerability is in prospecting Display campaigns where publishers profit from your clicks. The elegant solution isn’t bolting on expensive monitoring tools—it’s simply not putting your budget where the fraud lives.

For most small to medium businesses running primarily Search campaigns with some remarketing, Google’s native protection is likely sufficient. Save the subscription fees and invest them in better ads instead.

Click Fraud Protection for PPC Accounts