Fraud & invalid traffic
Click fraud
Click fraud is deliberately generating ad clicks with no real interest behind them, to earn publisher revenue or to drain an advertiser's budget.
Search ads are paid per click, so a click is worth money. Click fraud is the deliberate manufacture of clicks, by software, hired people or tricked users, by someone who profits from them.
In search arbitrage the incentive sits with whoever earns from the feed click. A dishonest publisher or sub-publisher can push fake clicks on the sponsored listings of its own lander and collect the revenue share. A dishonest traffic source can sell bot visits to an honest arbitrageur, who then unknowingly passes them into the feed. Either way the advertiser pays for nothing.
Red flags include Ad CTR far above normal, clicks clustered on a few networks or devices, bursts at odd hours, and plenty of clicks with almost no advertiser conversions. Google says its systems filter clicks from bots, automated tools and manual clicks meant to inflate publisher profits, remove them from billing and credit advertisers when they are found later.
The defence is layered: vetted sources, pre-click filtering, post-click analysis and per-source tracking with a Sub ID so a bad source can be cut quickly. Click fraud is the intentional subset of invalid clicks.
Think of it like this
It is a taxi driver taking a tourist round the block ten times to run up the meter. The meter is accurate. The journey was pointless.
Related terms
Invalid click
An invalid click is a click on an ad that does not reflect genuine interest in the advertiser, so the advertiser should not be charged for it.
Invalid traffic (IVT)
Invalid traffic is any click, search or ad view that does not come from a real person with genuine interest, whether caused by bots, fraud or honest accident.
Bot traffic
Bot traffic is visits and clicks made by software instead of people, ranging from harmless crawlers to programs built to imitate real users.
Click farm
A click farm is a group of low-paid workers, or racks of real phones, used to click ads and perform searches by hand so the activity looks human.
Self-clicking
Self-clicking is a publisher, or people acting for it, clicking the ads on its own pages to increase its earnings.
IVT detection
IVT detection is the set of methods used to tell real, interested visitors from bots, fraud and accidental activity, before or after an ad is clicked.
Sources: Google Ads Help: Invalid clicks, definition, Google Ad Traffic Quality: invalid activity