Query fraud (fake search queries)

A search ad is priced on the belief that a person just expressed a need in words. Query fraud breaks that belief at the source. The "search" is generated by software, inserted by a hijacker, rewritten after the user typed something else, or fired in a hidden frame. The feed returns ads for a query nobody had.

Fraudsters pick the queries for money, favouring expensive keywords in insurance, law or finance, whatever the visitor was actually doing. Google's AFS policies address this directly: queries must come from a user typing into a search box, a Product-Integrated Feature or an approved alternative query set-up, and publishers may not edit, filter or pre-populate search terms. Only one query may be sent per user request.

Red flags: a query mix dominated by top-paying terms, the same queries repeating at machine-regular intervals, queries unrelated to the page or the upstream ad, and many searches from sessions that show no typing or tapping.

The softer, policy-side cousin is keyword stuffing, where a publisher pushes high-value terms at real visitors. Defence rests on keyword-level reporting and comparing queries with context.

Think of it like this

It is a waiter writing "lobster" on every order slip regardless of what the diners asked for, because the kitchen pays him per lobster.