Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center

Invalid Clicks and your Account

In the Overview section we explained what click fraud and invalid clicks are, how Google protects advertisers against invalid clicks and what advertisers can do to protect themselves. The technologies we use offer very effective protection from invalid clicks as they can proactively detect invalid clicks. These technologies keep the rate of reactively detected clicks at less than 0.02% of all clicks.

In advertisers’ accounts we provide information about invalid clicks that are filtered out by our automated algorithms and manual analysis.

1. Report with invalid clicks data – automatically filtered
2. Click Quality Adjustments – manually filtered

1. Report with invalid clicks data

You can run a Campaign Performance or Account Performance report to see the number and percentage of clicks that have been classified as invalid and automatically filtered from your account. You are not charged for these clicks, and they do not affect your account statistics.

Here are instructions for running a Campaign Performance or Account Performance report with information on invalid clicks:

1. Click on the 'Reports' tab and then on the 'Create Report' link.
2. For 'Report Type,' click on the radio button next to 'Campaign Performance' or 'Account Performance.'
3. Choose your 'View' from among the available options (note that hourly views are not available for invalid clicks reporting).
4. Select the 'Date Range' for your report by using the time span. Data for invalid clicks reporting is available from January 1, 2006 onwards.
5. For Campaign Performance reports, select which campaigns to include by choosing the radio button for 'All campaigns' or the radio button for 'Manually select from a list' ( to hand-pick your campaigns for inclusion).
6. Within 'Advanced Settings,' click 'Add or Remove Columns.'
7. Check the column option boxes for 'Invalid Clicks' (for the number of invalid clicks filtered during the reporting period), and / or for 'Invalid Clicks Rate' (for the percentage of clicks filtered out of your total clicks during the reporting period).
8. Select any other data you want included in this report by clicking the appropriate boxes and adding filters if desired. Note that reports with data for invalid clicks can't include data for ad distribution.
9. Enter a unique 'Report Name' and check the box to save your settings as a template if you want to re-use them in the future.
10. For 'Templates, Scheduling and Email,' schedule your report to run at regular intervals if you want it automatically generated; provide an email address for delivery if desired; and then choose your preferred report delivery format (.csv, .csv for Excel, .tsv, .xml, or .html).
11. Click 'Create Report.'

Here you see an example of an Account report with invalid clicks data.

2. Click Quality Adjustments

We continuously monitor advertisers' accounts and apply credits if we identify unfiltered invalid clicks. Credits are labeled 'Adjustment - Click Quality'. You can view them by visiting your AdWords account's 'My Account' tab, selecting the Billing Summary page, and clicking the 'Advertising costs and adjustments' link. See the example below.