**** Guest Post By Click Guardian ****

What is click fraud and does it affect me?

It’s well known that using Google AdWords to generate leads that turn into jobs is prime marketing technique that many locksmiths adopt.  The beauty of AdWords in its purest form is being able to use keywords such as ‘locksmith Leicester’ or ‘locksmith Swansea’ etc to trigger an ad that entices a prospect to click through or call.  Once the visitor clicks through or makes a call, you’re charged a small amount and if all goes well you receive a phone call or enquiry that results in a job!

However, the Google AdWords system largely relies on honesty and unfortunately there are some unscrupulous people out there that engage in an activity known as click fraud to cost you dearly whilst handing themselves an advantage.

Click fraud is when someone, a bot or a competitor clicks on your paid ads (Google AdWords) in attempt to deplete your daily budget.  This can be a very costly problem and in particular we have noticed a large proportion of our clients are those that provide an emergency service, namely locksmiths!

Unfortunately there are very few ways of eradicating the problem entirely but with a service such as Click Guardian Pro there is hope to identify the perpetrators and reduce the problem by automatically detecting and blocking when excessive clicking occurs!

You may have heard that Google offer an inbuilt system to deal with invalid clicks, but with all the secretism that surrounds this faceless system, many locksmiths have completely lost trust and turn to 3rd parties where they can gather better information and trust that the problem is being dealt with.

Click Guardian works by click data being sent to their servers which then separates paid clicks from organic or direct clicks.  Once this separation has been made they inspect the paid click data carefully and log the paid clicks. One part of their algorithm that isn’t top secret is the way in which they allow their clients to choose how many clicks in a 24 hour period is acceptable prior to issuing a block.  There is also another layer of detection which assesses paid click data over a 7 day period which stops fraudsters going under the radar!  There are other components of their system which are kept secret that complete the algorithm that forms a layer of protection and transparency that Google do not offer. Ultimately this ends up in the perpetrator being blocked and once blocked ads are no longer displayed when they search for your keywords.

About the Author

Having been managing Google Ads since the inception of AdWords, Roy is the co-owner of pay per click agency and anti-click fraud specialist www.clickguardian.co.uk – In 2014 Roy realised a major issue was going undetected in the form of excessive clicks on his client’s ads.  Roy joined forces with Dan, a seasoned software and app developer to produce Click Guardian Pro, an anti-click fraud service that saves Google AdWords client’s from budget busting click fraudsters!  Since then the agency has gone from strength to strength attaining the coveted Google Certified Partner status.