Google Ad campaigns can be a great way to increase traffic to your website, but they are also susceptible to click fraud. Click fraud is when someone, or a group of people, clicks on your ads repeatedly with the intent of costing you money. This can be done manually by someone clicking on your ad over and over again, or it can be done by click fraud bots that automatically click on ads without any human interaction. Either way, it can end up costing you a lot of money. That’s where click fraud protection software like ClickGuard comes in.
What is ClickGuard?
ClickGuard is a Google Ads fraud detection software. It assists you in identifying and eliminating fraud attacks in your campaigns, as well as protecting you from click fraud bots and malicious actors. ClickGuard also provides detailed analytics to track the effectiveness of your campaigns, as well as insights into potential threats that could jeopardize your marketing efforts.
What are the benefits of using ClickGuard?
With fraud protection software like ClickGuard, you can be confident that your click ads will be safe from scammers and click robots. You can be sure that suspicious or malicious clicks from click farms won’t cost you any money, and be able to focus on increasing the effectiveness of your campaigns without fear of being taken advantage of by criminals. Your ads will be safe and secure with ClickGuard’s comprehensive fraud protection software, which will ultimately give you peace of mind.
How Does ClickGuard Work?
ClickGuard works by automatically detecting suspicious or anonymous clicks on your ads and blocking them from costing you money. It uses advanced algorithms to identify suspicious click patterns that could be indicative of a click fraud attack and blocks those clicks in real time so they don’t cost you any money. ClickGuard also provides detailed analytics, reports, and insights into potential threats to let you know if someone is trying to take advantage of you. With this information, you can make informed decisions about how to protect your campaigns and eliminate potential attacks.
Key Features
Google Ads shield
Protection for your Google Ads budget with dynamic and comprehensive click fraud protection solutions that include:
- Click frequency protection
- Invalid click protection
- Target frequency protection
- Time-on-site protection
- Conversion based protection
- Click intensity projection
Intelligent Protection
Dynamic fraud threat detection that’s fully adaptable to your specific business or industry:
- Proxy and VPN detection
- Bot detection
- Campaign level protection
- AdGroup level protection
- Keyword level protection
- Device level protection
- Geo-location protection
- IP range level protection
- Threat level classification
Forensic Reporting
Powerful forensic reports that allow you to audit and visually assess all click transactions to gauge quality which include:
- IP address and IP range reports
- Keyword click reports
- Placement source reports
- Device tracking reports
- On-demand CSV export
- Scheduled summary reports
- Click quality reports
Automated Optimization
Variety of automated processes that provide you with industry-leading click fraud protection and PPC optimization. These include the following:
- Set search campaign click cap
- Set display campaign click cap
- Organic traffic monitoring
- Pausing campaigns
- Ad placements whitelist
- IP address whitelist
- Custom duration exclusions
- Manage audiences of converters
Advanced Customization
Seamless integration with common web and CMS platforms. Fast and easy to install.
- Website Platform integrations
- WordPress plugin
- Email and Slack notifications
- Custom flagging
- Aliases tags
Pricing
ClickGuard offers three pricing plans:
ActiveGUARD $79 per month
Click fraud detection and prevention for Google Ads search campaigns
- 5000 Google Ad Clicks
- 1 Google Ad account
- 50 or more Campaigns
- 50 or more Domains
- Forensic Reporting
- IP Threat Mitigation
- Bot Detection
- Automated Blocking
- 5 Rules Per Type
- Device Tracking
- 3-Months Data Retention
- Standard Support
PremiumGUARD $79 per month
Search, Bot, GDN, and network fraud protection with advanced waste mitigation. Everything in ActiveGUARD plus the following:
- GDN Placement Mitigation
- GEO Threat Mitigation
- Unlimited Campaigns
- Unlimited Domains
- VPN/Proxy Mitigation
- Behavior Analysis & Rules
- Keyword / Adgroup Rules
- 10 Rules Per Type
- Reporting API Access
- Premium Support
EliteGUARD $99 per month
Complete click fraud protection and waste mitigation to scale ROAS traffic. Everything in PremiumGUARD, Plus:
- Dedicated analyst advisor
- Unlimited Rules
- 6-Month Data Retention
- Intense Threat Mitigation
- Full API Access
- 24/7 Priority Support
Pros
- Click fraud protection and prevention will save a ton of money on marketing. ClickGuard helps you do all of that by identifying click fraud across all of your marketing campaigns.
- You can also examine your users’ behavior to further optimize your application, website, or marketing campaigns.
- ClickGuard’s customer service team is very accommodating and available 24/7. From helping you with your setup process if you’re new to the platform, to resolving any problems you may have with your click campaigns, platform settings, etc.
Cons
- Setting up the UI can be a little difficult to fully understand, normally, it takes a few days using the platform to get accustomed to the setup
- There might be potential restrictions on ClickGuard’s integration partners. Reaching out to their technology team before signing up would be wise
- Even though it’s already packed with a variety of automated processes, a little more automation within the platform is something some users would like to see
ClickGuard vs. The Competition
Singular
Singular is one of the newer click-fraud solutions in the market. A group of marketers and developers with a passion for fraud prevention and ad technology created the platform. With Singular’s ability to sift through data and run it through a database of known fraudulent IP addresses and cookies, you can be confident that your marketing efforts are reaching actual customers.
Singular’s customer support team gets high marks for being readily available to help in resolving integration problems, reporting nuances, and streamlining platform management for your team and clients. Not being able to share creative reports via a custom link is one of the few lowlights of this otherwise solid click fraud protection software.
Opticks
Opticks is a fraud detection software that detects fraudulent clicks on your website by using click tracking. It can be used by any business that wants to ensure the legitimacy of its online traffic by monitoring clicks on a page and comparing them to an expected distribution of clicks. When the software detects something unusual or suspicious in that distribution, users will immediately be alerted
A key benefit for Opticks’ users is its ability to dig down into reporting data, including campaign-level data, keyword reporting, geo-monitoring, and more. Unrealistic click data is not an issue at all with the tool.
But the platform is quite pricey, and because of that, you need to ensure that it is going to provide the value for money that you and your customers are looking for.
Lunio
Lunio is click-tracking fraud software that lets you see whoever is clicking on your ads and how many times they have clicked. It’s an excellent way to keep track of your ad spend and determine the type of traffic you’re receiving. You can see where your ads are being clicked and then use that click data to create better ads and improve your overall ad performance.
A couple of lowlights for Lunio are that it can take a bit of time to place the tracking code across all of your marketing campaigns. Pulling data directly from the platform has a lot of room for improvement. Providing more custom reports, data fields, and formatted reports will level up the user experience
Clixtell
Clixtell provides a complete solution for businesses and digital marketing agencies. Call tracking, web analytics, Pay-Per-Click fraud detection, prevention, and protection services for online advertisers. They can track every visit to your website and protect your PPC ads budget by blocking any attempts to attack your Google Ads Campaigns and Bing Ads, example using Lunio PPC protect.
You can instantly and automatically prevent attackers from seeing your ads. And they’re able to execute this with great accuracy. They’ve gotten very good feedback for this feature.
Conclusion
Overall, there is a variety of click fraud protection software in the market today. ClickGuard, with
its simple interface and powerful protection capabilities, stands out due to its reasonable pricing. Businesses can use this software to protect their campaigns from costly click fraud without breaking the bank, while still allowing legitimate traffic to be directed to their websites.
Before deciding to sign up, it’s critical to understand your company’s goals. Weigh it out. At the end of the day, by doing your homework, you can make the best-informed decision about ClickGuard being the best fit for your needs.
