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WebmasterWorld's administrator, engine, aka Neil Marshall, created a thread at WebmasterWorld saying he is noticing a large increase in the refunds he is getting to his AdWords campaigns. The refunds are coming from "invalid activity."
He was surprised to see so many refunds recently specific to that reason of invalid activity.
He said, "I have noticed an increase in invalid activity refunds recently."
Then he asks why? It is because of an increase in bot activity? More accidental clicks from mobile users? More spammers? Why?
Have you noticed an increase in refunds due to invalid clicks?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Image credit to ShutterStock for the fuzzy click.
Comments:
Kyle proctor
01/08/2014 01:52 pm
Agreed. I am also seeing a big change. In some cases 3-4 days of budget are bieng refunded every week or so. Makes it very hard to gauge what is working and what is not.
jimster
01/08/2014 04:26 pm
Just went and checked our accounts. Looks like we're seeing similar charges. We usually have some every few days for a few cents, always less than a dollar. For the past month or so we've seen increasing amounts around a few dollars. The largest number we saw was $17 less than a week ago. $17 isn't significant to the amount spent in our accounts, but it's definitely significant in comparison to other invalid activity credits. Something is definitely going on. Appreciate Google giving the money back, but it makes one question what the cause is and are they possibly missing other invalid clicks?
StevenLockey
01/08/2014 04:45 pm
I think the answer is 100% yes, they are going to miss some because no system is going to be perfect. Having said that, they probably refund some valid ones as well. At least they seem to be fairly honest about it and actually make the refunds automatically unlikely certain other companies who don't even tell you about them unless you put in a specific request.
Lee
01/08/2014 06:07 pm
Sorry to burst the bubble , but Google make 10 time more money on invalid activity then they will refund or admit it, I run Adwords campaigns for years and have major problems with invalid activity , every time i call Google team about it i get the same old story about how their system is so good on detecting fraudulent clicks (BS) , I have to submit them a detail report from a 3 party monitoring script i have on all my sites to proof them they are wrong and to show them the data , and of course after that i get the credit , lets finish on that note , its estimated that 10%-25% of Adwords revenue are form invalid activates even if it's on the lower end its 5%-10% it's still hundreds of millions dollars a year , why should they give it up by crediting ALL invalid clicks , they do refund some but it is small % of it
Do the right thing will ya
01/08/2014 06:46 pm
So if they have worked out a better way to get the bad clicks, does that mean they knowingly now have in their coffers, hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue that has been obtained through fraud? I wonder what they will do with those ill gotten gains. My suggestion would be dived it up and donate the illicit cash to worthy charities.
lee
01/08/2014 07:48 pm
how about billions :)
Chad Edginton
01/16/2014 12:48 am
Can you please let me know what the third party script is that you are using for tracking invalid clicks?