An advertiser posted in the Google AdWords Help forum a discussion he had with a Google AdWords representative about invalid clicks he was being charged for.
He said, he excluded IPs from generating traffic to his site but they were still coming in. Google said it is possible only if the IP changes from the query to the click.
The advertiser sent Google an email to credit him for clicks he received that came from his campaign IP exclusion list. He wanted to know why these IPs are able to see and click his ads and why he was being charged upon these clicks?
Google responded to him saying:
1. There are cases where a search is made with with IP 'A' (which was not excluded) and then the click is made with IP 'B', which is excluded but Google has no control over it.
2. You are charged upon these clicks unless we detect these clicks as fraudulent. The fact that you have blocked an IP and that a click is made with this IP is irrelevant because the search that led to this click is done with a different IP.
Google's Coco chimed in the thread adding:
So it is technically possible for this scenario to happen. IP exclusion is query-based, and IPs can actually change as a user browses, so it could happen that a user searches with an IP that isn't excluded, they see the ad, their IP changes to an excluded IP, then they click on the ad.I don't expect this scenario to happen a lot. More often than not, there are issues with how your weblogs are reporting clicks if they're showing clicks from a lot of excluded IP addresses. All that said, are you see a lot of clicks from these excluded IPs?
So I guess it is possible but rare?
Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.
Image credit to ShutterStock for the fuzzy click.
