Click Fraud & PPC Glossary

Any fraudulent activity in digital advertising designed to misrepresent ad impressions, clicks, or conversions. Includes click fraud, impression fraud, and bot traffic.

Related: Click Fraud, Impression Fraud, Bot Traffic

Dividing your target market into groups based on shared characteristics. Used in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads to adjust bids and show different ads to specific demographics, locations, or behaviours.

Related: Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Remarketing (Retargeting)

The maximum amount you will pay per click in a PPC platform. Combined with Quality Score, it determines your ad rank and actual cost-per-click.

Related: Cost-Per-Click (CPC), Quality Score, Real-Time Bidding (RTB)

Automated, non-human traffic generated by scripts or bots that mimic real user behaviour. Used in click fraud to generate fake clicks at scale, draining ad budgets without any chance of conversion.

Related: Click Fraud, Invalid Traffic (IVT), Device Fingerprinting

The percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. Abnormally high bounce rates (above 70%) on paid traffic often indicate mismatched targeting or fraudulent clicks.

A landing page with 90% bounce rate from PPC traffic may be receiving bot clicks.

Related: Session, Traffic Quality Score

An operation where low-paid workers or automated devices repeatedly click on ads to generate fraudulent revenue or drain a competitor's budget. Often based in countries with low labour costs.

Related: Click Fraud, Click Fraud Network/Click Ring

The practice of repeatedly clicking on pay-per-click ads with malicious intent. Perpetrators include competitors draining budgets, bots generating fake traffic, and click farms. It is the most common form of ad fraud.

Related: Ad Fraud, Bot Traffic, Click Farm, Invalid Traffic (IVT)

A coordinated group of people or devices working together to commit click fraud at scale. Click rings distribute fraudulent clicks across multiple IPs and devices to avoid detection.

Related: Click Farm, Click Fraud

The ratio of users who click your ad versus the total who see it, expressed as a percentage. An unusually high CTR without corresponding conversions can indicate click fraud.

Related: Impression, Quality Score

A desired action completed by a user after clicking your ad, such as a purchase, form submission, or phone call. Tracking conversions helps identify whether clicks are generating real business value.

Related: Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA), Tracking Pixel/Conversion Pixel

Fraudulent activity designed to fake conversions such as form submissions or app installs. Often used by affiliates or publishers to earn commission on actions that never happened.

Related: Fake Lead, Lead Fraud

The actual amount you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. Determined by your bid, Quality Score, and competition. Click fraud directly inflates your CPC costs.

Related: Bid (CPC Bid), Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

The average cost to acquire one customer or lead through advertising. Click fraud increases CPA by generating clicks that never convert, making your campaigns appear less profitable.

Related: Conversion, Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

A technique that identifies unique devices using browser settings, hardware info, and software configuration. Used in fraud detection to track repeat offenders even when they change IP addresses or clear cookies.

Related: Fraud Detection, Bot Traffic

Visual banner ads shown across websites in ad networks like the Google Display Network. Display ads are particularly vulnerable to impression fraud and pixel stuffing.

Related: Impression, Pixel Stuffing, Programmatic Advertising

When a fraudulent website disguises itself as a premium publisher to attract higher ad bids. Advertisers think their ads appear on trusted sites but actually display on low-quality or fake pages.

Related: Publisher Fraud, Programmatic Advertising

Fraud specifically targeting display advertising campaigns. Includes pixel stuffing, ad stacking, and serving ads in hidden iframes where no real user ever sees them.

Related: Pixel Stuffing, Impression Fraud

A piece of valuable content offered in exchange for a visitor's email address, such as an ebook, checklist, or free tool. Common conversion goal in PPC campaigns, and a frequent target of fake lead fraud.

Related: Lead, Fake Lead

A fraudulent form submission using fake or stolen information. Fake leads waste sales team time and distort campaign performance data, making it harder to optimise spend.

Related: Lead Fraud, Conversion Fraud

The process and technology used to identify fraudulent clicks, impressions, and conversions. Modern fraud detection uses machine learning, device fingerprinting, and behavioural analysis.

Related: Device Fingerprinting, Machine Learning, Traffic Quality Score

A limit on how many times an ad is shown to the same user within a set time period. Helps control costs and prevent ad fatigue, but can also limit certain types of click fraud.

Related: Impression, Display Advertising

A unique tracking parameter automatically appended to URLs by Google Ads. Used to track individual clicks from ad to conversion, and helpful for identifying suspicious click patterns.

Related: Microsoft Click ID (msclkid), Tracking Pixel/Conversion Pixel

Google's 1-10 rating of the relevance and quality of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. A higher Quality Score lowers your CPC and improves ad placement. Click fraud can indirectly harm it.

Related: Quality Score, Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

A report in Google Ads showing clicks that Google automatically filtered as invalid. While useful, it only catches a fraction of fraudulent activity and does not cover all sophisticated fraud methods.

Related: Invalid Traffic (IVT), Manual Invalid Clicks

A single instance of your ad being displayed to a user. Impressions are the basis for display advertising costs and are vulnerable to inflation through impression fraud.

Related: Impression Fraud, Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Generating fake ad views to inflate impression counts and earn fraudulent ad revenue. Techniques include pixel stuffing, ad stacking, and loading ads in hidden browser windows.

Related: Pixel Stuffing, Display Fraud

Any traffic that does not come from a genuine user with real interest. Includes both general IVT (bots, crawlers) and sophisticated IVT (hijacked devices, advanced bots designed to look human).

Related: Bot Traffic, Click Fraud, Google Ads Invalid Clicks Report

Blocking specific IP addresses from seeing or clicking your ads. A core defence against click fraud, allowing you to stop known bad actors from wasting your budget.

Related: Click Fraud, VPN, Proxy

A word or phrase that triggers your ad to appear when someone searches for it. Choosing the right keywords and match types is essential for targeting real customers and minimising fraud exposure.

Related: Match Type, Negative Keyword, Quality Score

Manipulating keyword targeting to trigger ads fraudulently, often by searching for expensive keywords and clicking ads repeatedly. Targets high-CPC keywords to maximise damage to the advertiser.

Related: Click Fraud, Keyword

The web page a user arrives on after clicking your ad. Landing page quality affects your Quality Score, conversion rate, and ability to distinguish real visitors from fraudulent ones.

Related: Quality Score, Conversion, Bounce Rate

A potential customer who has expressed interest by submitting a form, calling, or taking another action. In PPC, a lead is typically the primary conversion goal for service-based businesses.

Related: Fake Lead, Lead Fraud, Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA)

The practice of submitting fake or low-quality leads to earn affiliate commissions, sabotage competitors, or inflate campaign metrics. Costs businesses time and money following up on leads that will never convert.

Related: Fake Lead, Conversion Fraud

The total revenue a business expects from a single customer over the entire relationship. Understanding LTV helps determine how much you can afford to spend on PPC acquisition before fraud eats into profitability.

Related: Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA)

A branch of artificial intelligence that enables systems to learn from data and improve over time. Used in click fraud detection to identify new fraud patterns automatically without manual rule updates.

Related: Fraud Detection, Device Fingerprinting

Fraudulent clicks performed by real humans rather than bots, often by competitors or disgruntled individuals. Harder to detect than bot traffic because the clicks come from legitimate browsers and devices.

Related: Click Fraud, Click Farm

A Google Ads setting that controls which searches trigger your ad. Options include broad match, phrase match, and exact match. Tighter match types can reduce exposure to irrelevant or fraudulent clicks.

Related: Keyword, Negative Keyword

Microsoft's PPC advertising platform (formerly Bing Ads). Runs ads across Bing, Yahoo, and partner networks. Subject to the same click fraud risks as Google Ads, though often with lower competition.

Related: Microsoft Click ID (msclkid), Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

A unique tracking parameter added to URLs by Microsoft Ads, similar to Google's GCLID. Used to attribute clicks to conversions and identify suspicious activity in Microsoft Ads campaigns.

Related: GCLID (Google Click ID), Microsoft Ads

A keyword that prevents your ad from showing for irrelevant searches. Adding negative keywords reduces wasted spend and can help filter out some search queries commonly exploited in keyword fraud.

Related: Keyword, Match Type

An advertising model where you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Google Ads and Microsoft Ads are the two major PPC platforms. The pay-per-click model makes PPC inherently vulnerable to click fraud.

Related: Cost-Per-Click (CPC), Click Fraud

A form of ad fraud where ads are loaded in a tiny 1x1 pixel iframe, invisible to users. The ad registers an impression even though no one actually sees it, inflating publisher revenue fraudulently.

Related: Impression Fraud, Display Fraud

Automated buying and selling of ad inventory through real-time auctions. While efficient, the complexity and speed of programmatic advertising creates opportunities for fraud at every stage of the process.

Related: Real-Time Bidding (RTB), Domain Spoofing

A server that acts as an intermediary between a user and the internet, masking the user's real IP address. Fraudsters use proxies (including residential proxies) to disguise the origin of fraudulent clicks.

Related: VPN, IP Exclusion, TOR

A website or app owner that displays ads and earns revenue from clicks or impressions. Publishers in ad networks can be legitimate or fraudulent, with some generating fake traffic to inflate earnings.

Related: Publisher Fraud, Display Advertising

When website publishers artificially inflate clicks or impressions on the ads displayed on their sites to earn more revenue. Methods include click injection, bot traffic, and ad stacking.

Related: Publisher, Domain Spoofing

A metric used by ad platforms to rate the quality and relevance of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. Higher scores lead to lower costs and better ad positions. Click fraud can degrade Quality Score over time.

Related: Google Ads Quality Score, Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

An auction-based system where ad impressions are bought and sold in milliseconds as a page loads. RTB powers programmatic advertising but also creates opportunities for fraud due to its speed and automation.

Related: Programmatic Advertising, Bid (CPC Bid)

Showing ads to users who have previously visited your website. A highly effective PPC strategy, but remarketing audiences can be polluted by bot traffic, reducing campaign effectiveness.

Related: Audience Segmentation, Tracking Pixel/Conversion Pixel

The revenue generated for every pound or dollar spent on advertising. Click fraud directly reduces ROAS by consuming budget without generating any return.

Related: Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA), Life-Time Value (LTV)

The method by which ad platforms cycle through multiple ads in an ad group. Rotation settings like "optimise" or "rotate evenly" affect which ads are shown and can influence how fraud impacts specific creatives.

Related: Split Testing / A/B Testing

A period of user activity on your website, typically ending after 30 minutes of inactivity. Analysing session behaviour (duration, pages viewed, mouse movement) helps distinguish real users from bots.

Related: Bounce Rate, Session Hijacking

When a fraudster takes over a legitimate user's browsing session to perform actions like clicking ads. This makes the fraudulent activity appear to come from a genuine user, bypassing basic fraud detection.

Related: Session, Click Fraud

A numerical rating assigned to traffic or leads indicating the likelihood of being spam or fraudulent. Higher spam scores warrant investigation and potential blocking.

Related: Traffic Quality Score, Fraud Detection

Running two or more versions of an ad, landing page, or campaign element simultaneously to see which performs better. Fraudulent traffic can skew test results, making fraud detection essential for accurate data.

Related: Rotation, Conversion

Code added to web pages that helps search engines understand content. In PPC, structured data can enhance ad extensions and improve Quality Score by providing richer information about your business.

Related: Quality Score, Landing Page

A composite score measuring the legitimacy and value of incoming traffic. Factors include device fingerprint, IP reputation, behavioural signals, and session data. Used by ClickGuardian to rate every visitor.

Related: Fraud Detection, Invalid Traffic (IVT)

A privacy network that anonymises internet traffic by routing it through multiple relays. While legitimate for privacy, TOR exit nodes are frequently used to mask the origin of fraudulent ad clicks.

Related: VPN, Proxy

A tiny invisible image embedded on a webpage that fires when loaded, tracking user actions like page views and conversions. Essential for measuring PPC campaign performance and detecting suspicious patterns.

Related: Conversion, GCLID (Google Click ID)

Where your website visitors come from: paid search, organic, social, direct, or referral. Analysing traffic sources helps identify channels with unusually high fraud rates.

Related: Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Traffic Quality Score

A Virtual Private Network that encrypts internet traffic and masks the user's IP address. Commonly used by fraudsters to hide their location and bypass IP-based exclusion lists.

Related: Proxy, IP Exclusion, TOR

A metric measuring whether an ad was actually visible to a user. Industry standard requires at least 50% of pixels visible for one second (display) or two seconds (video).

Related: Impression, Viewability Fraud

Techniques used to make non-viewable ads register as viewable, including ad stacking, tiny iframes, and auto-scrolling. Cheats advertisers out of budget for ads that no human ever actually saw.

Related: Viewability, Impression Fraud, Pixel Stuffing

A list of approved websites, IPs, or publishers that are considered safe for ad placement. Using whitelists reduces fraud exposure by limiting where your ads appear to trusted, verified sources.

Related: Publisher, IP Exclusion

Video advertisements served on YouTube through Google Ads. Subject to view fraud, fake engagement, and bot-driven impressions. YouTube is one of the largest ad platforms by spend.

Related: Impression Fraud, Viewability