Quick question on Google's adwords system

georgelol

New member
Nov 18, 2010
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So through Google Adwords you get charged every time somebody clicks on your advertisement on the side of the search bar.. But what if somebody decides to purposely spam your link in order to hurt you and try to bring you down by running you out of money? I know the google system has something to prevent that and refund you but..

I guess my real question is .. What if your competitor goes on a dozen different IP's daily and purposely tries to destroy you? Is there any way to prevent this?
 


So through Google Adwords you get charged every time somebody clicks on your advertisement on the side of the search bar.. But what if somebody decides to purposely spam your link in order to hurt you and try to bring you down by running you out of money? I know the google system has something to prevent that and refund you but..

I guess my real question is .. What if your competitor goes on a dozen different IP's daily and purposely tries to destroy you? Is there any way to prevent this?
1. Yes, you are charged per click. PPC, Pay Per Click.
2. I'd assume Google has measures in place to detect this.

I don't think you mean AdWords...it's free. AdWords is used to find keywords.
This is incorrect. The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a free tool used to research keywords, though it also provides information regarding Google AdWords such as CPC. AdWords is a way to advertise your websites.
 
Adwords is correct--those are the paid ads on the right side of any search page result. I can't say that it's impossible for someone to do that to you, but it seems pretty unlikely. There are tons of competitors and I can't see anyone spending that much time and effort to hurt your campaign and they would have to have a lot of clicks each day to really impact you.

Google is pretty sophisticated about finding click fraud, and I don't think you have much to worry about there.
 
with adwords google defends you as the advertiser from multiple clicks from the same user e.g. they click on your adwords ad 10 times - google only charges you once. however no such defence exists for adsense...
 
Google's measures against click fraud are not as robust as one might think. You can definitely get nailed by someone else.

Tommul, re: "There are tons of competitors and I can't see anyone spending that much time and effort to hurt your campaign and they would have to have a lot of clicks each day to really impact you"

There are bots or automated programs to do this for someone, they don't have to actually go through and click your ad. If you're a small advertiser, yes, you'll probably be okay, but if you're appearing towards the top or seriously competing with someone else for keywords, it could be worth the time for them.

In short, yes, it's definitely and issue and you should make yourself aware of what some telltale signs are of click fraud on your analytics so you can report it to Google to supplement their existing info. It's not exactly in their interest to identify times where you're getting frauded--that means they have to refund you money.
 
This has been talked about for years but I don't think there's an actual example of it happening. If it did happen, you would probably notice the spike of bogus traffic and report it to Google. They're not going to hold you responsible for fraud traffic.