ClickCease: Is it right for your Google Ads Campaign?

Last month we received a note from one of our clients detailing the uptick in spam calls they were receiving as a result of Google ads. They also had strong suspicion that competitors were clicking on their Google ads in an effort to waste their money. Now historically, Google has software built in to their ad platform that is supposed to defend against situations like this.

However, it appeared that there was some cause for concern that Google was not doing this. We decided to look to the open market and we discovered ClickCease, an application I had tested a year ago, but due to Google's algorithms I didn't think it was necessary. So we set up a test. The test confirmed what we had thought and we saw a substantial amount of clicks coming from the wrong places. 

How about those results?

To date there have been 115 IP blocks, 123 ad clicks that were blocked, and an estimated savings of $3800. Now it's important to know, that this type of fraud has not been ongoing throughout the course of our work with this client. However something in the first quarter of 2020 happened to where there was an increase in spam and competitor clicks. We are still investigating to see if this is something that other ad agencies or even small businesses are experiencing. We also installed the software on 10 of our other clients Google ads, and while we had positive results, it wasn't near to the degree that we saw with the initial client.

Sometimes what happens in certain industries is that a group will become more competitive and people will resort to outside or third-party tactics to try and give them a competitive edge. We've seen this between law firms, lawn care companies, and basically any space where organic keywords are difficult to rank for; or where in Google ads are very competitive and they are bidding on a high cost per click.

ClickCease Data: 115 IP blocks, 123 ad clicks. Data via campaign since Feb. 26, 2020

Our recommendations.

So we wanted to take the time today to write out what we've seen in this space and hopefully if you are running Google ads you can install this software and see exactly what is happening with your account. Watch it for 30 days and then make an assessment as to whether or not it is helpful for you. there a lot of things that you can do to help optimize your Google ad campaigns, and this is just one of them. I don't necessarily recommend it for every single business, it won't hurt you, but it may not garner any results either. And I don't want to see companies wasting money on things that are totally necessary.

So my advice is to watch the software for 30 days, make a decision based on the data, and move forward from there. If you need any help installing this software or if you need an outside firm to help manage your Google advertising, please give us a call and we will help you get everything set up properly. We specialize in optimizing Google ad campaigns as well as ensuring everything on the backend for leads, follow-ups, and overall campaign wellness is in place.

Thanks so much for reading we really appreciate it.