Blog

Articles about protecting ads from bots and click fraud

Detecting click fraud

  • Why the click price rises on the same budget

    A higher click price on the same budget is not a fraud column. Direct’s predicted bid already includes the CTR forecast and post-click behavior, and invalid clicks stay out of spend.

    5 min read

  • Clicks come in, leads do not

    Clicks with no leads come from a broken goal, a real person who did not buy, a click that never reached the site, or an empty click left in spend. Check in that order. Fraud is last.

    6 min read

  • Signs that your ads are being clicked empty

    A sign of click fraud is a click that stayed in spend and brought no target action, after Direct's filter left it in. A spike in Webvisor is not that sign by itself.

    6 min read

Click fraud basics

  • Does Yandex return money for click fraud

    In most cases Yandex Direct returns spend on traffic it has already classed as invalid, and it does that automatically. A support letter returns money only when the suspicion is confirmed.

    5 min read

  • How a bot differs from a person on your site

    One sign cannot separate a bot from a person. Yandex Metrica counts both masking programs and some JavaScript-free visits as robots, and it does not publish the behavior rules.

    6 min read

  • Who clicks your ads, and why

    An empty click comes from software, a person paid to click, a competitor, or an accident. The report shows a trace, not a name, and you pay for what the filter missed.

    5 min read

  • What ad click fraud is

    Click fraud is a click you still pay for even though the person was not a buyer. A click the ad platform already marked invalid and did not charge is not part of that loss.

    6 min read

Metrics and calculations

  • Robotness in Yandex Metrica: what the number is

    Robotness is the share of visits Yandex Metrica classed as robots by behavior. It is not the share of your Direct budget. The two systems differ, and the report mode is the one on your screen.

    6 min read

  • How to estimate budget lost to click fraud

    The loss is the share of spend you were charged, behind which there was no buyer. The invalid-clicks row is not part of that sum: you were not charged for it.

    5 min read

  • How to calculate cost per lead

    Cost per lead in the report is spend divided by leads. The conversion price on a Yandex Direct strategy is a different number: a limit you set, not the period's result.

    5 min read

  • What CTR is, and why there is no normal CTR

    There is no normal CTR. It is clicks divided by impressions, and one number for a whole campaign mixes search with the ad network. Compare like with like, over one period.

    5 min read