Fake leads: where they come from and how to tell them apart

A fake lead here is a submission that moved a counter or created an order and is still not a real enquiry. Catalogs describe the sources differently: a repeated submit to shift a metric, a “form sent” goal on a failed attempt, a new account used for spam, a contact the browser never checked. Yandex Direct, at the same time, does not treat as invalid traffic repeat conversions in different visits, a repeat of the thank-you page, a wrong contact, off-target fields, or a form filled in for a reward. Click fraud and an empty lead can travel together and still remain different platform decisions.

Below is what to check before you call a lead fake, and what the check does not prove.

What Direct does not write off as invalid

The list is short. Repeat conversions in different visits. Opening the thank-you page again. A wrong contact. Off-target fields. A form filled in for a reward. If a manager sees junk, the Direct account can still keep the click and the conversion in the statistics. That is not a broken report. That is the written rule.

So “fake” in the CRM and “invalid conversion” in Direct are different labels. A dispute with the platform over this list is not won by a manager’s tag alone.

Repeating to move a metric, and a button that counted for nothing

OAT-016 Skewing is repeated clicks on links, page requests, or form submits in order to change some metric. The metric may be visible to people (a counter, a poll, a review, a dynamic price) or hidden (usage statistics, business indicators). Malicious inflation of spend is a different catalog event, not this one. Names such as click fraud in the catalog are event names, not a Direct report and not a measurement of quizzes.

Metrica’s help says a “form submission” goal is reached by default on a successful send and on a failed attempt, for example when the data failed validation. The conversion is recorded at the moment the submit button is pressed. Before you use the goal in ads, the help requires you to check that the goal fires on the site: a change in HTML layout can break it. The number of times this goal is reached is not the number of accepted leads and not the number of leads Direct accepted as valid.

Email and phone in the browser prove almost nothing

An email field, according to MDN, checks format: empty, or an address shaped like name@domain. The mailbox may not exist, may not belong to this person, and may not be acceptable to the site. People change the HTML locally, so a security decision is made on the server.

A phone field, unlike email and url, does not itself check a format before submit: phone formats differ too much around the world. The field exists so a mobile browser can show a keypad. A pattern attribute can set a template, and it depends on the country. An HTML check does not replace a server check: the data can be sent past the form. This help does not set the length of a Russian number.

Mass creation of new accounts (OAT-019) is another source of empty “leads” if registration itself creates an enquiry. Among the later uses are spam, reputation, search manipulation, reviews, and polls. These are new accounts. Guessing passwords that already exist is a different event.

How to mark spam so the report can see it

Metrica’s CRM upload help gives five order statuses. “Spam order,” default identifier SPAM, reaches the goal “CRM: Spam order.” Beside it: “order created” (IN_PROGRESS), “order paid” (PAID), “order cancelled” (CANCELLED), and “order in another status” (OTHER) if you pass the identifier of your own goal. In the help’s example a quality lead is a separate goal sent after a conversation, not the form submit itself. The sending side sets SPAM. On this help page Metrica does not promise to read the lead text and recognize spam.

An order is tied to the closest visit in time of a person found by ClientId, phones, or email. With no tie, the order is visible only in the “Visitors and clients” report and is left out of the other reports. Goals tied to the statuses of such an order are not passed to Direct when the visits belong to that ad source. The help treats ClientId as more reliable than a phone or an email and does not publish a match rate.

Check in this order:

1. Separate a wrong contact and a reward form from an invalid click. Direct does not put the first of those on the invalid list.

2. See whether the goal counts every button press, including a validation error.

3. Do not trust an email format or the presence of a phone field. The check that decides is on the server.

4. Send spam as status SPAM, and a quality lead as a separate goal after the conversation.

5. If the order was not tied to a visit, do not expect it in the other reports or in Direct.

6. Look at who clicks ads, click fraud and sklikivanie, invalid clicks, and a refund separately: a spam tag in the CRM is not a refunded click.

What the check does not prove: that the platform will call the conversion invalid, that the mailbox exists, and that Metrica read the lead text itself.