Click fraud on search and in ad networks

Yandex Direct’s help does not split click fraud into “dangerous networks” and “clean search”, and it does not publish two fraud rates. The difference it does describe is elsewhere. Impressions on Yandex search projects cannot be removed by the placement block list. Placements in the Yandex Advertising Network and in external networks can, site by site. A display click is counted before the redirect to the site, and that page does not extend the rule to search as a whole.

Below are those three boundaries, and the antifraud update that describes search and the network together. What the system has already taken out of spend does not, in this text, depend on the channel: the bin is covered in invalid clicks. The placement row where a network review starts is a separate read, in suspicious RSYA placements.

Yandex search cannot be switched off in the block list

In Direct you can block impressions on chosen Yandex Advertising Network placements and in external networks. You cannot block impressions on Yandex search projects. For banners the list is up to 1,000 domains, for video ads up to 100. A site on the list also closes thematic pages and search on that site. An external network cannot be blocked as a whole, only individual placements. The guide warns that excluding placements can narrow the audience.

Another page of questions about networks phrases the cap differently: no more than 1,000 placements, including sites, apps and external networks. If the two wordings diverge, the decision should follow the blocked-placements page and keep the second wording beside it as a caveat, not as a second instruction.

The list cannot turn off “all of search”. It also cannot turn off “the whole network” with one switch.

A display click is counted before the redirect

The IAB compliance page says that for display advertising Direct counts the click in its internal system before the redirect to the site. The opening paragraph limits the rule to display placements and does not extend it to search as a whole.

A separate rule for the moment a search click is counted is not in the sources checked here. The display wording does not prove that search waits for the site to open, and it does not prove the opposite.

Display clicks on search are not compared with performance campaigns

Clicks and conversions of display campaigns on search are not compared with performance campaigns: the demand is different. That is not a comparison of “search versus the network”. It is a refusal to fold two campaign types into one figure, even when both are shown on search. A single CTR for the whole account hides that split. How CTR itself is built is covered in what a normal CTR is.

Antifraud for search and the network is one update

The guide describes an antifraud update for campaigns in the Yandex Advertising Network and on search together. Previously the algorithm examined behavior after the click and removed invalid impressions, clicks and conversions from the statistics, but it did not stop that traffic from reaching the site. It now also lowers the chance of the visit itself: before an impression, the ad may not be shown if the system is confident it is facing a bot or a fraudster, and on a suspicious click it may show a captcha.

The page does not promise that traffic no longer reaches the site. The next paragraph says fraud can still arrive. The description has no separate, stricter scheme for one channel.

If the visit did open the page, a script on the site sends one check: behavior, the browser environment, the network and address, request frequency, and the ad-click parameters. It does not run the Direct cabinet and does not choose whether the ad is shown on search or in the network. That choice stays with the ad system.