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Google began giving AdWords customers data on invalid clicks on Tuesday, according to the company’s Inside AdWords blog.
To display the data, Google released a new AdWords feature that gives AdWords customers a detailed picture of invalid click counts in their account, including “invalid clicks” and “invalid click rate.”
“These clicks are filtered in real-time by our systems before advertisers are charged for them,” wrote Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust and safety. “The resulting data will of course differ from one advertiser to the next. In addition, a much smaller number of invalid clicks may also be credited to advertisers’ accounts after-the-fact, as the result of a publisher being terminated from the AdSense program for invalid click activity. These will appear as account-level credits.”
Ghosemajumder also wrote that previous third-party estimates of click fraud present conflicting data because the reports use different methodologies. One oft-cited report, which Ghosemajumder specifically addressed in March, said that one AdWords customer has a 30 percent click-fraud rate.
Recent reports put the average click-fraud rate at around 14-15 percent. A recent third-party study commissioned by Google said the company’s efforts to combat click fraud have been reasonable.
Google does not plan to publicize data about the rate of invalid clicks across its advertising network.