Starting November, 2004 each of our invoices have had certain 'adjustment amounts.' This would be some money that is deducted from our total invoice bill. According to the AdWords Help Center, these deductions may reflect any of the following: promotional credits, credits for invalid clicks toward our account, and courtesy credits applied by AdWords client services specialists.

We have not had any promotional credits or courtesy credits. That leaves invalid clicks. Until February this year, the adjustment amounts were pretty small...usually within $200. However, this month for the first time the adjustment deduction was a whopping $1000 (out of a total spend of $100,000 for the month.)

It's becoming apparent that these refunds are for click fraud/invalid clicks. And the situation seems to be worsening by leaps and bounds. No wonder Google (and the others) are being slapped with click fraud lawsuits.

Anybody else facing a similar situation? Any insights on my situation and what may be happening?

you might want to check out this thread (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=5064), which is current

Thanks Kevin; I did read that article in the paper this morning and the discussion as well.

My question actually was, that were these refunds really for invalid clicks or was something else going on? And also, are there any other advertisers here who saw a similar big jump in the amount refunded to them this month?

The standard "explination" that I usually get is that they were determined to be, as you said, "invalid clicks." There have been occasions when I have been refunded for issues with clicks form content networks. What those issues are, or could be, is beyond me. When I contacted my rep (both Google & Overture) I have been told that I need to prove where I saw questionable clicks. I am working on that at the moment.

To answer your question, I have not seen a big jump in refunds in March. I would suggest contacting your rep. and asking for an explination for the refunds.

On a related note, we were issued a $5,000 credit :eek: in March for the following reason, according to the Adwords interface:

"The AdWords Discounter reduces your actual cost-per-click (CPC) based on your ad's clickthrough rate (CTR). From January 14th to February 17th, 2005, we incorrectly predicted the CTR for a small number of ads created during this period; therefore, some ads didn't receive their full discount. We've corrected the problem and credited the price difference to affected advertisers' accounts. You can see this credit as a line item on your AdWords account Billing Summary page."

A $5,000 estimation error?!? I've emailed my Adwords rep about this, but was wondering if anyone else had such a large credit on their account for this reason. I just can't believe they could have been this far off.

Incidentally, this is a new account, and I had noticed that click costs seemed very high, but with no history on the keywords in question, I didn't suspect anything - I just lowered my daily budget and max CPC! Looks like there was more going on than met the eye.

Melissa

Maybe AdwordsRep could chime in and give us a little insight...???