Claiming Click Fraud Refunds in Google

[mordcomm]

Greetings,

I'm collecting information as to what's the best way to go about claiming refunds from Google for the potential fraudulent activity caught by a 3rd party auditing services.

I would appreciate any tips, stories, or experiences you could share.

- Who do you usually eMail first?
- How do they usually respond? How do you respond?
- What do you do if they don't ackowledge the clicks as fraudulent?
- What information do they usually need in order to complete their investigation?
- What is your average success rate?

Once again, any additional information would be very, very helpful.

Best Regards,
Boris

[AussieWebmaster]

Do you have an ad rep? If so then contact them, if not try the generic contact info.
This should help:
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6432

[spenland]

Hey Mordcomm, unfortunately I have had zero luck with Google recognizing click fraud from a third party program. I used Adwatcher (not sure what your using). The problem with Adwords is that their algorithm automatically filters out any clicks after 2 clicks are made.

So when you submit a report to them with a list of fradulent clicks they may have a record of an IP address clicking one or two times but not 20, 30, 40 that the third party programs tend to tell you. What is so frustrating about Googles policy is that they consider the first few clicks of virtually any user as legitimate. Its only the clicks after the initial ones that they will remove, and they usually do this automatically.

Let me know if you have any luck

[peor]

Hi

Is mordcomm (starter of the thread) the same person as the owner of Adwatcher?

spenland how do you find adwatcher?

Thanks
Peor

[Jeff Martin]

I own and use VeriClix which is a free click fraud monitoring service. It too collects all PPC activity for a site and I have been successful in requesting refunds for 'low-quality' clicks.

When submitting an inquiry I have only needed to submit the aggregated data from VeriClix to the reps. I haven't been asked for any other supporting data. I really don’t think the PPC networks need much, just a general indication of the direction they need to go in. However, asking for data probably does cut down the amount of advertisers who would just call in and request an investigation with no supporting reports.