Detect and block invalid traffic on your ads

What is invalid traffic (IVT)?

Invalid traffic (IVT), which Google also calls invalid activity, is any click or interaction on your ads that has no genuine intent behind it. It includes bots, scrapers, competitors, click farms and accidental or repeated clicks. Every invalid click you pay for is budget that never had a chance to convert.

The industry splits it in two. General invalid traffic (GIVT) is the obvious, easy-to-filter kind, known bots and crawlers, that ad platforms catch most of. Sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) is engineered to look human and routinely slips past native filters.

ClickPatrol scores every click against 800+ data points in real time, classifies it as legitimate, suspicious or fake, and blocks the invalid sources across Google, Meta, Microsoft, Performance Max, TikTok and LinkedIn Ads, then reports it to Google for potential credits.

Invalid traffic is best understood as an umbrella term. It spans everything from accidental double clicks to coordinated fraud, which is why a single filter is never enough to handle all of it.

ClickPatrol classifies each click as legitimate, suspicious or fake, so you are not treating a harmless repeat click the same as a determined competitor or a click farm.

GIVT, SIVT and everything in between

The industry splits invalid traffic into two broad tiers. General invalid traffic is the obvious, easily filtered kind, known bots and crawlers, that ad platforms catch most of. Sophisticated invalid traffic is engineered to look human and routinely evades native filters.

ClickPatrol scores across both tiers on every click, so you are protected from the fraud platforms handle and, more importantly, the fraud they do not.

Classify, then act

Legitimate, suspicious and fake labels let you exclude, block or allow with intent rather than guesswork.

Report for credits

Detected invalid traffic is reported to Google, which processes valid cases as invoice credits over time.

How ClickPatrol works

What is click fraud protection?

Click fraud protection is software that automatically detects and blocks invalid clicks on your paid ads: the clicks that come from bots, click farms, competitors and scrapers instead of real potential customers. Rather than paying for traffic that never converts, you keep your budget focused on genuine prospects, and your analytics stay clean enough to make good decisions.

Across the 1,793+ businesses ClickPatrol™ protects, invalid traffic regularly accounts for 10-20% of paid clicks, and can exceed 20% in competitive, high-CPC verticals. That is budget recovered the moment protection is switched on.