BOT CLICKS

What you need to know and how to beat them

Half, or more, of paid online display adverts have never been seen by an actual person.

Google

What are bot clicks?

A bot click is when a script or software program using an auto bot commands information from a website link in the same way a human clicking on a link with their mouse would do.

Also known as click fraud in email campaigns or banner ads, it can frequently mean you – or your client – is paying for clicks to a website which aren’t from humans and who therefore won’t be real potential customers for your goods and services.

How effective is reCAPTCHA in preventing bots?

Instead of relying on the traditional distorted word test, ‘reCAPTCHA’ examines other factors including IP addresses and uses cookies to provide evidence that the user is the same friendly human Google remembers from elsewhere on the Web.

But not every website or service is one which would require the use of a captcha.

As White Ops’ co-founder and president Michael Tiffany says: “Imagine if every CAPTCHA on the internet was the same. It wouldn’t work very well. Validation with only a pixel is like serving a CAPTCHA that never changes. Only a dynamic challenge can be used to catch a dynamic adversary.”

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Not all bot clicks are bad

There are a number of automated programmes which trawl the internet for good reasons, Google’s own spider bot Googlebot included.

Copyright Bots

looking for articles or content which may have been plagiarised or illegally uploaded

Trade/Shopping Bots

searching for the best available deals across multiple websites for whatever item you’re looking to buy

Data Bots

searching for the most up to date information available on a particular subject

RSS Bots

pulling together news articles on a subject and presenting it in an easily digestible format

How do you know if a bot is clicking?

There are a number of methods to identify bot clicks, some are easier than others and most start with Google Analytics.

Checking Google Analytics on a regular basis makes it easier to spot irregularities which may be down to bot clicks. Monitoring the average number of page views, average session time, and the source of the referrer traffic makes it easier to spot bot visitors which don’t follow the same patterns.

Block bots today

Our patented, AI-driven bot detection solution

Our all-in-one click fraud protection platform tracks every link click and website visit from your campaigns. The platform collates all visitor actions and behavioural and network analysis to determine which are genuine human visits and which are likely to be bots.

Giving you accurate and transparent marketing data, enabling improved analytics, decision-making, and results.

Get your free traffic audit

Case studies

Increasing genuine human campaign visitors by 59% for Genpower

With ad fraud prevention in place, Hyundai saw a 24% reduction in fraudulent traffic in just two weeks. Giving them over 20,000 more clicks from legitimate human visitors.