Google Ads Scripts

How Google Ads Scripts Works

[Google Ads Account Data]
        │
        ▼
+---------------------+
│ Google Ads Script   │
│ (Scheduled/Triggered)│
└─────────┬───────────┘
          │
          ▼
+---------------------+
│  Analysis Engine    │
│ (Rules & Heuristics)│
└─────────┬───────────┘
          │
          ▼
+---------------------+
│   Action Taken      │
│ (e.g., Block IP)    │
└─────────────────────┘

Google Ads Scripts operate as an automated layer of defense within your advertising account. By executing custom JavaScript code, they can monitor, analyze, and act upon your campaign data without manual intervention. This automation is critical for responding to click fraud threats in a timely and efficient manner, protecting your ad spend from being wasted on invalid traffic. The entire process functions as a continuous loop of data collection, analysis, and protective action.

Data Collection and Monitoring

At its core, a Google Ads Script accesses performance data directly from your account. This can include metrics like clicks, impressions, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and cost. For fraud detection, scripts are often programmed to fetch data associated with suspicious activity, such as the Invalid Clicks column provided by Google, or to pull reports on placement performance in Display and Performance Max campaigns. These scripts can be scheduled to run as frequently as every hour, ensuring constant vigilance over your campaigns.

Automated Analysis

Once the data is collected, the script applies a set of predefined rules and logic to identify anomalies that may indicate fraudulent activity. This logic can be simple, such as flagging a campaign where the invalid click rate exceeds a certain percentage, or more complex, involving the analysis of placement reports to find sites with abnormally high and non-converting CTRs. This automated analysis allows advertisers to process vast amounts of data and spot patterns that would be nearly impossible to detect manually.

Protective Actions and Alerting

If a script identifies a potential threat based on its rules, it can automatically take a variety of protective actions. The most common action is to add fraudulent IP addresses to an exclusion list, preventing them from seeing and clicking on your ads in the future. Scripts can also pause campaigns that are under significant attack or exclude poor-quality website placements from Display campaigns. Additionally, scripts can be configured to send email alerts, notifying you of suspicious activity and the actions taken, ensuring you remain informed.

Diagram Breakdown

[Google Ads Account Data]

This represents the source of all information. The script queries your account for performance metrics like clicks, impressions, invalid click rates, and placement reports, which serve as the raw input for any fraud detection analysis.

+— Google Ads Script —+

This is the engine of the operation. It’s a piece of JavaScript code that you add to your Google Ads account. You can schedule it to run automatically at set intervals (e.g., hourly, daily) to fetch and process the account data.

+— Analysis Engine —+

Contained within the script’s logic, this component applies your custom rules to the data. For instance, a rule might be: “IF invalid click rate > 20% AND clicks > 50, THEN flag as suspicious.” This is where you define what constitutes fraudulent or wasteful activity for your specific campaigns.

+— Action Taken —+

This is the output of the process. If the analysis engine flags an issue, the script executes a pre-programmed action. In the context of click fraud, this is typically blocking the source IP address or excluding a poor-performing ad placement to prevent further budget waste.

🧠 Core Detection Logic

Example 1: IP Filtering Based on Click Velocity

This logic identifies and blocks IP addresses that generate an unusually high number of clicks in a short period. It helps prevent automated bots or malicious users from rapidly draining an ad budget. This is a foundational technique in real-time traffic protection.

FUNCTION check_ip_velocity(ip_address, time_window, click_threshold):
  click_events = get_clicks_for_ip(ip_address, within_last=time_window)
  
  IF count(click_events) > click_threshold:
    add_ip_to_exclusion_list(ip_address)
    log_action("Blocked IP due to high velocity: " + ip_address)
  END IF
END FUNCTION

Example 2: Placement Exclusion Based on Performance

This logic is used for Display or Performance Max campaigns to automatically exclude low-quality website placements. It analyzes placement reports and removes sites that have high costs and high click-through rates but zero conversions, which often indicates fraudulent activity.

FUNCTION analyze_placements(campaign_id):
  placements = get_placement_report(campaign_id, last_30_days)
  
  FOR EACH placement IN placements:
    IF placement.cost > 50 AND placement.conversions == 0 AND placement.ctr > 0.10:
      exclude_placement(campaign_id, placement.url)
      log_action("Excluded low-quality placement: " + placement.url)
    END IF
  END FOR
END FUNCTION

Example 3: Geo Mismatch Detection

This logic identifies suspicious activity by comparing the IP address’s geographic location with the targeted location of the campaign. If a campaign is targeted to a specific city but receives numerous clicks from IPs in a different country, this script can flag and block those IPs.

FUNCTION check_geo_mismatch(click_data):
  campaign_target_location = get_campaign_location(click_data.campaign_id)
  click_ip_location = get_location_from_ip(click_data.ip_address)
  
  IF click_ip_location.country != campaign_target_location.country:
    add_ip_to_exclusion_list(click_data.ip_address)
    log_action("Blocked IP due to geo mismatch: " + click_data.ip_address)
  END IF
END FUNCTION

📈 Practical Use Cases for Businesses

• Campaign Shielding: Automatically identify and block IP addresses that show patterns of invalid activity, such as an excessive number of clicks with no conversions. This directly protects the advertising budget from being wasted on bots and malicious competitors.
• Data Integrity: By filtering out fraudulent traffic sources and low-quality placements, scripts ensure that campaign performance data (like CTR and conversion rate) is more accurate. This leads to better-informed decisions and more effective manual or automated optimizations.
• ROAS Enhancement: Prevent ad spend on traffic that will never convert. By ensuring that the budget is spent on reaching genuine potential customers, Google Ads Scripts help improve the overall return on ad spend (ROAS) and campaign profitability.
• Automated Maintenance: Continuously monitor for issues like broken ad links (404 errors) or disapproved ads. Scripts can alert advertisers to these problems immediately, preventing wasted spend on non-functional ads and ensuring campaigns run smoothly.

Example 1: IP Exclusion List Management

This logic automatically adds IPs that are flagged by a third-party fraud detection service or an internal watchlist to the Google Ads exclusion list, saving time and preventing manual errors.

// Fetch a list of fraudulent IPs from an external source (e.g., a shared Google Sheet)
// or internal server logs.

FUNCTION sync_ip_exclusions():
  fraudulent_ips = get_fraudulent_ips_from_source("http://api.myservice.com/flagged-ips")
  
  // Get the campaign to apply exclusions to
  campaign = AdsApp.campaigns().withCondition("Name = 'My Protected Campaign'").get().next()
  
  FOR EACH ip IN fraudulent_ips:
    campaign.excludeIp(ip)
    Logger.log("Excluded IP: " + ip)
  END FOR
END FUNCTION

Example 2: Anomaly Detection Alert

This logic monitors key performance indicators (KPIs) and sends an email alert if metrics deviate significantly from the norm, which could signal a coordinated bot attack or click fraud attempt.

// Check for sudden spikes in Click-Through Rate (CTR) without a corresponding
// increase in conversions.

FUNCTION check_for_ctr_anomaly():
  today_stats = AdsApp.currentAccount().getStatsFor("TODAY")
  yesterday_stats = AdsApp.currentAccount().getStatsFor("YESTERDAY")
  
  // Check if CTR has more than doubled
  IF today_stats.getCtr() > (yesterday_stats.getCtr() * 2) AND today_stats.getClicks() > 100:
    subject = "High CTR Anomaly Detected in Google Ads Account"
    message = "CTR has spiked to " + today_stats.getCtr() + ". Please investigate for potential click fraud."
    MailApp.sendEmail("myemail@example.com", subject, message)
  END IF
END FUNCTION

🐍 Python Code Examples

This Python function simulates checking for rapid, repetitive clicks from a single IP address within a defined time frame. It’s a common method for identifying automated bots designed to exhaust ad budgets quickly.

# A simple log of recent clicks (ip, timestamp)
click_log = [
    ('192.168.1.100', 1672531200),
    ('192.168.1.100', 1672531201),
    ('203.0.113.50', 1672531202),
    ('192.168.1.100', 1672531203),
    ('192.168.1.100', 1672531204)
]

def detect_click_velocity(ip_address, time_window_seconds=60, max_clicks=3):
    """Filters clicks from a specific IP within a time window to detect high frequency."""
    current_time = 1672531205  # Simulated current time for consistency
    recent_clicks = 0
    
    for ip, timestamp in click_log:
        if ip == ip_address and (current_time - timestamp) <= time_window_seconds:
            recent_clicks += 1
            
    if recent_clicks > max_clicks:
        print(f"Fraud Alert: IP {ip_address} exceeded {max_clicks} clicks in {time_window_seconds} seconds.")
        return True
    return False

# Example usage
detect_click_velocity('192.168.1.100')

This code filters incoming traffic by checking the user agent string. It blocks requests from known bot signatures or user agents that are commonly associated with non-human traffic, helping to pre-filter traffic before a click is even registered.

# List of known suspicious user agents
BOT_USER_AGENTS = [
    "AhrefsBot",
    "SemrushBot",
    "MJ12bot",
    "Python-urllib",
    "Scrapy"
]

def filter_by_user_agent(user_agent_string):
    """Checks if a user agent matches a known bot signature."""
    for bot_signature in BOT_USER_AGENTS:
        if bot_signature.lower() in user_agent_string.lower():
            print(f"Blocked suspicious user agent: {user_agent_string}")
            return True
    print(f"Allowed user agent: {user_agent_string}")
    return False

# Example usage
filter_by_user_agent("Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AhrefsBot/7.0; +http://ahrefs.com/robot/)")
filter_by_user_agent("Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36")

Types of Google Ads Scripts

• IP Exclusion Scripts: These are the most direct type of anti-fraud scripts. They programmatically add IP addresses that have been identified as fraudulent to a campaign’s or account’s exclusion list. This action immediately blocks ads from being shown to those sources again, preventing further budget waste.
• Anomaly Alerting Scripts: These scripts monitor account performance metrics like CTR, cost, and impressions. If a metric suddenly deviates from its historical average beyond a set threshold (e.g., clicks spike by 300% in an hour), the script sends an email alert to the advertiser for manual review.
• Placement Cleanup Scripts: Specifically for Display and Performance Max campaigns, these scripts analyze placement reports. They automatically exclude websites and apps that generate a high volume of clicks but result in zero conversions or have suspiciously low session durations, which are strong indicators of placement fraud.
• Reporting and Auditing Scripts: These scripts do not take direct action but instead generate custom reports to help identify fraud. For instance, a script could create a daily report of invalid click rates per campaign or list search terms that are spending money without converting, helping advertisers spot inefficiencies.

🛡️ Common Detection Techniques

• IP Reputation Analysis: This technique involves checking the IP address of a click against blacklists of known malicious actors, data centers, proxies, or VPNs. It helps block traffic that is intentionally trying to hide its origin or is coming from sources known for bot activity.
• Behavioral Heuristics: This method analyzes user behavior on the landing page after a click. Metrics like session duration, pages per visit, and mouse movement are monitored. Clicks that result in an immediate bounce (e.g., under one second) are flagged as likely being non-human.
• Click Timestamp Analysis: This technique examines the time patterns of clicks. Bots often operate on predictable schedules, leading to unnatural patterns, such as clicks occurring at precisely the same second every hour or a burst of clicks in a short window. This helps distinguish automated traffic from human behavior.
• Device Fingerprinting: More advanced scripts can analyze a collection of browser and device attributes (like user agent, screen resolution, and installed fonts). This creates a unique “fingerprint” that can identify and block a specific device even if its IP address changes.
• Geographic Validation: This technique cross-references the geographic location of a click’s IP address with the campaign’s targeting settings. If a campaign is targeted to a specific city but receives a high volume of clicks from a different country, those clicks are flagged as suspicious.

🧰 Popular Tools & Services

Tool	Description	Pros	Cons
ClickCease	A real-time click fraud detection and blocking service that automatically adds fraudulent IPs to your Google Ads exclusion list. It monitors traffic from various channels, including search and social, to protect ad spend.	Real-time blocking, supports Google and Facebook Ads, detailed reporting, device fingerprinting.	Subscription-based cost, may require a tracking code installation on the website, can be complex for beginners.
PPC Protect	An automated click fraud prevention platform that analyzes click data to identify and block invalid and low-value traffic sources with high accuracy. It aims to give advertisers more control over their acquisition spend.	Automated IP blocking, analyzes visitor behavior beyond just clicks, manages multiple domains from one dashboard.	Can be costly for very large campaigns, relies on its own set of algorithms which may not be fully transparent.
ClickGUARD	A click fraud protection service specifically for Google Ads that allows for granular rule-setting. It helps advertisers identify invalid traffic, bot attacks, and competitor clicks and provides tools to automatically block them.	Highly customizable rules, detailed forensics on each click, real-time protection, good for advertisers who want deep control.	Can have a steeper learning curve due to the number of customization options, pricing is based on ad spend which can be expensive for high-budget advertisers.
TrafficGuard	A comprehensive ad fraud solution that provides protection across multiple channels, including Google Search, Performance Max, and social ads. It uses machine learning to detect and block invalid traffic in real-time.	Multi-channel protection, offers a free plan for low-spend accounts, focuses on ensuring data accuracy for better decision-making.	Full feature set is reserved for paid plans, integration might be more involved for multi-platform setups.

📊 KPI & Metrics

Tracking the right KPIs is crucial when using Google Ads Scripts for fraud protection. It’s important to measure not only the script’s detection accuracy but also its impact on key business outcomes like advertising costs and lead quality. This ensures the solution is both technically effective and commercially beneficial.

Metric Name	Description	Business Relevance
Invalid Click Rate (IVR)	The percentage of total clicks that Google identifies as invalid.	A primary indicator of the level of fraudulent activity targeting your campaigns.
IP Block Rate	The number of unique IP addresses your script adds to the exclusion list per day or week.	Measures the direct action and volume of threats your script is neutralizing.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)	The average cost to generate one conversion (e.g., a sale or lead).	A decreasing CPA can indicate that the script is successfully filtering out non-converting fraudulent traffic.
False Positive Rate	The percentage of legitimate clicks or users that are incorrectly flagged as fraudulent.	A critical metric to ensure your scripts are not blocking potential customers and harming business growth.
Clean Traffic Ratio	The ratio of valid clicks to total clicks after the script has been implemented.	Demonstrates the script’s effectiveness in improving the overall quality of traffic reaching your website.

These metrics are typically monitored through a combination of custom dashboards built with tools like Google Sheets, which can be updated automatically by the scripts, and email alerts for significant events. The feedback from these metrics is essential for refining the fraud detection rules in your scripts, such as adjusting the sensitivity of your click-frequency thresholds or adding new patterns to your analysis engine.

🆚 Comparison with Other Detection Methods

Customization and Flexibility

Google Ads Scripts offer a high degree of customization that is often lacking in other methods. Unlike third-party tools which provide a one-size-fits-all solution, scripts allow advertisers to write their own logic tailored to specific business goals, campaign types, and known fraud patterns. Manual IP blocking is highly targeted but not scalable, whereas scripts can automate the blocking of thousands of IPs based on complex, custom criteria.

Speed and Real-Time Capability

Google Ads Scripts can be scheduled to run as often as every hour, providing near-real-time monitoring and response. This is significantly faster than manual detection, which might only happen weekly or monthly. However, dedicated third-party fraud protection services often operate in true real-time, analyzing each click as it happens, which can provide a faster response than even an hourly script.

Scalability and Maintenance

For managing multiple accounts, MCC (Manager Account) level scripts are highly scalable, allowing an agency to apply a single fraud detection script across hundreds of client accounts. This is far more efficient than manual blocking or configuring individual settings in a third-party tool for each account. The main trade-off is maintenance; scripts require some JavaScript knowledge to create and update, whereas third-party tools are typically managed through a user-friendly interface.

⚠️ Limitations & Drawbacks

While powerful, Google Ads Scripts have several limitations that can make them less effective in certain scenarios. Their effectiveness is constrained by the data available within the Google Ads environment and the inherent limits of the platform itself, meaning they are not a complete solution for all types of ad fraud.

• Execution Time Limits – Scripts have a maximum execution time (typically 30 minutes), which may not be sufficient for processing very large accounts or performing highly complex analyses.
• Limited Scope – Scripts operate solely within the Google Ads ecosystem and cannot detect fraud on other platforms (like Facebook Ads) or more sophisticated forms of fraud like attribution hijacking that happen post-click.
• Requires Technical Expertise – Creating and maintaining effective scripts requires knowledge of JavaScript and the Google Ads API, creating a barrier for non-technical marketers.
• Reactive, Not Proactive – Scripts generally react to data that has already been recorded, such as an invalid click that has already occurred. They can’t prevent the first fraudulent click from a new source.
• Data Latency – Some data points within Google Ads reports can have a delay of several hours, which means a script might be acting on slightly outdated information, slowing its response time.
• API Limitations – Scripts are bound by the capabilities of the Ads API, which may not expose all the data needed for advanced fraud detection, such as raw server logs or detailed device parameters.

In cases involving sophisticated, multi-channel bot attacks, hybrid strategies that combine scripts with dedicated third-party fraud detection services are often more suitable.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

How often can Google Ads Scripts run for fraud detection?

Google Ads Scripts can be scheduled to run as frequently as once per hour. This allows for near-real-time monitoring of campaign data, enabling timely detection and response to suspicious activities like sudden click spikes or performance anomalies.

Do I need coding skills to use Google Ads Scripts for click fraud?

Yes, a basic understanding of JavaScript is required to write or modify Google Ads Scripts. However, many pre-built scripts for common tasks like IP blocking or anomaly detection are available online from communities and developers, which you can often use by copying and pasting the code.

Can a script block all types of click fraud?

No, scripts are not a complete solution. They are effective at identifying and blocking fraud based on data within Google Ads, such as IP addresses and click patterns. However, they may not catch sophisticated bots that mimic human behavior perfectly or fraud that occurs outside the Google Ads platform.

Are Google Ads Scripts free to use?

Yes, the ability to create and run scripts within your Google Ads account is completely free. You do not incur any additional charges from Google for using this feature, though you are still responsible for the costs of the clicks your campaigns receive.

Where do I add a script in my Google Ads account?

You can add a script by navigating to “Tools & Settings” in your Google Ads account, then selecting “Scripts” under the “Bulk Actions” section. From there, you can click the plus (+) icon to create a new script, paste your code, and then authorize and save it.

🧾 Summary

Google Ads Scripts provide a powerful, customizable method for automating ad fraud detection directly within your account. By executing JavaScript code, they monitor campaign metrics, identify suspicious patterns like high invalid click rates or anomalous performance, and automatically take protective actions such as blocking malicious IP addresses. This helps safeguard advertising budgets, improve data accuracy, and enhance overall campaign effectiveness.

🔗 Related Articles

• Google Ads scripts: Everything you need to know – https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-scripts-everything-you-need-to-know-445831
• How to Use Google Ads Scripts: A Beginner’s Guide – Store Growers – https://www.storegrowers.com/google-ads-scripts/
• How to Stop Invalid Clicks and Protect Your Budget – Opticks – https://opticks.io/blog/how-to-stop-invalid-clicks-and-protect-your-budget/
• [Google Ads Script] Pause Campaigns for Potential Invalid Activity – Nils Rooijmans – https://nilsrooijmans.com/google-ads-script-pause-campaigns-for-potential-invalid-activity/
• Google Ads Display Click Fraud Prevention Script – PPCnerd – https://www.ppcnerd.com/products/google-ads-display-click-fraud-prevention-script