ClickGuardian

ClickGuardian is click fraud protection software for advertisers and agencies running Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising. It identifies invalid paid clicks from bots, click farms, competitors and repeat clickers, and on Google Ads it blocks the sources automatically by adding their IP addresses to the account's exclusions. It is built and operated by Further Forward Innovation Ltd in the UK and has over 1,000 users, including agencies and resellers.

How it works

Tracking tag. A JavaScript tag on the advertiser's website, installed directly, through Google Tag Manager or with the ClickGuardian WordPress plugin, records each visit that arrives from an ad click.

Click scoring. Each paid click is scored as it arrives, using signals such as datacenter, VPN, proxy and TOR detection, device fingerprinting and repeat-click patterns.

Blocking. When a click is judged fraudulent, its IP address is added to the Google Ads exclusions automatically. For Microsoft Advertising, traffic is tracked in real time and ClickGuardian provides ready-to-apply exclusion lists, because Microsoft's API does not allow tools to apply IP exclusions automatically.

Setup. Connecting Google Ads and adding the tag typically takes about five minutes.

Key features

A reason for every blocked click, showing which signals triggered the block

Block by country and manual IP blocking

Email alerts when a keyword is receiving repeated blocked clicks

Campaign exclusions, custom block rules, conversion pixel blocking and cross-blocking across websites (Professional plan and above)

Microsoft Advertising protection (Growth plan and above)

Multi-user access, with API access on higher plans

Data retention