FAQS

We haven’t actively monitored our competitors’ activities, but from our interactions with customers, we’ve noticed that people turn to us when other click fraud protection systems don’t provide effective solutions. They choose to stay with us and appreciate our more adaptable bot-blocking settings 🙂

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a message in the chat, and one of our operators will contact you shortly. Our team is available from 11 AM to 5 PM on weekdays (Moscow time)

Our system continually advances, offering round-the-clock protection for your advertising campaigns. In our experience, fingerprint analysis doesn’t consistently guarantee high-quality protection because modern browsers anonymize both users and bots, making precise and accurate visitor identification challenging. That’s why we prioritize multifactor analysis using a neural network in our approach, rather than relying solely on browser fingerprinting.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a message in the chat, and an operator will get in touch with you shortly. Our team is available from 11 AM to 5 PM on weekdays (Moscow time).

Indeed, and here are the reasons:

1. A conversion on your website relies on an initial ad click.

2. Click fraud drives up the cost per legitimate click because of numerous false clicks. Without anti-fraud tools, we can’t filter out 9 bot clicks to ensure 1 genuine click, leading to paying for all 10 clicks.

3. Each genuine click’s cost affects the overall conversion cost. The conversion cost is derived from the sum of valid click costs and the likelihood of a sale. For example, if 100 actual visitors come to the site from ads, and three buy something, the formula is: 100 clicks * cost per click / 3 purchases = cost per conversion.

Ultimately, ad campaign fraud inflates the cost of each conversion. We suggest placing application forms lower on the page to weed out irrelevant responses. Additionally, making the application slightly more complex, by adding a few extra questions, can be beneficial. These measures will protect your precise conversion targets. For further details, consult an external resource, like this link.

By using our click fraud protection, you can enable IP blocking. For Yandex.Direct, this is done by adding the Director token in your account, and for Google Ads, we need access to your ad campaigns through your Google ID.

We automatically block harmful visits based on IP (the attacker’s location). However, there are limitations in advertising systems:

• Yandex limits to 25 IP addresses.
• Google allows up to 500 IP addresses, but this may still be insufficient.

We believe IP blocking alone isn’t fully effective in click fraud protection but can be a helpful secondary measure. Our service includes this feature. After blocking by IP in Yandex.Direct, we categorize visits with identifiable ClientID into the Yandex.Metrica segment labeled asBadSession. Note that when the IP block list is full, older IPs are removed for new ones.

Important for Yandex.Direct: If you have ads in different accounts, blocked IPs can only be transferred to the account specified in our dashboard. Each account requires its specific token. For agency representatives, setting the client’s login header is necessary. Working with multiple accounts simultaneously isn’t possible, and token access is restricted to campaigns under that login.

Keep in mind, if a botnet with many proxies, like 400 or 500, attacks your ad campaigns without daily budget limits, it can drain your budget. It’s vital to analyze data in our dashboard and adjust your ad campaign settings, such as disabling sites in RSYA. We continually expand our analytical data to better combat click fraud.

Usually, we can stop these visits using ClientID, browser fingerprint, and other factors. But, bots are constantly improving and finding ways around our defenses. We’re always working on new methods to block them.

To start using our protection on your site, you can sign up using this link and get 1000 rubles in your account, which covers 10 days of protection under the Starter plan.

If the code for your Yandex Metrica counter has been modified, you must make an update in the site settings within the corresponding field. Afterward, initiate a “Data Update” by clicking on the button to generate the GTM code. This final step is crucial because we determine the Metrica counter code in the tags based on the input provided in the dashboard for each specific site.

Detailed steps for changing the Yandex Metrica counter code, as depicted in the screenshots, are as follows:

On the screen below, replace the Yandex Metrica counter code and then update the Yandex Metrica and Yandex Direct tokens (the link to the update is available by clicking the gray question mark). Don’t forget to click the “Save” button.

Once you have completed these steps, click on the “Update Data” button to refresh the tags in your GTM code associated with the Metrica counter code.

Your current tariff status, as indicated on the website, can be found on the “My Sites” page.

To choose or modify your tariff, simply click on the tariff status field (for instance, the screenshot below displays the status as “Initial”).

Afterward, on the new page, you will have the option to select the appropriate tariff. The billing will occur daily while the protection is active.

Funds are debited from your account balance on a daily basis. The deduction amount is determined by the number of active sites and the chosen tariffs for those sites. When your balance reaches a negative value, deductions cease, and the protection stops functioning. To reactivate the protection, you must replenish your balance and enable protection in our dashboard.

You can review the specifics of these deductions on the “Balance / Account Movements” page.

As a result of the numerous inquiries and suggestions concerning competitor click fraud, we’ve included this statement in our Knowledge Base: We do not participate in any kind of ad clicking; our focus is on safeguarding against click fraud.

This parameter enables the initiation of an Event during the initialization of the Metrica counter. This is essential to ensure that our scripts run smoothly after your Metrica counter is loaded, without causing interference, and can interact with it correctly. Please remember to include a comma when adding this parameter, as it’s a common oversight (sometimes our clients forget to include a comma after the previous parameter when adding this one):

The triggetEvent parameter is documented in the official documentation. You can find more information about it on this page at the end of the table: link to the Yandex.Metrica documentation

At times, within your personal account tables, you might notice that website visitors are coming from various cities and countries, even if your advertising campaigns are specifically targeted at your city. We don’t control the source of this traffic; we merely analyze all website visits.

The occurrence of visits from different regions could be due to some bots accurately interpreting ad links within the intended region, while other bots, utilizing proxies, access these ad links from different countries. Alternatively, it might be a result of incorrect ad targeting settings.

We analyze every visit to your site, whether it’s advertising-related or not.

The tariff is determined based on your site’s total traffic because we conduct real-time visitor analysis, detect fraudsters (bots), and prevent them from displaying ads. The greater the traffic volume, the more servers (and other resources) are required for analysis.

Furthermore, within your personal account, there is the option to block non-advertising traffic if needed.

Aside from adding the standard protective elements such as creating a Segment, Metrica, and Direct tokens (for Yandex), and adding Google ID (for Google Ads), we also provide additional and highly useful tools for safeguarding your advertising campaigns.

Behavioral Factors: You can find these in your personal account under “My Sites” / “Edit Site Section” / “Blocking Settings.”

Enable the ‘Analysis of Behavioral Factors’ option to block users (bots) who do not meet the criteria outlined below:

• Apply only to advertising sessions: When activated, other behavioral parameters will only assess visits through advertising and block them by IP address (in Yandex.Direct and Google Ads systems). If this option is disabled, all visits will be analyzed. All Yandex-related blocks will be directed to a segment in Yandex.Metrica.
• Minimum number of actions on the site: Sessions that don’t meet this specified indicator will have future ad displays blocked (if set to 0, the parameter is disregarded). For example, if a user clicked on an ad but only performed one action, the system will block future ad displays for them. Actions on the site include clicks, scrolls, and resizing the page, essentially any user interaction.
• Minimum session length in seconds before blocking: Sessions that fall short of this duration will be blocked (if set to 0, it’s not applied). For example, if a user clicked on an ad but spent less than 10 seconds on the site, the system will block them.
• Maximum number of visits per day: Users who exceed this number of daily visits to your site will be blocked. For instance, if a user clicked on an ad more than 3 times in a day, the system will block them. (if set to 0, the parameter is disregarded)

Note: If a user (or bot) meets any of the specified criteria, the system will block future ad displays for them.

Cluster Analysis: You can configure this parameter in the dashboard under “My Sites” / “Site Editing Section” / “Blocking Settings.”

Our system employs machine learning methods to analyze the traffic on your site. By default, this functionality is enabled but can be turned off or adjusted.

• If you don’t want machine learning cluster algorithms to analyze your site traffic, uncheck the ‘Cluster Analysis’ box.
• If you want only sessions that originate from advertising to undergo intelligent analysis (excluding all general sessions), check the ‘Only sessions through advertising’ box.
• There’s also an option to fine-tune the algorithm’s sensitivity if the current settings don’t suit your needs. The recommended sensitivity value is 6. You can lower or raise it within the range of 1 to 10. Higher values will result in more sessions being blocked.

How does cluster analysis work? It’s a machine learning algorithm that, based on a set of parameters (black box model), determines whether a bot has visited the site. Depending on the analysis data, it assigns the visit to one of six clusters (see the figure below). A value of 6 indicates the visit is placed in a cluster where 100% are bots. However, since bot algorithms vary and constantly evolve, we recommend increasing this value to 7-8 if you suspect bot visits on your site due to click fraud. Values above 6 consider data not just from the bot cluster but also from the average cluster, where ‘suspicious’ visits are identified. There is no 100% certainty in this cluster; it may be a well-masked bot or a real user exhibiting suspicious behavior.

In the z.clickfraud.ru dashboard, there are two tables: Detailed Report on Blocks and Budget Savings.

It’s essential to note that the number of site visits may differ between our system and Yandex/Google Analytics. For more information on why this might happen, refer to this guide: Why Statistics Differ Between Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics

1. Detailed Report on Blocks

In the Blocked Sessions section, sessions marked as “suspicious” by us are displayed. We automatically (every 10 minutes) send the corresponding parameter to Yandex (and/or Google) through the API.

We automatically block these sessions in your advertising systems, to which we have access. Bot identification is based on the two previous tables and additional internal machine learning algorithms developed by our company.

2. Budget Savings

To calculate savings, we combine reports from advertising systems with our data. The minimum savings are calculated using the formula: Number of our system’s blocks * Click cost. The potential savings can be much more significant because bots that click on ads never click only once. Their goal is to do as much damage to your budget as possible.

As of now, the savings report works for the Yandex.Direct advertising system. To enable this function in Yandex.Direct, you need to add the Direct token in the personal account (Advertising Systems, the second item). Learn more about how to do this here.

It’s important to note that if a campaign is attacked by a bot with a large number of proxies, for example, 400 or 500, and there is no daily budget limit on the advertising campaigns, it will negatively impact the budget. Therefore, it’s crucial to review the analytical data provided in our personal account and adjust the settings of advertising campaigns accordingly. For example, disabling sites in YAN and so on. We, in turn, continually increase the range of analytical data that can help combat ad fraud.”

1. utm_source=google
2. utm_medium=cpc
3. utm_campaign=net|{network}|cid|{campaignid}
4. utm_content={creative}
5. utm_term={keyword}
6. placement={placement}
7. adposition={adposition}
8. matchtype={matchtype}
9. device={device}

Tracking template:
{lpurl}?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=v2||{creative}||{targetid}||{keyword}||{adgroupid}||{campaignid}||{adposition}||{network}||{placement}||{target}||{adtype}||{merchant_id}||{product_channel}||{product_id}||{product_country}||{product_language}||{product_partition_id}||{store_code}||{feeditemid}||{matchtype}||{device}||{adwords_producttargetid}||{loc_physical_ms}||{loc_interest_ms}||{devicemodel}{_user_params}{_fragment}
Final URL Suffix:
utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid}_poisk_rf_ofisnayamebel&utm_content={creative}&utm_term={keyword}

1. Once you have registered and configured your site, you can create the GTM code in the Site Settings. This code must be implemented on your website as per the guidelines in the Settings and our email instructions.

It’s essential to install the GTM code on every page of your website. Without this code, tracking and analyzing site visits for future blocking will not be possible.

The GTM code can be incorporated into any CMS that allows for code insertion. This is applicable to most CMS platforms. We have provided guides for the top three CMS platforms:

Tilda

Bitrix

WordPress

For WordPress, there’s also an option to install through the Google Tag Manager for WordPress plugin. The steps are outlined below:

Proceed to the Plugin Settings:

Then choose the following settings. Note that you should replace GTM-XXXXXXXXXX with the GTM container identifier provided in our email. The complete GTM scripts are sent via email, but you only need to use GTM-XXXXXXXX from it and enter it in the Google Tag Manager ID field, as illustrated in the screenshot below:

Once these settings are configured, data will begin transmitting to us within 30 minutes.

Preferably, place our code above Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics.

Ensure to add the code to all your website pages. We analyze numerous bot behavior aspects, like page transitions and mouse movements, to prevent future unauthorized access. If some pages are not analyzed, the protection algorithm might not function efficiently on your site.

If there’s already a GTM code on your page, add ours as per the official guidelines – https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/devguide#multiple-containers

After installing the GTM code on your site, verify its accuracy in our dashboard on the main page.
Important: Some platforms like Flexbe may have unique characteristics that could hinder our program’s functionality. If issues arise post-GTM code implementation, please reach out to our support team on our website.

No service can guarantee 100% protection against click fraud. We assess many technical and behavioral aspects of each visit and keep adding and refining criteria to enhance our service and remain cutting-edge.

It’s vital to recognize that if ad campaigns are hit by a bot with numerous proxies, say 400 or 500, and there’s no daily budget limit, it could hurt your budget. Thus, reviewing the analytical data in our dashboard and tweaking your ad campaign settings is essential. This might include disabling sites in the Yandex Advertising Network. We are constantly broadening our analytical data scope to better fight click fraud.

Here are a few potential reasons, with the most common ones outlined below:

1. Placement of the Tracker: Analytics systems may be positioned in various sections of the website’s code. One could be in the header, while another might be in the body. In such cases, disparities in statistics are likely. Therefore, we recommend positioning our script as close to the beginning of the header as possible.
2. Differing Identification Methods: Each tracking system employs its own set of parameters for identifying users. Typically, these parameters differ among various analytics systems. Consequently, one system might register 2 site visits as 2 distinct visitors, while another might consider them as one visitor, depending on its identification method.
3. User Access from Different Devices: When a user accesses the site from different devices while being logged in to Yandex or Google, Metrica or Analytics would regard them as a single visitor. Clickfraud lacks the capability to track these parameters, so we would count them as 2 separate visits.

We examine bot behavior, and in order to accomplish this, it’s crucial to monitor not just how it arrived on your site but also the duration of their stay, the actions they perform, and their mouse movements. If you only place the code on the homepage, it greatly restricts our algorithm’s capabilities and impedes effective analysis and blocking.

Principle of Our Protection Algorithm:

• Collect data on sessions.
• Analyze data using machine learning algorithms to identify bots.
• Create audience segments with yaClientID and adjust -90% (for protection in the Yandex advertising system).
• Block IP addresses of identified bots at the campaign level.

General Algorithm of Actions:

1. Register on the page z.clickfraud.dev.
2. Add one or several sites to your account, ensuring you fill in all the necessary information for site setup, including Yandex Metrica and Direct tokens, and the Metrica counter number for Yandex advertising protection, or Google ID for Google advertising protection.
3. Upon registration, you have a 10-day free protection period with the Starter plan. After the trial period, make a payment based on the monthly traffic on your site (slight excess is permissible). You can review the plans here, and each site can have its plan individually selected.
4. Create a unique GTM code on the Edit Site Settings page for each site.
5. Install the GTM code on all pages of the protected site. If your site uses a popular CMS, this can be done quickly. Find out more here, and understand why it’s essential to install the code on all pages here.
6. Ensure that the Yandex Metrica counter code includes the parameter “triggerEvent:true.” Without this parameter, our code may work less efficiently. Learn more about it here.
7. Confirm that UTM tags are transmitted in your advertising campaigns. Learn more here. Yandex provides information on setting up UTM tags here.
8. After installing the GTM code, we will begin collecting data on visitors to your site for subsequent blocking. If you selected Google protection and provided your Google ID in our control panel, you will receive an email to your Google account-associated email within 24 hours, asking you to grant access to the user clickfraud.access@gmail.com. Follow the instructions in the email. If you need protection for Yandex advertising, learn how to set up the Yandex.Metrica segment here.
9. If necessary, adjust the default settings for behavioral factors and the sensitivity of cluster analysis in Settings, as these are essential elements for effective bot blocking. Learn more here.
10. Add other sites to your account as needed. Payment will be debited from your account separately for each site according to the tariff.
11. For additional information on other topics, consult our Knowledge Base here.

Overview of the Control Panel:

We provide a welcome bonus of 1,000 for all new clients upon registration. This amount is enough for several days of free use of our click fraud protection service.

Overview of the Personal Dashboard:

You can add funds to your account anytime by clicking the “Balance” button located in the upper right corner of our dashboard at z.clickfraud.ru.

To create an invoice, it is advisable to complete the organization data fields within the “Payment Settings” section.

Following this, navigate to the “Add Funds/Bank Transfer” section to generate an invoice. Once you choose the payment amount and click the “Pay” button, you will receive an invoice for the specified amount in your email.

To obtain documents for closure, kindly visit the “Balance” / “Billing History” page using the following link: https://z.clickfraud.ru/Payment/BillingHistory

On this page, you can access and download the invoice, as illustrated in the provided screenshot:

If you require an invoice via Electronic Document Flow (EDO), please get in touch with our support chat on our website or via email at info@clickfraud.ru. In your request, include your login, complete company name, Steuernummer (Taxpayer Identification Number), and specify the period for which you need the documents.

We operate through SBIS (TENSOR operator) and can facilitate Electronic Document Flow (EDO) exchanges.