Frequently asked questions

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Getting Started

What is ClickCease

ClickCease is a cyber security service which blocks invalid traffic, or non-genuine visits from your website. ClickCease is owned by CHEQ and was known formerly as CHEQ Essentials. By blocking invalid traffic, marketers prevent bots, click farms and other non-converting traffic from spending their ad budget. This also benefits marketers since their Analytics data is cleaner which enables you to achieve more efficient PPC campaigns, more effective retargeting and remarketing.

Do I really need Invalid Traffic protection?

Any company with an online presence is highly exposed to invalid traffic that can significantly damage its performance, waste the marketing budget, and skew data analytics. Clickcease automatically monitors, detects and blocks harmful sources in real-time, allowing you to easily transfer to genuine traffic only and, by that, rely on accurate data and improve your KPIs.

Is it complicated to set up ClickCease protection?

No. When you sign up, you’ll receive instructions to walk you through the setup and our 24/7 support service is available for any question or assistance you might need.

How can I get in touch?

ClickCease offers 24/7 online support, so if you ever have a problem, you can just reach out via chat or email. From getting set up through personalizing your dashboard and notifications to payment details and adding new clients - we’re here to answer all queries as quickly as possible.

Plans & payment

What if I exceed my plan’s limit?

We know web traffic and we know that some months you might go over your plan. No problem!
Once you've finished using your plans’ amount of visits, you'll be charged according to your actual total usage and our rates based on the plan you chose.
To make sure you’re never out of our protection, we continue to monitor and block for you even when your account has exceeded its plan. In some cases, you may want to consider upgrading your plan and other times, your ClickCease CS team will upgrade your plan but never without notifying you first.

ClickCease isn’t for me, can I get a refund?

We offer a 7 day free trial so you can check out our software on your site. You can cancel any time before your billing date, no questions asked. Unfortunately, we cannot provide any refunds for completed or partially completed months.

How long do I need to commit?

Your commitment depends on the subscription plan you choose - monthly or annual. You can cancel your subscription at any time before the next billing date to stop auto-renewal.

When will I be billed?

When you sign up for your free trial, we’ll collect your payment details. Once the trial ends, your account automatically moves to the subscription plan you selected - unless you cancel before the trial expires. Your payment will then be charged automatically on your billing cycle (monthly or annual), and will continue until you cancel your subscription.

Features

How does ClickCease’ fraud protection work?

Our award-winning click fraud and ad fraud prevention technology conducts over 2,000 real-time behavioral tests on each visit. If click fraud or ad fraud is detected, we exclude the corresponding IP address/user, ensuring that your ads will no longer be displayed to them.

Which ad/acquisition platforms does ClickCease protect?

ClickCease protects your campaigns across Google, Meta, and Microsoft Ads. It also analyzes data from all your traffic sources to enhance detection and optimize blocking on your connected ad platforms.

How many landing pages can I protect with ClickCease?

We offer protection for unlimited landing pages on all ClickCease packages. The amount of protected domains depends on your selected subscription plan.

Does ClickCease work with MCC/Google Ads Manager?

Yes. If you use Ads Manager (previously My Client Centre/MCC) you can easily add ClickCease to monitor and block invalid traffic on all your campaigns.

Total Protection

What is Invalid Traffic Protection?

Invalid traffic protection safeguards ad campaigns and websites against various types of invalid traffic, including click fraud, ad fraud, and malicious bot traffic. It combines advanced techniques such as click fraud protection, ad fraud protection, and bot mitigation to ensure the integrity and effectiveness of marketing performance.

How does Total Protection handle bad bots?

Bad bots are automated programs or scripts that mimic human behavior to perform malicious activities, such as generating fake leads or engaging in click fraud. Total Protection incorporates bot mitigation techniques to identify and block these bad bots from accessing your website or interacting with your ads.
This helps ensure that your traffic and leads come from genuine users, enhancing the accuracy and quality of your campaigns.

What are the benefits of using Total Protection?

Using Total Protection offers several benefits, such as increased ad campaign performance, improved return on ad spend (ROAS), enhanced brand safety, better targeting accuracy, and protection against ad fraud and click fraud.

Can Total Protection be Customized?

Yes, our Total protection solution can be customized to align with the specific requirements of individual campaigns. Advertisers can define their own parameters, thresholds, and rules to tailor the protection measures according to their campaign goals and targets.
This flexibility enables optimized protection against invalid traffic while maximizing the effectiveness of your advertising efforts.

How does Total Protection impact website performance?

Total protection positively impacts website performance by filtering out harmful activity, including bot traffic and fraudulent clicks. By blocking bad bots and eliminating fake leads, it reduces the strain on server resources, bandwidth, and processing power.

Doesn’t Google prevent click fraud?

Yes, Google has its own systems to detect and prevent invalid clicks and traffic. However, many advertisers find that these measures don’t fully capture the scope of click fraud.
Google’s approach is based on its own parameters, which aren’t publicly disclosed, and it applies the same invalid traffic definitions to all advertisers. ClickCease, on the other hand, offers greater visibility and lets you customize certain thresholds and rules to match your business needs - giving you more control over how fraud is detected and blocked.

Paid Marketing Protection

Who needs Click Fraud and Ad Fraud protection?

Click fraud and ad fraud protection are crucial for any business engaged in online advertising to safeguard their budgets and improve the overall effectiveness of their ad campaigns, especially on Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Meta Ads.

How does paid marketing protection affect my performance?

Paid marketing protection saves your precious ad spend and marketing efforts for genuine human traffic only by preventing click fraud and ad fraud in real-time, allowing you to rely solely on accurate data analytics.

What types of click fraud and ad fraud can hurt my business?

Click fraud refers to any non-genuine and malicious clicks on your paid ads. This can include people intentionally clicking your ads, such as brand haters or competitors, or accidental clicks.
Ad fraud is a more organized form of click fraud, where a publisher will maximize the number of fake clicks, often using bots or click farms, usually designed to commit fraud on a bigger scale.

How do I activate my click fraud and ad fraud protection?

To enable ClickCease protection, simply Start add the ClickCease tag to your website using Google Tag Manager, our WordPress plugin, or by inserting the code directly.
Then, connect at least one of your ad platforms (Google Ads, Meta Ads, or Microsoft Ads) to enable active protection. Once both are in place, ClickCease will automatically block fraudulent clicks in real time using IP or audience exclusions.

Bot Mitigation

Who needs bot mitigation?

Preventing bad bot traffic is crucial to any company or business that relies on online platforms, digital advertising, or lead generation. Bot mitigation blocks bots and prevents them from generating invalid traffic or fake leads, ensuring that valuable resources are directed toward genuine users and improving the overall effectiveness of your online operations.
Bot mitigation actively blocks bots on WordPress websites and provides detection data for other hosting platforms.

What threatens my website without bot mitigation?

Invalid traffic, such as bad bots, gives you an inaccurate understanding of your analytics and conversion rates, wasting your team’s time and resources on fake leads and stopping you from focusing on real potential customers.

How does bot mitigation work?

Our unique bot mitigation solution identifies and prevents bad bots from entering and interacting with your website by sending them to a 403 unauthorized page instead.
With over 2,000 real-time detection tests and evaluations, we make sure to block bad bots traffic only so you can focus your website performance and marketing efforts on genuine customers only.

How does bot mitigation affect my website?

Bot mitigation positively impacts website performance by effectively blocking bad bot traffic. Filtering out this invalid traffic prevents the unnecessary consumption of server resources, bandwidth, and processing power.
This results in improved website speed, enhanced user experience, and increased server uptime and ensures that valuable resources are dedicated to genuine users rather than wasted on fake leads or fraudulent activities.

Agencies

Why do marketing agencies need Invalid Traffic Protection?

Marketing agencies need Invalid Traffic Protection to ensure the accuracy and effectiveness of their digital advertising campaigns. By implementing click fraud and ad fraud protection, agencies can filter out invalid clicks and fraudulent activities, protecting their clients' ad budgets and maximizing campaign performance.

How does Invalid Traffic Protection benefit marketing agencies?

Invalid Traffic Protection provides marketing agencies with a reliable solution to fight click fraud, ad fraud, and any form of malicious activity. By detecting and filtering out invalid clicks and fake leads, agencies can provide accurate reporting to their clients, optimize campaign targeting and performance, and maintain client trust and satisfaction.

Can Click Fraud Protection help agencies with multiple client domains?

Yes, our click fraud and ad fraud protection offer a multiple-domain view feature. This allows you to monitor and protect multiple client domains within a single dashboard.

I run an agency with multiple clients, can I protect all of their websites from invalid traffic?

Yes. Get in touch with our team and ask about our Advanced plan. Pricing is based on how many protected websites and visits are required.

Click Fraud

What signs can indicate click fraud?

If you spot some of the following signs in your analytic tools, you might be affected by click fraud:

  • Sudden spikes in impressions and clicks
  • Clicks from unusual locations
  • Repetitive clicks from the same IP addresses
  • High traffic but low conversions
  • High bounce rates
What are the sectors most affected by click fraud?

The fake traffic rate varies from industry to industry. Some industries are more attractive targets to fraudsters, while some have demonstrated lower fake traffic rates. However, even a 1% click fraud can mess up and harm your entire business. According to a research CHEQ conducted with the University of Baltimore, these are the most affected ones:

  • Gambling and Gaming: 49.1%
  • Tech: 20%
  • Telecom: 17.3%
  • Education: 17.2%
  • Retail: 16.4%
How can I protect my PPC campaigns from click fraud?

To keep your PPC campaigns safe from click fraud, monitor your metrics for anything unusual, set limits on clicks, and block suspicious IP addresses. Use tools to track clicks, and consider using a trusted fraud protection solution.

How does click fraud protection work?

Click fraud protection works by monitoring ad campaign traffic, setting click thresholds, and employing algorithms to detect anomalies like repeated clicks or unusual activities. Other techniques include IP exclusion and device fingerprinting to block fraudulent clicks.        
On top of it, ClickCease uses advanced AI-powered detection and real-time monitoring and blocking, with over 2,000 behavior tests conducted on each click,plus IP blocking for Pmax and YouTube campaigns, Pixel Guard and Audience Exclusion.

How can ClickCease help?

ClickCease will mitigate and block malicious actors from interacting with your online activities. This will help you ensure that only real visitors visit your website, your ad budget is not wasted due to click fraud, and you’ll see better conversion rates and higher ROI.

Ad Fraud

How Do Bots Drive Ad Fraud?

Bots, which are automated computer programs, can be used to simulate human behavior and engagement, leading to misleading or false advertising results. This can be done by clicking on large volumes of ads automatically or by using scripts to increase their engagement numbers artificially.

How Do Advertising Platforms Fight Against Ad Fraud?

Advertising platforms are actively implementing measures to lower the risks of ad fraud on their platforms.Google and Microsoft have their own systems to detect and prevent invalid clicks and traffic by blocking the fraudulent IP. However, many advertisers find that these measures don’t fully capture the scope of click fraud. Google’s approach is based on its own parameters, which aren’t publicly disclosed, and it applies the same invalid traffic definitions to all advertisers.Meta claims that their detection systems are capable of not just detecting and removing already existing accounts but also stopping them from being created in the first place. ClickCease, on the other hand, offers greater visibility and lets you customize certain thresholds and rules to match your business needs - giving you more control over how fraud is detected and blocked.In addition, ClickCease also applies Audience Exclusion capabilities and CHEQ’s Pixel Guard solution.

Will an ad fraud detection software slow my site?

No, a reliable ad fraud detection software is designed to work efficiently without slowing down your site or hurting your users’ experience. It operates seamlessly in the background, ensuring real-time fraud detection while maintaining optimal site speed and user experience.

Can I detect and block ad fraud manually by myself?

While basic manual efforts like monitoring metrics can help, manually detecting and blocking ad fraud is challenging due to the complexity of online advertising. Automated tools, such as specialized ad fraud detection software like - ClickCease, are recommended for more effective and comprehensive protection against evolving fraudulent techniques.

How Can - ClickCease Help Combat Fraud From My Ads?

As a leading ad fraud detection software,- ClickCease can increase the level of protection for your ads. It can detect and block more advanced ad fraud forms that cannot be detected by advertising platforms’ detection algorithms.
The software analyzes data in real-time that is specific to your campaign particularly. This allows you to customize your fraud filters based on your preferences and data, refine your targeting, and maximize your PPC results.

Bot Attacks

What is a bot in cybercrime?

Bots are software codes or scripts programmed to execute specific tasks over the internet. When it comes to cybercrime, the tasks that these bots perform are with malicious intent.
Such malicious and fraudulent actions cause serious harm to businesses online. They can hurt the regular operations of websites, systems, marketing activities, etc., resulting in ineffective marketing campaigns, poor business decisions based on irregular data, financial losses, and more.
Bots are a major threat to cybersecurity, and they are becoming increasingly sophisticated and difficult to detect. Therefore, organizations need to implement strong security measures to protect themselves from bot attacks.

How to recognize a bot attack?

Usually, a bot attack would slow down your website, network, or system. So, if you notice an unusual change in the way they commonly work, it can be taken as a red flag and investigated further.
Google Analytics or other reporting tools should be your first go-to tool. Dig deeper into your analytics to spot uncommon patterns, such as website visits coming from strange locations, repetitive clicks from the same user or IP address, high bounce rates, etc.
Remember to regularly monitor your traffic and keep your protection measures up to date.
Read this bot protection guide to learn some commonly used techniques and strategies to minimize the risks of bot attacks.

How can bot mitigation improve my performance?

Bot mitigation improves performance by preventing malicious bots from engaging with your website, ensuring genuine user access, faster load times, and a positive user experience. It not only prevents bot attacks but also safeguards against fraud, maintains data integrity, and contributes to server efficiency, reducing the risk of downtime.

Can ClickCease block bot traffic from my website?

Bot mitigation actively blocks bots on WordPress websites and provides detection data for other hosting platforms.
It uses a combination of advanced algorithms to analyze patterns and detect fraudulent activity. By constantly monitoring suspicious activity, it detects and blocks malicious bots from interacting with your website in real time.
This way, the invalid traffic stays filtered out from your website, allowing you to focus on genuine interactions and improve website performance for real users.

Can ClickCease help me achieve better ROI for my campaigns?

Yes, it can. 'ClickCease paid marketing protection blocks fraudulent interactions from your ads, saving you money and reducing wasted ad spend.
Additionally, your ads will only be seen and clicked by people with genuine interest, increasing the likelihood of conversions and purchases.

Understanding Invalid Traffic

How to check invalid traffic in Google Ads?

You can spot suspicious activities and traffic anomalies in both your Google Ads reports and Google Analytics.
If there are any unusual patterns in your traffic, like sudden fluctuations in your clicks, spikes of visits from particular locations, or multiple clicks on your ads from the same IP address, those could indicate invalid traffic.
Also, you can use a third-party protection tool like ClickCease that will automatically detect and block invalid traffic from your Google Ads campaigns.

How do I reduce invalid traffic?

To recover or minimize the consequences of invalid traffic after it has affected your website, ads, or organic activity, there are a few steps you can take.
First, try to identify the fraudulent sources of Invalid traffic and filter them out from further interactions. Your next step would be to figure out where your vulnerabilities are or what might have triggered invalid traffic.
This will help you take appropriate actions to fix your vulnerabilities and minimize the risks of invalid traffic in the future.

How does Invalid Traffic affect different advertising channels?

Invalid Traffic affects advertising channels differently. In display and video advertising, invalid traffic can inflate metrics like impressions and views, while search advertising may suffer from click fraud. Social media engagement metrics can also be distorted. Invalid traffic undermines campaign effectiveness, reduces the return on investment (ROI), and compromises data integrity.Implementing solutions like ClickCease helps detect and prevent invalid traffic, ensuring more accurate and efficient advertising efforts.

Why use ClickCease to block invalid traffic?  

If you want to maintain effective online marketing efforts and increase your chances for better ROI, you should consider using ClickCease. The software tool protects you from cyber risks like invalid traffic, click fraud, and ad fraud that drain your advertising budgets.
It will block the fraudulent actors automatically, allowing you to stay focused on activities that drive real results and more revenue.

Is it easy to use ClickCease?

Yes, ClickCease comes with an intuitive interface, allowing easy integration with your website or ad platforms like Google Ads, Microsoft advertising and Meta Ads. It also provides comprehensive reports that give you easy navigation through them and visibility into the level of invalid traffic risks and how it’s being managed.
Its purpose is to ensure full protection as soon as you register your account, and our team is available to support you with any questions you might have.

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