Buying click fraud protection: what to actually compare

Every product in this category claims to block bots and save your budget. The claims are near-identical, which makes them useless for choosing. These are the questions that actually produce different answers from different vendors — including from us.

1. What unit does the plan meter?

This is the most common way a price comparison goes wrong. Some vendors meter paid ad clicks; others meter all site visits. A plan with 5,000 visits is a much tighter cap than one with 5,000 ad clicks, because your organic traffic consumes the same allowance. Compare the unit before you compare the number.

2. What happens when you hit the cap?

Two very different answers exist. Some products stop protecting you until the next billing cycle. Others continue and bill the overage. Neither is wrong, but one of them means your protection switches off during the month a traffic spike arrives — which is exactly when you needed it.

3. Does it write exclusions back into the ad platform?

The critical distinction in this category, and worth being blunt about: blocking a bot on your own site stops it reaching your page, but you have already paid for the click. Preventing the spend requires the tool to push IP exclusions into your Google Ads account through the API. Ask directly whether a product does this. ClickCease and Fraud Blocker do. TryNoBot does not do it yet — it is on our roadmap, and if that automation is your main requirement you should buy one of theirs today.

4. Can it see traffic that never runs JavaScript?

A JavaScript tag only sees clients that execute JavaScript. Scripted HTTP clients, scrapers and anything hitting your endpoints directly are invisible to it. If that matters to you, you need server-side enforcement, which means a check your server makes before rendering — not a tag in your page.

5. Will it show you why?

When a visitor is blocked, can you see which signals drove the decision, or only a verdict? This matters the first time a customer calls to say they could not reach your site. A score with its contributing signals is auditable. A number with no explanation is not, and you will end up disabling the tool rather than tuning it.

6. How does it treat ad-review crawlers?

The one question with a right answer. Ad platforms send automated reviewers to check that your landing page matches your ad. Those reviewers must be served exactly what a human is served. Identifying them so your click quality reports can exclude them is legitimate and useful; showing them different content is cloaking, it breaches Google's circumventing systems policy, and it risks your account rather than protecting it. If a vendor markets the latter as a feature, that is a reason to walk away, not a selling point.

7. What does the contract actually say?

Headline monthly prices in this category frequently assume annual billing, and introductory rates frequently cover only the first few cycles. Check the renewal rate, the cancellation terms and whether the annual commitment can be exited. Read it before the trial ends, not after.

A short checklist

1. 1Run the manual diagnostics first, so you know whether you have a problem and how big it is.
2. 2Compare metering units, not headline numbers.
3. 3Ask what happens at the cap.
4. 4Ask whether it writes exclusions back to the ad platform.
5. 5Ask whether it can see non-JavaScript traffic.
6. 6Ask to see a blocked visit with its reasons.
7. 7Read the renewal and cancellation terms.

If a vendor cannot answer four through six clearly, you are being sold a dashboard rather than a detection engine.