*Update February 28th, 2023*
The good news since I wrote this article last year is that Google has improved issues associated with Performance max lead quality, with new features available to keep fraudulent traffic to a minimum.
There’s plenty of documentation online about changes made, but if you want to get started somewhere, head to your Google Ads accounts and start with content exclusions.
Go to Tools & settings then Content exclusions.
The main issues we have experienced with client accounts were surrounding bad actors using apps to generate fake leads. You can now exclude all apps from your campaigns.
For further information, visit https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/13311048.
Performance Max Lead quality – How do I reduce fraudulent leads?
Having issues with “Bad Actors” using Performance Max Campaigns and looking for ways to stop form / lead fraud? You’re not the only one.
I’ve received a number of emails in the past few months in relation to Performance Max and lead quality. In particular disturbing trends of fraudulent lead form submissions directly related to Performance Max campaigns.
So, what do these fraud leads look like?
Here are some examples of the emails we have seen being used for fraudulent leads (note they are all fake, do not email them!):
- basb.mitchell@ vivaldigital.com
- amywright7422@ cloudmdrive.my.id
- erica744@ gdriveme.it
- georgiarobby@ putrajayabaya.skom.id
At the end of this document, I’ve provided further common fraudulent domain names we have seen directly from Performance Max leads.
What they look like at first glance is any other lead. Phone numbers, email addresses and names are all filled into each lead form. However, there are some noticeable issues with the data. Names and email addresses not matching in the slightest way is one. Another is phone numbers being used all seem legitimate, but are more than likely not mobile numbers, with the over use of local phone numbers. Then IP address being known as having highly fraudulent activity.
Put them all together and it is more than likely you have a fraudulent lead.
Fake email generators
Another source of email addresses was directly from so-called throwaway email providers. An example was dayrep DOT com. Dayrep describes themselves as “part of a free disposable email address service”. These throw away addresses or fake email generators allow individuals to send emails. In many cases you can’t reply to these email providers.
In short, if someone is sending a query to your organisation through a fake email generator, it is more than likely that they aren’t really overly interested in your business, are a competitor or are fraudulent. We have banned the majority of fake email generator providers.
Where are these leads coming from?
When looking at the lead data we are gathering, most campaigns we have seen this activity from are showing YouTube ads as the source of traffic.
The time frame most of these leads experienced between hitting the website page with the form and final form submission varied between 1 to 3 minutes.
The activity thereafter was NIL.
In normal circumstances, bots would usually show more page scraping and quicker times between page requests. The other unusual characteristic; the same user agent being used on many occasions.
How sophisticated are these bad actors?
If the above is from a BOT, it is extremely sophisticated in the way it acts. Considering forms were changed multiple times and the bot continued to adjust, it may in fact be bad actors at play here.
Another factor is that it is getting through Google Ads systems; only being picked up at a later stage.
While activity has slowed down in recent months (less than 0.5% of all leads generated), at one stage we were experiencing ten times the amount of fraudulent leads per week (EDIT: 23/09/2022 – Whist slowdowns do occur at times, we are still experiencing fluctuations in activities from bad actors and have seen up to 10% of all leads generated equating to fraudulent leads).
So, these bad actors are either human or using extremely sophisticated bots.
How did you resolve this issue?
We spend a lot of time discussing the issue with our Google accounts manager. Understanding the issue and reviewing activity in campaigns provided some additional insights into what was occurring and changes that we could make to slow down the issue.
We all know that the “ad game is full of bad actors” and this is something we need to expect. Work where we can to reduce the number of issues being faced.
Whilst the issue isn’t 100% resolved here are some of the actions we undertook at slowing down the rate of fraudulent leads reaching our CRM:
Blocking IP addresses at the commencement of the issue was used, but having 200+ IP addresses sitting in .HTACCESS files and block lists only goes so far.
We made changes to our submission forms as well, which had minimal impact as time went on; but adding fields did assist for some time. Of course, the issue is that if you have an optimised form and landing page on your website, the past thing you want to be completing is changes to the page and A/B testing
Domain block lists, country block lists and IP block lists all helped slow the flow of fraudulent leads down as well. Ensuring a lead doesn’t reach your CRM where someone may commence following it up is better than wasting a sales account persons time.
Education – we provided additional education to our client sales teams in relation to what to look out for with fraudulent leads. Some leads looked clearly legitimate, but when following up these leads either email addresses OR phone numbers were fake or incorrect.
Checking IP quality score may provide some assistance
One thing we did complete initially is making use of IP Quality Score checks. https://www.ipqualityscore.com/ provided us a simple system where we could API into their database to check IP quality. However, there were some false positives along the way as you would expect.
IP Quality Score provide ample information to ascertain the quality of an IP address if everything else associated with the lead looks legitimate. It provides a fraud score, information on whether the IP is a Proxy or VPN, location of the IP and ISP provider.
Pattern Matching and form manipulation
We have found that bad actors are using similar submission patterns when generating fraudulent leads. Look out for commonalities in fraudulent leads from the types of fields they are submitting to non-matched first and last names versus email address. A good example of this is when the email address really has no significant match to the submitted name. e.g. email address is fredsmith@google.com, with name submitted as Jhon French.
We added a dummy field to our forms that we turned off after a few weeks. We’ve found that bad actors tend to keep attempting to submit to these fields.
There is some discussion also amongst Search Engine marketers that the more fields you add, the more difficult it makes it for bad actors. Issue with this of course is you face the issue associated with genuine clients having to fill in multiple lead fields, additional AB testing and form changes. Options available are either adding new lead forms for Performance Max campaigns with more fields to complete or manipulating current lead forms based on URL referral – i.e. If you can see that the lead is from a performance max campaign, then add additional requirements to your lead form.
Another solution may be adding IP address checking to ascertain quality then redirecting to an alternative lead form where performance max leads are being detected. This is something we have looked at for a few clients and have a number of beta tests in place to analyse the impact on quality vs fraudulent leads.
Google Ads Account Managers – reach out!
I always recommend my fellow digital marketers to have a chat to their Google Ads account managers. It’s always my first point of call when I experience any challenges with specific campaigns that are a little out of the norm. Google also provide some great documentation online, for which I’ve added some links to below.
Check out the following for further information about improving your Performance Max campaigns:
Fix issues with Performance Max campaigns – https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10732484?hl=en
Optimisation Tips for Performance Max campaigns – https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/11385582?hl=en
Podcast – The Google Ads podcast from Solutions 8 is also a great Performance Max resource. Listen in to the “Performance Max Best practices” podcast (23/08/2022), “Performance Max for small budgets” (15/08/2022) and “How to restrict fraudulent traffic in Performance Max (01/08/2022)”.
Speak to fellow marketers or join a community such as PPC Pro People – https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1217347/.
Finally, if you see any of the following domain names; it is more than likely you are facing an issue with fraudulent traffic.
NOTE: These are not safe URLS. Do not visit these websites.
Azola .my.id
Benjaminmail .xyz
Boxcello .com
Bozcello .com
Bozzcello .com
Bozztirex .us
Cloudmdrive .my.id
Dayrep .com
Digdayarecord .online
Driveplus .com
Drivem .my.id
Gdriveme .id
Gdriveme .it
Iffygame .com
Jourrapide .com
Maginvest .biz
Mdriveku .my.id
Putrajayabaya .skom.id
Terasy .com
Tinktank .biz
Vivaldigital .com
Yinktank .biz