Competitor clicks on Google Ads: How to spot, stop, and block those budget-sabotaging tactics
Competitor clicks are one of the oldest tricks in the PPC playbook, and they’re still costing advertisers thousands of dollars every year.
You pay for a click, they waste it on purpose.
Whether it’s a rival hammering your ads manually or using bots and VPNs to stay hidden, the goal is pretty much always the same: drain your budget, mess up your data, and push you out of the competitive race.
In this guide, we’re breaking down exactly how it works, how to spot it, and how to stop it using real-world tactics and tools that actually catch the clicks that those all to well known paid PPC channels don't.
Let’s get into it.
TL;DR: Prevent competitor clicks draining your Google Ads spend
Competitor clicks aren’t just annoying...they’re deliberate, expensive, and designed to sabotage your PPC campaigns.
The problem: Rivals (or their bots) repeatedly click your ads to drain budget and disrupt performance.
Why it matters: These fake clicks inflate costs, skew your data, and give your competitors an unfair edge.
The fix: Google’s filters miss too much, but tools like Hitprobe track behavior, fingerprint devices, and auto-block bad clicks before they burn your budget
Need to fix the problem? Sign up for our 14-day free trial and say goodbye to wasted ad spend using our multi-layer blocking.
So, what are competitor clicks?
Competitor clicks happen when your direct business rivals (or their hired help like click farms) deliberately click your ads to drain your budget or sabotage your campaign. It’s a super dirty tactic designed to:
- Burn through your daily ad spend quicker than you can get real conversions
- Push your ads down in search results, elevating your competitions ads
- Skew your performance data, making it harder to optimize
These clicks can be:
- Manual: Someone physically clicking on your ads
- Automated using scripts or bots: Software programmed to mimic real clicks
- Click farms or outsourced workers: Paid to click repeatedly from various devices
- Masked clicks: Using VPNs, proxies, or mobile IPs to hide their real location
No matter how they do it, competitor clicks cost you real money and can kill your campaign’s effectiveness.
Why do competitors do it?
Their motivation is pretty simple.
Knock you out of the race and have one less competitor to battle against themselves.
Let’s be real for a minute - competitor clicks are a form of digital sabotage.
By draining your ad budget early or forcing you to pay more than you typically would per click, your business rivals can push you down the ad rankings and reduce your ads visibility.
In highly competitive markets, like local services, SaaS, or eCommerce, every single lead counts, and wasting your budget hurts your ability to win real customers with real intent.
How to spot competitor clicks
Competitor clicks don’t always stand out from the real ones, but there are some telltale signs:
Behavioral red flags
- You see a sudden spike in clicks, but lack the matching increase in conversions
- Multiple clicks start coming in from the same geographic area, repeatedly
- Visitors bounce quickly or spend very little time on site
- You see low engagement after clicking ads (i.e. no scroll depth, no real interaction with your site)
Technical red flags
- You’re seeing far too many clicks from the same device or browser (that is, if you can even see this much data if you’re using basic tools)
- Traffic keeps originating from suspicious IP ranges, VPNs, or even proxies
- You’ve spotted repeat clicks with pretty near identical timing or intervals, i.e. every Wednesday at 11:10am
If you spot several of these patterns, you might be dealing with competitor click sabotage.
Common myths about competitor clicks [Debunked]
Click fraud is one of those topics that divides the room.
Some swear it’s eating up budgets daily, backed by industry stats and security experts.
Others claim the tools built to stop it are basically snake oil.
With all that noise, it’s no wonder there are still so many myths flying around. Let’s clear up some of the myths so you don’t get stuck chasing phantom clicks:
❌ “You can tell which competitor is clicking my ads”
Not quite. If you’ve been busy Googling “can competitors click my Google Ads?” or “can competitors click Google Ads? - the answer is yes, but identifying them isn’t all that simple.
Unless they’re clicking from a known office IP or specific device (which you’ll need to identify using device fingerprinting), you won’t get a direct match.
✅ Google’s invalid click filters miss more than they should, so you need your own layer of defense to catch what slips through. Tools that track devices, networks, clicks and keywords offer you a stronger line of defence.
❌ “Google automatically blocks competitor clicks and refunds me the cost”
They try to detect and block potentially malicious clicks like competitor clicks, but their system is far from perfect. If you’re sitting there wondering “how do I stop competitors clicking on my AdWords”, don’t expect Google alone to protect you.
✅ Google’s invalid click filters miss plenty - you need your own layer of defense to catch what slips through.
❌ “Blocking a few IP addresses solves the problem”
Think again! If you’ve been searching “block competitor clicks”, keep in mind: static IPs are very easy to change or mask. Many competitors use mobile networks, proxies, or VPNs to stay hidden.
✅ Use a tool that sees through the deception with device device fingerprinting and behavioral analysis to block repeat offenders, no matter how they disguise themselves.
❌ “It only happens to big brands”
False. Search terms like “stop competitors clicking on my ads” exist because small and local businesses are often the hardest hit.
❌ “If my ad clicks aren’t converting, it must be bad targeting…not click fraud”
Many advertisers assume poor performance is their fault: wrong audience, weak landing page, bad timing…and sometimes that’s true. But if you’re getting high CTR with zero engagement, it could be sabotage - not strategy.
✅ Use a tool that gives you session/traffic intelligence and anaylze the clicks in more detail. Tools like Hitprobe measure the risk and engagement level of every ad click, alerting you to emerging trends and patterns that point to potential click fraud.
How can I block competitor clicks?
The simple answer is: there’s no single switch you can flip to turn off the risk.
Stopping competitor clicks requires a multi-layered approach.
Here’s how to make it harder (and more expensive) for your rivals to mess with your campaigns:
- Use IP exclusions: A good starting point and if you’re familiar with Google Ads, you’ll probably already know that Google lets you block up to 500 specific IP addresses or ranges at any time, preventing them from seeing your ads. Great if you’ve identified a known IP from a competitor's office, but not so great when you reach the rolling 500 IP limit or they’re using mobile networks, dynamic IPs, or VPNs that change every time they reconnect to the internet.
- Monitor user behaviour, not just the click itself: Clicks are great, but avg CPC (cost-per-click) isn’t a single source of truth. If you’re seeing high click rates but strange session behaviour like bouncing within 2-3 seconds, no page scrolls or clicks when they land, you’re probably paying for junk traffic.
Remember, real users engage whilst competitors? They click and bail.
- Set click frequency caps or use rule-based exclusions: If the same device, browser or IP address combo is clicking your ad three, four, or even five times a day, something is definitely up. Smart click fraud tools allow you to create frequency-based rules that stop budget wasters, fast.
Real prospects don’t keep clicking without converting.
- Detect VPNs, proxies and known data centers: Competitors use shady tactics to hide their tracks, so you’ll need a tool that can see through the deception. Standard analytics tools won’t tell you where the traffic is coming from, it’ll only focus on the click activity itself, but behavioural tracking tools like Hitprobe can detect when a click looks strange from a mile off.
- Block at device level: IPs change, PPC channels place some pretty restrictive limits on how many IP addresses you can actually exclude at any given time, and cookies get cleared. But the device fingerprint remains the same every time your ad gets clicks.
By fingerprinting your site visitors, you can detect, flag and block repeat offenders, even if they come back wearing a new digital disguise.
Why PPC channels like Google Ads haven’t solved competitor clicks yet
Google, Meta, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Amazon…they all want to protect their advertisers. But their systems have limits and in reality, they’re designed to sell well placed ads, not stop click fraud. Here’s where they fall short:
They’re reactive, not proactive ⚠️
Sure, they might flag invalid clicks after they’ve happened. But by this time, a competitor’s drained $300 from your budget and it’s too late. Wondering about the refund? That might show up weeks later, or not at all…refunds are the wild west of PPC advertising.
If you're not clued up on refunds, you can read more here.
Limited transparency ⚠️
You wont find a well placed chart or dashboard showing you which clicks we’re flagged as fraud, when, or why. That makes it nearly impossible to improve your targeting or defend yourself long term.
No behavioural insights ⚠️
You won’t get scroll depth, engagement time, device fingerprinting, or VPN detection built in. Why would you accept basic numbers with no way of separating real interest from sabotage?
No custom rules ⚠️
Every ad campaign and business works differently, so you want to be able to manage your own fraud filters in tools like Google Ads right? Well, it’s not as straightforward as that - you either rely on (and put your entire trust in) their algorithm, or well…that’s about it.
The bottom line? If you’re serious about your ad spend and getting the most from your ad budget whilst protecting yourself from risk, you need a fraud detection layer like Hitprobe that works with PPC channels like Google & Meta.
Simply out, we do what Google can’t.
How Hitprobe helps
You’re not here to play defence, and maybe you’re reading this because you suspect competitor clicks are already a problem you’re paying for.
Hitprobe gives you the firepower to fight back against shady clicks before they burn your budget.
Here’s how we do it better than your current ad platform ever could:
Real-time fingerprinting that outsmarts basic IP blocks 🔍
Don’t worry about chasing IP addresses, that’s a losing battle.
Hitprobe locks onto the device itself and once it’s logged its unique device fingerprint, we always see it, even if they switch IPs, use incognito mode, or bounce between networks.
Behaviour-based fraud detection 🧠
Fake clicks don’t act like real users, there’s always a giveaway, and we spot the difference instantly. Whether it’s missing scroll depth, interaction or hitting the back button within 1-2 seconds and landing on your site, we see it all.
Auto-blocking that works on autopilot ⛔
You shouldn’t need to babysit your traffic, you need automatic defence.
Hitprobe automatically blocks known abusers, bots, VPN traffic, repeat clicks and any clicks that fall within the custom rules you set to protect your site.
Set your rules once and leave us to handle the dirty work.
A dashboard with truths, not ML based fluff 📊
Get a clear, real-time view of every visit, whether it's good, bad or just plain suspicious.
With Hitprobe you can see where they came from, how they behaved, what pages they visited, where they exited and if they came back again.
No guesswork, just clean, actionable insights.
Purpose built for marketers
Hitprobe was built for performance marketers, not developers - that’s why we have a simple onboarding process and one lightweight JavaScript tag that doesn’t slow your site down.
Cookie free, lightweight and friction’less…what’s not to love.
Bonus tips on how to spot competitor clicks without the click fraud software
Whilst you might not be able to point at a rival's logo and say “they did it”, you can use the data you have to make a very compelling case (if you have the data).
Here’s a few tips to help your sleuthing:
Geo-targeting clues 🌎
If your ad gets a flurry of suspicious clicks from a location that matches a known competitor's offices or HQ, that’s your first breadcrumb to follow.
Timing patterns ⏰
Competitor clicks quite often follow a pattern, like spikes right after your ads go live or repeated hits around new campaign launches. If this keeps happening at the same time, it’s not a coincidence.
Reverse lookups ◀️
If you manage to get your hands on a suspicious IP address, you can run a reverse lookup to see which ISP it’s linked to and whether it’s associated with a datacenter, or a known proxy.
Final thoughts: Sabotage is real, but your defense can be too
Competitor clicks aren’t just annoying, they’re deliberate, damaging, and more common than most advertisers think.
But you don’t have to put up with them
With the right visibility and tools, you can catch click sabotage in real-time, before it eats into your ad spend.
Hitprobe gives you that control - we track every visit, score every session, and block the bad clicks before they burn your budget
Don’t let competitors decide how your campaigns perform, take smarter action and close the door on competitor click fraud.
Try Hitprobe for free and stop paying for dirty clicks.
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