Getting an ROI through your PPC campaigns

Late last night Google introduced a new feature to AdWords, the ability to run a report that shows invalid clicks.  Click fraud and invalid clicks have been at the forefront of the PPC scene for the last few months.

Detecting click fraud is extremely difficult and Google hasn't been forthcoming with how much click fraud goes on.  Speculators have been numerous with reports anywhere between 1% and 30% of clicks being fradulent.  I would guess the number in the low single digits but who cares what I think now that you can run your own reports!

This is going to get a little sticky if you aren't familar with Google AdWords and running reports from web based applications.

Follow along:

1. Click Reports then click "Create a Report Now >>" (see picture below.) This takes you into the report section of your AdWords account.  If you have never been there, they provide great reports of a lot of information you can't see in the regular account view.

2. Select "Campaign Performance" as your report type. (see pic below)

3. Choose a date range.  I like the monthly view.

4. Chose either "All Campaigns" (default) or "Manually select from a list".  If you have been paying attention, you probably have a lot of campaigns and you should select one or two manually.

5. Under "Advanced Options" click "Add or Remove Columns" to show the "Invalid Clicks" and "Invalid Clicks Rate" boxes.  Check them both.  This is still under the Reports menu, just further down on the page. (see pic below)

6.Name your Report. (See Picture)

7. Click "Create Report"

You will now see the screen that says, "Your report request was submitted successfully. We estimate your report will take 1-5 minutes to complete." Mine took about 2 minutes to generate.

You can then view your report when you see the screen below.

That is all it takes to generate an invalid clicks report within Google AdWords!

Any tips or questions?

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