Click Fraud

Extended Definition

Click fraud occurs when fake clicks are generated on affiliate links with no intent to convert. This inflates traffic statistics, wastes advertising budgets, and can lead to account suspensions from affiliate networks. Click fraud is estimated to cost the digital advertising industry over $100 billion annually.

Types of Click Fraud

• Bot traffic — Automated scripts that simulate human clicks at scale.
• Click farms — Networks of low-paid workers clicking links manually.
• Competitor clicks — Competitors clicking your paid ads to exhaust your budget.
• Self-clicking — Publishers generating fake clicks to inflate their traffic numbers.
• Click injection — Mobile malware that triggers fake clicks before an app install completes.

How GeoRedir Fights Click Fraud

GeoRedir includes multiple layers of click fraud protection:

• Bot detection — Blocks 40+ known bot patterns from User-Agent strings
• Click velocity detection — Flags IPs generating more than 5 clicks in 60 seconds
• IP blocking — Block specific IPs or ranges globally or per-link
• Traffic quality scoring — 0-100 score measuring overall traffic health
• Duplicate detection — Marks same-IP clicks within 24 hours as non-unique

Learn more in our Click Fraud Protection Guide.

Related Terms