Performance Max and Click Fraud: What You Can and Can't Control

Performance Max is now where many ecommerce stores put most of their Google Ads budget. It is also the campaign type where you have the least direct control, which matters if some of your clicks are invalid.

This guide covers what Performance Max does and does not let you control, and what to do about the gaps.

What you cannot do

• Exclude individual IP addresses. That control exists on standard Search, Display and Shopping campaigns, with a limit of 500 excluded IPs per campaign, but not on Performance Max.
• See a full list of exactly where each click came from. Reporting is more summarised than on other campaign types.

What you can do

• Add account-level placement exclusions for sites and apps you do not want your ads shown on.
• Use brand exclusions and negative keywords where the campaign allows, so spend is not wasted on searches you do not want.
• Use URL exclusions and limit final URL expansion so ads only send traffic to pages you choose.
• Restrict locations to the regions you actually ship to, and review location reports.
• Feed the campaign good conversion data. Bidding learns from conversions, so fake or low-quality ones teach it the wrong lessons.
• Run Search and Shopping campaigns alongside it where you need tighter control and IP exclusions.

How to spot trouble early

• Compare clicks in Google Ads with sessions in GA4 for the same campaign. A big gap means clicks that never loaded your site.
• Look for spikes by hour or day with no change in sales.
• Check engagement for paid traffic in GA4: sessions with near-zero engaged time and no add-to-carts deserve a closer look.
• Review the invalid clicks columns in Google Ads, which show what Google has already filtered.

Where independent detection helps

Because Performance Max hides much of the detail, evidence matters. A tool that scores every click on your ads and shows why a click was flagged gives you something to act on, such as excluding the offending networks on the campaigns that allow it and tightening the controls above on the ones that do not.

Read: how much click fraud is costing your store →

See ClickWall pricing and sizes →

Compare click fraud protection tools →