Q: How does ClickGUARD check IP addresses?

<p>ClickGUARD uses a <strong>suite of geo-location and anti-fraud services</strong> to retrieve detailed information about the IP address of people (and bots) that click on your ads. </p> <p>The information includes, but is not limited to:</p> <ul> <li>ISP (Internet Service Provider)</li> <li>geographical location of the IP address (city-level / postal code accuracy)</li> <li>is IP blacklisted (various malware and anti-fraud blacklists)?</li> <li>does IP address belong to a public proxy / VPN or Tor browser?</li> <li>the threat level of the IP address</li> </ul> <h6 id="howcanyouusethisinformation">How can you use this information?</h6> <p>With ClickGUARD, all information about an IP address is made actionable through automated rules. You can set different thresholds for different combination of conditions. For example, you can limit the number of clicks that a certain IP address can make if it is a proxy or block all clicks that come from IPs that are located outside of your targeted location.</p>

Question 1

How to install ClickGUARD tracking code?

Accepted Answer

You can find the tracking code for your website in your ClickGUARD dashboard by visiting Site settings page, and then clicking on the Tracking tab.

Click on the icon in the top right to copy it.

To install it on your website paste it like any other tracking pixel. You can put it inside the tag at the very bottom.

Important: You should add tracking code to your website layout, so that it's loaded on every page on the website. This will ensure that no activity goes unrecorded by ClickGUARD.

More information:

What is ClickGUARD tracking code?
Can ClickGUARD work without tracking code?
How to check if ClickGUARD tracking code is installed properly?

Question 2

How to set up automatic click tracking with Google Ads?

Accepted Answer

In order for ClickGUARD to track paid traffic coming from Google Ads, we need to configure a tracking template on Google Ads account level.

By doing this, all traffic coming from your ads will be tracked to ClickGUARD.

To enable automatic setup of click tracking, visit PPC accounts page, select your Google Ads account and open the Tracking tab.

PPC Accounts

Enable the Automatically configure click tracking toggle, and click Save settings. Now ClickGUARD will automatically set tracking template on your Google Ads account to enable tracking of paid traffic.

Are there alternatives?

Yes. If you're already using tracking template, you can configure click tracking with URL suffix only.

Can I configure tracking manually in Google Ads?

Yes. Please take a look at instructions described here.

Question 3

How does ClickGUARD check IP addresses?

Accepted Answer

ClickGUARD uses a suite of geo-location and anti-fraud services to retrieve detailed information about the IP address of people (and bots) that click on your ads.

The information includes, but is not limited to:

ISP (Internet Service Provider)
geographical location of the IP address (city-level / postal code accuracy)
is IP blacklisted (various malware and anti-fraud blacklists)?
does IP address belong to a public proxy / VPN or Tor browser?
the threat level of the IP address

How can you use this information?

With ClickGUARD, all information about an IP address is made actionable through automated rules. You can set different thresholds for different combination of conditions. For example, you can limit the number of clicks that a certain IP address can make if it is a proxy or block all clicks that come from IPs that are located outside of your targeted location.

Question 4

How to test if ClickGUARD is tracking clicks?

Accepted Answer

The best indicator that ClickGUARD is logging and tracking your paid traffic is to see clicks in ClickGUARD within Click Reports. However, there is a great way to test the tracking template directly in Google Ads.

Login to Google Ads and go to the account or campaign settings where you installed ClickGUARD's tracking template. Under "Tracking" you will notice a blue "TEST" command:

Hit the "TEST" and let's interpret the results.

Successful Test

When the test is successful, Google Ads will both confirm that the tracking succeeded and that your landing page was found:

If you haven't configured ClickGUARD to ignore clicks from Google ad bot, you will be able to see clicks from the successful test in your Click Reports as ADBOT clicks.

Issues with Tracking

Issues with tracking will be shown by Google, and will usually be related to your final URL (landing page) not being accessible to Google's test:

In these cases you would need to check why your landing page URL was not properly formed during tracking. Best way to understand this is to mouse over the tracking template URL to get a more detailed tracking trail:

![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/480f8ec7e113

Question 5

How to use a custom tracking template in parallel with ClickGUARD?

Accepted Answer

If you're using a 3rd party tracking template (e.g. for Facebook Ads), use our template merge tool to get a merged template. If you're using a custom tracking template to add UTM parameters to your landing page, simply follow the steps below to move these parameters to the final URL suffix in Google Ads.

Move tracking parameters to the final URL suffix

Step 1 - Get your custom tracking template

Grab your current tracking template from your account, campaign or ad group in Google Ads. It will look something like this:

|| {lpurl}?campaign={campaignid}&keyword={keyword}

Step 2 - Grab only URL parameters from the template

You can do this by removing the {lpurl}? part of the template to get:

|| campaign={campaignid}&keyword={keyword}

Step 3 - Paste URL parameters into the URL suffix

Now simply paste the result of step 2 into the "Final URL Suffix" field in your account or campaign settings and save changes.

Why use final URL suffix?

Google introduced the final URL suffix as a part of their efforts to make it easy for implementation of 3rd party tracking with using multiple tracking templates or parallel tracking.

They are used to: clearly distinguish between URL parameters that are used to determine the content of a page from parameters that are used for tracking purposes on your own site.

Some of the perks of usin

Question 6

Can I track clicks on Google Ads without setting tracking template?

Accepted Answer

If your tracking template is already used by another service, you can alternatively setup click tracking with final URL suffix only.

You can let ClickGUARD set this up automatically - visit PPC accounts page, select your Google Ads account and open the Tracking tab.

PPC Accounts - URL Suffix

Enable the Automatically configure click tracking toggle, and Use final URL suffix only, and click Save settings. Now ClickGUARD will automatically set tracking via URL suffix on your Google Ads account.

Important: When tracking with final URL suffix, there are few important things to consider:

You need to have tracking code installed on your website

Since traffic is not coming directly from Google Ads, we will be tracking ad clicks with the help of tracking code. With parameters set in the final URL suffix, tracking code will report those visits as paid traffic.

Make sure you have tracking code installed on your website for URL suffix tracking to work.

You will not be able to track bounced clicks

Since all the paid traffic is tracked directly from the website landing page, we can't accurately track bounced clicks. When a visitors closes the web page immediately after clicking on an ad, by using only final URL suffix we will not be able to track this type of a click.

If you don't want to miss these clicks, make sure you setup tracking w

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