Why are your ad clicks not becoming orders?
Start with the products being advertised, the visitors reaching them and the steps to checkout. These checks help you identify a page or tracking problem, inspect suspicious traffic and assess whether a protection change helped genuine customers buy.
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Try a purchase on your phone and compare the result with your shop's order records. Then review the campaigns or products causing concern. Out-of-stock items, payment errors, repeated visits and incorrectly counted purchases each point to a different next step.
Why are shoppers clicking but not placing orders?
Customers often visit a shop more than once before buying. They compare sizes and prices, check delivery costs or return after payday. Start with the products and traffic sources behind the change in sales. Are you advertising an item that is out of stock? Does the landing page show the same price and delivery promise as the ad? Are mobile visitors getting further than the product page?
Try adding an item to the basket and completing the checkout steps yourself. Check shipping restrictions, payment errors and any recent changes to tracking. Once those basics work, inspect the visits that still look unusual, such as repeated activity concentrated on one product or source. Compare them with paid orders from the shop's own records. An abandoned basket, a suspicious ad visit and a disputed payment each need a different investigation. Identifying which problem you have helps you choose a useful response without interrupting genuine shoppers.
Can shoppers buy the product shown in your ad?
Open the destination URLs from a sample of your shopping ads. Check the exact item, size or variant being promoted. A customer who arrives on an unavailable option, an old product page or a different price has a good reason to leave. Review the product feed and page together so the information matches at the time of the visit.
Repeat the check on a phone and follow the route to checkout. Look for difficult option selectors, missing delivery information and redirects that lose campaign parameters. If a product is available only in certain regions, check that your campaign targets customers you can serve. After correcting a feed or page problem, note the date and review the results for those products. You can then investigate the remaining suspicious visits without confusing a stock or usability problem with click fraud. Include these checks when launching a new catalogue or a major promotion.
Are purchases being counted correctly?
Compare a few orders in your shop with the purchase events shown in your advertising reports. Check when each event fires and what value it sends. An unpaid order, a test purchase and a completed sale may appear differently in your commerce system. Decide which event should represent a successful purchase, then make sure your reporting follows that definition.
If both the browser and server send purchase events, ask your tracking specialist to check how duplicates are removed. Also check whether refreshing a confirmation page or returning after payment sends the event again. After changing protection settings, run the same purchase test and confirm that the order and event still appear correctly. Use paid orders and refunds from your shop when reviewing commercial results. Traffic records can help explain where visitors came from, while the shop's own order information tells you which purchases actually completed.
What changes during a sale or product launch?
A sale, press mention or product launch can bring a large increase in genuine visits. New visitors may browse differently from regular customers, and campaigns may reach audiences that rarely appeared before. Note when the promotion started, which products it featured and any budget or targeting changes made alongside it.
When inspecting unusual activity, compare the same source, device and product group where possible. Check that the advertised items remain available and that checkout can handle the extra demand. If customers report problems after a protection change, investigate promptly with the person who manages the site. Once the promotion ends, compare paid orders or qualified enquiries with the spend and traffic from that period. This gives you a useful record for the next sale. It also helps you distinguish a genuinely successful campaign from a tracking error or a burst of visits that did not reach the intended customers.
How to investigate a sudden increase in ad clicks
Suppose a campaign suddenly receives more clicks without more enquiries. Before investigating, you only know that costs have risen. Pausing the campaign may stop the spending, but it can also stop genuine customers reaching you. Start by noting the affected dates and checking whether you changed the budget, targeting, offer or landing page around that time.
Next, inspect the traffic source and a few visits from the affected period. Test the enquiry form yourself. If you find a page problem, repair it. If a particular group of visits looks suspicious, review the available protection settings for that campaign and record the change you make. Afterwards, watch both the suspicious activity and genuine enquiries. This before-and-after example shows how to narrow the response. To assess your own result, compare similar days and keep other campaign changes in the record so you can see what helped.
Are Facebook and Instagram ads receiving the right conversion data?
Look at the action that triggers your chosen Meta conversion event. Does a lead mean someone completed a form, or only clicked a button? Does a purchase mean payment was confirmed, or that a checkout page opened? If the event fires too early, Ads Manager can appear to show successful conversions while your sales team or shop sees a different result.
Test the customer steps with the person responsible for your Pixel and server-side tracking. If both send the same event, check that duplicates are handled correctly. Then review the MyClickShield integration and the protection options it supports for your setup. Website controls, event handling and advertising exclusions work differently, so ask what will change before enabling an option. Afterward, complete another ordinary customer journey and confirm that genuine leads or purchases still appear where expected. This check is particularly useful after changing a checkout, form or tracking plugin.
Where can you check invalid clicks in Google Ads?
Google Ads has its own systems for identifying invalid traffic. Its invalid-click reporting and billing adjustments are useful starting points when you suspect a problem. Compare the affected campaign and dates with the visits recorded on your website. Some activity may already have been filtered from charges, so check the account before treating every flagged website visit as money lost.
Look for a repeatable pattern you can describe: a particular campaign, time period or group of visits. Save the relevant details if you need to request an investigation. Check which exclusions are available for that campaign type and how they are applied in your connected account. Search and Performance Max do not necessarily offer the same controls. If you are unsure which action is supported, use the current Google documentation and ask about your specific campaign. That gives you a clearer next step than adding broad exclusions based only on a high click count.
Source: Google Ads: invalid clicks
Could a protection rule block a real customer?
A real customer might browse through a company network, use a VPN or switch from Wi-Fi to mobile data. Several people can also share one public IP address. These situations matter when you review repeated visits or a network-based flag. If you tighten a rule, check a sample of the affected visits and confirm that ordinary enquiries or purchases still work.
When someone reports a problem, ask which page they tried to use and approximately when it happened. Compare that information with the visit record before changing a broad account setting. Check whether an exclusion or website rule caused the problem, then adjust the relevant setting if needed. Keep a note explaining any exception so the next person managing the account understands it. Include staff, your agency and tools your website relies on in your checks, especially after installing protection or changing a site's forms and checkout.
What should you measure before switching protection on?
Before changing protection settings, save a report for the campaign you want to improve. Include its spend, clicks, landing pages and useful results: qualified calls, accepted enquiries or paid orders. Note the existing exclusions as well. Choose dates that reflect your normal business. A weekend promotion will usually bring different visitors from an ordinary Tuesday.
Keep a short note of changes during the trial, including new ads, budget increases, promotions and website edits. If sales improve after several changes at once, that note will help you understand what may have contributed. Check lead quality with the people answering calls or handling enquiries; a larger form-submission count can conceal more unsuitable requests. With a low-volume campaign, you may need longer to judge the effect on sales. You can still use the first week to confirm that tracking works, reports make sense and the right account is connected.
How much money has click protection actually saved?
Start with what you were actually charged and the results your business received. A flagged visit does not automatically equal a paid click. Your advertising platform may already have filtered or credited some invalid activity. Check its reporting and billing adjustments before adding up a claimed saving from the same visits.
For a practical comparison, look at spend per qualified enquiry or paid order before and after the change. Include the subscription fee and the time you spend reviewing traffic. For example, if ten flagged visits are multiplied by a $4 average click price, the resulting $40 is an estimate of possible exposure, not proof of a $40 refund. Keep estimates labelled and explain the calculation. A useful review should show whether your account is producing better-quality enquiries or orders for its overall cost, with promotions, bid changes and other adjustments taken into account.
Is MyClickShield installed on the right pages?
Check the landing pages receiving your paid traffic, rather than testing only the homepage. Confirm that the tracking snippet is installed through your chosen website or tag-manager setup and has not been added twice. If a campaign sends visitors through a redirect or onto a separate landing-page service, include that destination in the check.
Open a page in your own browser, move to the next step and look for the expected visit record. Test the form or checkout as a customer would. If your site changes pages without a full reload, check those route changes too. Review how the snippet behaves with your consent settings and ask the person managing your website to investigate missing records. Give them the affected URL, approximate time and installation method. After a website redesign or tag-manager change, repeat these checks before relying on the reports from a newly launched campaign.
What should you check during your 7-day trial?
Pick one campaign you understand well. Install MyClickShield on its landing pages, connect the appropriate account and confirm that a test visit is recorded. Open a few traffic records to see whether you understand the information shown. Check the available response to a suspicious visit and make sure ordinary customers can still submit a form or complete checkout.
Try the tasks you will need after the trial: finding an affected campaign, reviewing a flag and explaining a result to a colleague or client. Write down questions for support as they arise. Before the trial ends, check the selected plan, when charging starts and how cancellation works. A quiet campaign may not produce enough sales in one week to judge a financial improvement. In that case, use the trial to assess installation, reporting and ease of use, and be specific about what you still need to learn.
