Platform
Google Ads refund evidence
Every Google Ads click that came from a bot, a datacenter, a masked network or a repeat clicker, listed with the reason and the click ID. Download it as a CSV and attach it to Google's Click Quality Form.
What it is
The refund evidence export is a report of suspicious Google Ads clicks on your site. It covers visits that arrived with a Google click ID (gclid) and were flagged as a bot, a datacenter IP, a VPN, proxy or Tor, or repeat clicks from one IP. Each row has the date, IP, device, location, gclid and the reasons. It covers up to the last 60 days, the period Google reviews, and is available on the Organization plan.DataCops already scores every visit. The export simply pulls out the ones that came from your Google Ads and looked invalid, and puts them in the format a refund request needs.
Why it helps
Google filters a lot of invalid clicks on its own. Some still get through and you pay for them. Google lets advertisers ask for a review of clicks they believe were invalid, using its Click Quality Form. The hard part has always been the evidence: which clicks, from where, and why you think they were not real.
Without a tool on your site, you are guessing from Google's own reports. DataCops sees each click land, with the IP, the browser and the behaviour behind it. That turns a hunch into a list Google can check against its own records, click by click.
Which clicks are included
A click is included when the visit carried a Google click ID and at least one of these reasons applies:
| Reason | What it means |
|---|---|
| Automated browser | The visit was ruled a bot, with the kind of automation named where known (for example a headless browser). |
| Bot | The visit was ruled a bot without a more specific kind. |
| Datacenter IP | The click came from a cloud or hosting network, not a home or phone. |
| VPN, Proxy, Tor | The click came through a masked network. Each is listed separately. |
| Repeat clicks | 3 or more different Google click IDs from the same IP inside any 24-hour window. The count is shown. |
Repeat clicks look at distinct click IDs, not page views. A real person who reloads a page keeps the same click ID. A clicker who keeps coming back through your ad gets a new one each time. Three in a day from one address is the pattern that gets flagged.
What is left out
Good bots are never in the report. Search engine crawlers, social link previews and other known, honest bots are kept on their own list in DataCops and skipped here. That keeps the report to clicks that cost you money for no reason, and keeps it credible when Google reads it.
Clicks where the visitor never loaded a page are left out as well, because there is no IP or browser to show, and DataCops does not guess. Clicks with no reason against them are left out too. The report is evidence, not your whole click log.
The CSV
Each row is one suspicious click. The columns are:
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
date, time | When the click landed on your site. |
campaign | Your campaign tag from the landing URL. This is your own label, not Google's internal campaign ID. |
landing_page | The page the click landed on. |
ip_address | The visitor's IP address. |
device, browser, user_agent | What the visitor claimed to be. |
country, city | Where the IP is located. |
gclid | The Google click ID, so Google can find the exact click. |
fraud_reasons | Every reason that applies, separated by semicolons. |
You pick the date range. If you ask for more than 60 days, it is trimmed to 60, since that is the window Google looks at. The same data is also available as JSON from the DataCops API if you want to work with it yourself.
File a request
- In the DataCops dashboard, open the refund evidence export for your site.
- Choose the date range, up to the last 60 days, and download the CSV.
- Open Google's Click Quality Form from your Google Ads help pages.
- Fill in your account details and attach or paste the rows that matter.
- Submit. Google reviews the clicks against its own records and decides on any credit.
DataCops does not file anything with Google for you. You stay in charge of what you send and when.
Good to know before you start
- Google decides. The export gives Google clear evidence. Any credit is Google's call.
- It covers 60 days. Download regularly so no window slips past.
- It is for the Organization plan. Bot detection itself runs on every plan.
- It pairs with the edge block. The same repeat bots can be pushed to your Cloudflare, so you stop paying for them and stop seeing them.