Knowledge base
Free on every Zinn-hosted site: paid clicks scored for bots, datacenter networks, repeat clicks and zero dwell, with estimated wasted spend. Converting visits are never flagged.
The Zinn® Ads click-fraud shield is free on every site hosted by Zinn® and is on by default. It looks at the paid clicks that land on your sites and marks the ones that look invalid, so you can see how much of your ad spend may be going to bots, competitors or click farms.
A paid click is a visit whose address carries an ad platform's click id: gclid, msclkid, fbclid, ttclid, li_fat_id, twclid, epik. For each one, the shield reads your site's own web-server log (no tracking script is added to your site) and checks:
rather than a home or mobile connection.
several times within 24 hours.
Each click gets a score from 0 to 100 and the reasons behind it. A click scoring 50 or more is listed as suspected invalid.
⛔ A click that converted is never flagged. If the visitor reached an order-received or thank-you page, or sent a form, the click is marked converted whatever else is true about it. You can add your own conversion pages under Zinn® Ads → Click-fraud shield.
Enter your average cost per click and the shield multiplies it by the suspected clicks. This is an estimate: Google decides which clicks are invalid and what it credits back, and we never promise a refund.
When a click is very clearly invalid, the address and its network are added to a shared fraud network as an anonymous signal: a scrambled key and a count. It never contains your organisation, your site, a page address or the visitor's address, and other customers can never see that it came from you. Signals expire after 30 days unless they are seen again.
The shield runs under legitimate interest (fraud prevention). The visitor's address, browser name, click id and page are kept for 60 days — the window in which an invalid-click claim can be made — and are then deleted. The score and reasons, without any of that, are kept for 400 days for your reports. In the dashboard the address is only ever shown as its network. You can switch the shield off for your organisation at any time.
The shield does not yet block addresses in Google Ads or prepare refund claims for you; those need your Google Ads account connected and are coming next. Sites not hosted by Zinn® are not covered.
An AI assistant connected to your account (MCP) can read the shield's totals and the scored clicks with the same permissions you gave it.
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