How to Exclude IP Addresses in Google Ads

Competitors clicking on ads, bot traffic and click farms are just some of the ways click fraud drains your ad spend. Proactively identifying and blocking this traffic can improve your ad reach and help you grow your business faster. The simplest way to do this in Google Ads is to add IP addresses to your exclusion list, prohibiting traffic from those IP addresses from viewing ads.

What are IP exclusions?

IP exclusions are exactly what they sound like: Google allows you to specify up to 500 IP addresses per ad campaign to ‘block’ from displaying your ads. You can either specify individual IP addresses or blocks of addresses, and this can be applied either at account or at campaign level giving you full control.

How do I manually exclude IP addresses in Google Ads?

Google makes it very straightforward to apply IP exclusions both at account and campaign level.

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Account level (this will exclude IP addresses from all campaigns in your account):

1. Log in to your Google ads account, and navigate to ‘Settings’ 
2. Click ‘Account settings’ and navigate to ‘IP exclusions’ 
3. Enter the IP addresses you want to exclude from seeing your ads and click ‘Save’
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Campaign level (this gives you the flexibility to exclude invalid traffic at an individual campaign level) 

1. Log in to your Google ads account, and click the ‘Campaigns’ icon
   
2. From the drop-down, select the campaign you wish to exclude IP addresses from
3. Click the settings icon, and then on the settings page, click ‘Additional settings’ 
4. Click to expand the IP exclusions section
5. Enter the IP addresses you wish to exclude from your campaign and click Save

How do I remove IP addresses from the exclusion list?

Why would you want to remove IP addresses from the exclusion list? Well, IP addresses are rarely fixed to individual users, so you want to only apply the exclusion for enough time to prevent the invalid activity and reevaluate from time to time or else you risk blocking real customers.

Additionally, with Google’s limit of 500 IP addresses, you will need to occasionally remove IP addresses in order to add new ones. 

To remove IP addresses from the exclusion list:

1. Follow the steps outlined above for either account or campaign exclusion
2. Instead of adding IP addresses, use the same process to remove any IP  address exclusions that you don’t want to apply
3. Click Save‍

With Protect Pro PPC, you don’t need to worry about updating your exclusion list. It uses sophisticated algorithms to determine which IPs to prioritise, ad and remove to keep your ads protected from fraud.

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Why should I exclude IP addresses in Google Ads?

There are several reasons for blocking this type of invalid traffic. For example, it could be that you don’t want people within your company inadvertently clicking on your ads via organic search results and costing you money unnecessarily, or it could be that your competitors are deliberately targeting your paid results and eating up your budget.

Among the benefits of excluding IP addresses are:

• Prevent ad spend wastage due to click fraud
• Improve the reach of your ads by blocking invalid traffic
• Ensure more of your budget reaches potential customers, not invalid traffic that won’t ever convert

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Which IP addresses should I exclude?

Without a trusted anti-fraud tool in place, it is hard to know which IP addresses are sources of invalid traffic. Unfortunately, neither Google Ads nor Google Analytics provides this level of visibility.

The first step to identifying IP addresses for exclusion is to set up a 3rd party tool that will allow you to view the IP addresses of your ad engagement, or establish some way of checking your web server logs. This may sound complex but with TrafficGuard you can get set up very easily without the need for coding or development.

TrafficGuard Protect PPC gives you granular visibility of your traffic quality and depending on your budget you might even get it for free.

Learn more: Finding IP addresses for exclusion using TrafficGuard’s free fraud protection

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What are the limitations of manually blocking IP addresses?

Manual IP address exclusion management is a great way to get a basic level of protection for your Google Ads budget but it does have its limitations, including:

• Timing: If you are only checking your traffic quality daily, or weekly, you will almost certainly be receiving invalid traffic in the interim
• Labour intensive: Tedious nature of updating blacklists of every individual campaign takes you away from tasks that could generate more value
• Exclusion list size: Google Ads allows excluding up to 500 IP addresses, which makes it crucial to ensure that they represent the biggest threats at any point in time

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Is there an alternative to manual IP exclusion in Google Ads?

Is there a better way to deal with ad fraud than spending your time updating your exclusion list? Absolutely – Real-time ad fraud protection takes care of all of your exclusion list maintenance in Google Ads, including list removals to ensure that you are protected from the more current threats to your advertising.

• Real-time protection: Where manual exclusion management means your campaigns could be receiving that bad traffic for weeks or months before it is excluded, TrafficGuard adds exclusions as soon as threats are identified ensuring fraud is actively prevented
• Reliable prevention: TrafficGuard relies on data captured from billions of advertising engagements every day. This intelligence is used to determine sources of invalid traffic quickly and reliably without real traffic being caught in the crossfire
• Save time on manual exclusions: Trust TrafficGuard to handle the management of your exclusion list so that you can focus on improving your ad reach and growing your business

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How does automated IP exclusion work in Google Ads?

Rather than relying on the user manually updating IP exclusions, TrafficGuard’s automated IP exclusion uses cutting edge algorithms and real-time analytics to proactively identify and block fraudulent IP addresses from interacting with your campaign.

This intelligent approach optimises campaign performance by detecting invalid traffic and click fraud in your Google Ads campaigns, while saving you the time and effort required for manual oversight. 

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Conclusion

It only takes a few minutes to set up a TrafficGuard account and get started protecting your ad campaigns from click fraud, bad actors and bots. 

Contact us to get started.