Google Confirmed Click Penalty: How to Avoid & Recover

As a publisher, ensuring that ad revenue is a steady stream can be very critical to the success of your digital platform. However, some unforeseen issues can sneak up and affect your earnings; one such problem is the Confirmed Click Penalty by Google. Such a penalty is likely to dramatically reduce your CTR and ad impressions, which impacts your revenue streams.

Whether you’re already seeing the negative impact of this penalty or want to proactively safeguard your ad revenue, knowing what the Confirmed Click Penalty is and how it affects your ads is critical. In this article, we will dive deep into what this penalty entails, why Google applies it, how to detect it, and the steps you can take to recover from it or avoid it altogether.

Confirmed Click Penalty Definition

The Confirmed Click Penalty is also sometimes called the Two-Click or Double Click penalty. The Confirmed Click Penalty is a Google automatic feature to counter invalid click traffic. It usually targets websites and ad units that exhibit more than normal accidental clicks or fraudulent click activities. Click through this ad by one user, now the user should fill an extra action like a visit site button after clicking which indicates that he’s ready to see the advertiser landing page. If not clicked by this confirmation button for the publisher it will not add any revenue to the account based on that particular click.

Why Does Google Apply the Confirmed Click Penalty?

The most prominent reason for the application of the Confirmed Click Penalty is dealing with invalid clicks, specifically accidental ones, that might result from bad ad placement or user mistakes. Google is continually trying to make digital advertising a better experience and increase the efficiency of ads; it has recently taken an interest in filtering out low-quality traffic.

The Confirmed Click Penalty is part of the overall effort by Google towards keeping user experiences improved, and even the concern for Core Web Vitals reflects a continuous push for making the sites more usable. Cumulative layout shift, an average measure that penalizes websites with shifting content while loading, can result in accidental clicks and other forms of invalid clicks that lead to improper click rates. 

Google, therefore uses the Confirmed Click feature every time it recognizes patterns where users click on ads by mistake because of misleading ad placement, reflowing content, or lack of sufficient padding between ads and other content.

How Google Detects Accidental Clicks

The self-service system monitors interactions on ad units and finds patterns that could imply accidental clicks. For instance, users always click on ads in such a way that one cannot get meaningful engagements like low conversion rates and bounce rates to ignore user activities: Google will confirm the users’ intentional click by applying the Confirmed Click functionality. 

• Inadequate padding or spacing between the ads: The navigation buttons and menus plus other details may accidentally get clicked due to how closely they appear to the ads.
• Deceptive ad placement: Some ads can be placed in such a way that they are portrayed as content. The ad may also become a link or button to attract random clicks.
• Overlapped sticky ads with other content: Sticky or floating ads might interfere with a user’s natural navigation flow, making them click on such ads accidentally.
• Reflow of content: Whenever content re-flows while pages are loading due to delayed ad loads, users will end up mis-clicking the ads since they might have not intended to do so.

How to Identify If Your Website Is Affected by the Confirmed Click Penalty?

There are several ways to identify whether the Confirmed Click Penalty has been implemented on your ad inventory:

1. Decline in eCPM and CTR: If eCPM and CTR have taken a huge fall but traffic doesn’t go down, then there’s a good chance that the Confirmed Click Penalty has been applied on your website.
2. Check Your Site’s Code: Look for the ad tag in the header of your site for the keyword ‘confirmedClickVisible’. This will tell you if Google has flagged your ad units with the penalty.
3. Google Policy Center: Look within your Google Ad Manager account and find the Policy Center. Search for warnings over invalid clicks, also known as Confirmed Click Penalty. Here is where you shall view potential issues with ads.
4. Partner Health Score: If using Google Ad Manager, a rate of invalid clicks may affect a higher rate here. A drastically sharp decline in the health score likely means the confirmed click penalty applies

How to Solve and Prevent a Confirmed Click Penalty 

Knowing what you should do to rectify the situation or avoid it from happening in the first place is as important as knowing how the Confirmed Click Penalty works. Here are some best practices you should observe:

1. Add Extra Padding Around Ads:-  Adding padding around ads prevents accidental clicks, especially in areas where users will most likely click, such as navigation bars or buttons.

2. Make Ads Distinct from Content:- Clearly mark your ads as advertisements using clear labels like Sponsored or Advertisement. Avoid making ads appear as content so that they are not mistaken and clicked accidentally.

3. Place Ads Wisely:- Place ads in places where they will not interfere with key navigational elements or content. For example, avoid placing ads near buttons that users are likely to click on or in areas where content may shift.

4. Avoid Content Reflow:- Use fixed-size containers for your ads, especially for in-article or in-feed ads, to avoid layout shifts that can cause accidental clicks.

5. Optimize Your Site’s Page Speed:- The content will jump around because the page is taking a long to load, and accidental clicks on ads are very likely. Ensure that your page loads as fast as possible to make the experience smooth and reduce accidental clicks.

6. Diversify Your Revenue Streams:- This tends to happen when relying heavily on the Google ad network, as it did with the penalty from the Confirmed Click, so now might be an excellent time to try a little diversification of other monetizing techniques, perhaps header bidding, which may help prevent putting too much revenue on one line.

How Long Will It Take To Remove This Penalty?

The Confirmed Click Penalty is not something that publishers can remove manually. Google will automatically monitor the performance of ad units, and if it determines that there is a sustained improvement in click quality-for example, fewer accidental clicks, the, the penalty will be removed eventually. It will take some time depending on the changes you implement and how soon Google can evaluate the improved click quality.

Defending Your Revenue Against the Confirmed Click Penalty

This penalty can be quite a plague for publishers, but at least by following some best practices and improving ad placements, you may be able to avoid or recover from this penalty.

After all, staying proactive- maintaining good user experience on your website, higher page load times, and varied sources of revenue will continue to keep your ad revenue healthy.

If you are having problems with the Confirmed Click Penalty or need help optimizing your ad setup, we at Snigel are here to help you.

Contact us today to find out how we can help you implement strategies that maximize your ad revenue while keeping your site compliant with Google’s best practices.

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