Can competitors click on my ads to waste my budget?
Yes, competitor click fraud happens, especially in expensive local search categories such as legal, locksmiths and home repair, where a single click can cost tens of dollars. A rival, or someone they pay, clicks your ads to exhaust your daily budget so your ads stop showing. Platforms filter some of it, and exclusions plus monitoring reduce the rest.
Manual competitor click fraud is usually small in volume but costly per click. Signs include repeated clicks from the same area or network at similar times, ad clicks with no calls or form fills, and budgets exhausted unusually early in the day. Automated versions use cheap bots or click farms.
Countermeasures: exclude repeat IP addresses where your platform allows, narrow geotargeting and ad schedules, use keyword bidding strategies tied to conversions, and report patterns to the platform so the clicks are reviewed as invalid clicks. Dedicated click-fraud tools automate detection and exclusions.