Osvaldo P.
An expensive "peace of mind tax" with zero real impact on performance
I decided to use these services (I tried both ClickGuard and CHEQ Essentials), paying around $300 a month under the promise of protecting my campaigns from alleged "click fraud" and bot attacks. At first, you see a very nice dashboard full of flashy red charts telling you they are blocking thousands of threats, which makes you feel safe. But the reality is completely different. What these tools actually do is inflate "threat" metrics—classifying legitimate crawlers or regular users as bots—just to justify their hefty monthly fee. Furthermore, given the current Google Ads ecosystem and technical limitations (like Google's strict IP exclusion limits), their actual blocking capability is virtually non-existent. This is especially true for campaign types like Performance Max (PMax), where these platforms essentially operate blindly. The real test: I ran an experiment and completely turned off these platforms for an entire month. The result? My traffic behavior, overall visits, and campaign costs did not change at all. Google already handles invalid traffic filtering natively and for free. Paying $300/month for a panel that just sells smoke and fear makes no sense. If you feel your campaigns are getting bombarded with junk clicks, the solution is to optimize your campaign structure (for instance, switching from PMax to Standard Shopping or tightening your targeting), not giving your money away to these "prevention" tools. Highly NOT recommended.
Response from ClickGuardMay 26, 2026
Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback about ClickGuard. We appreciate you highlighting these points and would like to address them directly for you and for others reading this review. On detection accuracy: ClickGuard does not inflate threat counts. Every flagged visit has a logged classification reason that is visible in your dashboard, and known crawlers are allowed by default. As a Google-certified click tracking service, you also have full control over detection sensitivity and custom rules. This means you decide what gets flagged, not us. On IP exclusion limits: You are correct that Google caps IP exclusions at 500, and we are transparent about that limit. Our system automatically rotates out the oldest excluded IP address as a campaign approaches the limit, ensuring protection remains uninterrupted. Audience exclusions are also available and are not subject to this cap. On your 1-month test: No change in total traffic volume over a short period is actually expected. Invalid traffic rarely appears as a clear and visible spike. Its real impact is more subtle. It can skew bidding signals, reduce efficiency, and gradually increase costs. A short, uncontrolled test period usually cannot clearly capture these effects. On Google’s native filtering: Google catches many obvious bots, but its system is a black box, and its incentives are not fully aligned with refunding questionable clicks. ClickGuard is designed to complement Google’s baseline protections by detecting patterns such as repeated clicks from the same IP ranges, suspicious session behavior, and possible competitor activity. We provide transparent reporting and actionable controls so that you can see what is happening and decide how to respond. Google’s filtering is a starting point, not a complete solution. We also want to note that we attempted to contact your team directly on May 19 and May 26, but did not receive a response. We would still very much welcome the opportunity to review your specific account data with you. Please reach out to our support team and reference this review so that we can prioritize your case.