Google Ads Refund Claims

Google lets an advertiser ask for a review of clicks it believes were invalid, and credits the account when its specialists agree. AxiTrace does the slow part of that request for you: it selects the paid clicks that came from high-risk addresses, builds the evidence pack, writes the texts for Google's Invalid Clicks form and tracks the deadlines. You paste the texts into the form, attach the files and send it. The ad platform decides whether, and how much, to credit.

Two-track protection

Fraud Detection protects your Google Ads budget on two tracks that work side by side:

• Track 1: exclude the address right away. With Google Ads Auto Exclusion switched on, a high-risk address is written into your own Google Ads account as an account-level IP exclusion, so your ads stop being shown to it. This stops future spend and does not change anything that has already been charged.
• Track 2: claim the money back afterwards. Clicks that were already charged before an address was excluded, or that came from addresses Google has not filtered, are collected into a refund claim. You send it to Google, and Google reviews it.

Neither track replaces the other. Exclusion is fast but works only from now on; a claim covers past clicks but takes weeks and its outcome is decided by the ad platform.

Which clicks are selected

A click goes into a claim only when all of these hold:

• It is a paid Google Ads click with a click identifier (gclid, gbraid or wbraid), recorded by the click tracker or by the AxiTrace SDK when the visitor landed on your site.
• It came from a high-risk address, rated High risk by Fraud Detection, or with hard click-level evidence such as one click identifier replayed across devices and networks.
• Its IP address was verified as the real address of the clicking browser. Clicks whose address could not be verified are counted in the summary but never listed as evidence.
• It is not from someone who should never be reported: customers who bought from you, addresses on your whitelist, your own staff, and Google's published crawler ranges are always excluded.
• It has not been claimed before. A click identifier appears in at most one claim.

When a claim is ready

• Thresholds. A claim is prepared when the selected clicks reach 30 clicks or an estimated cost of 50 in your account currency, whichever comes first. The cost is estimated from the average cost per click of each campaign. Both thresholds can be changed in the settings.
• Claim period. A claim covers the last 52 days up to yesterday, minus any days already covered by an earlier claim. Google accepts requests for roughly the last 60 days; the shorter period keeps the whole pack inside that window during the 7 days a ready claim waits for you.
• One claim at a time. Each Google Ads account has at most one open claim, and at most one new claim every 30 days. A claim that expired or that you withdrew does not count against that limit.
• 7 days to send it. A ready claim that is not marked as submitted within 7 days expires. Its clicks are released and can be selected again in the next claim.

Claims are evaluated once a day. When one is ready, a notice appears at the top of the panel.

What is in the evidence pack

Google's specialists look at server logs first, so the pack puts raw records and objective patterns first and the AxiTrace score last:

File	Content
clicks.csv	One row per click: click identifier, time in UTC, IP address, user agent, network operator and country, campaign, ad group, keyword, network and device, whether the click landed on your site, and the signals that fired for its address.
ip_summary.csv	One row per address: number of clicks, first and last click, and the bursts of clicks within short windows.
daily.csv	Per day and campaign: selected clicks, conversions, and the invalid clicks Google already filtered itself, so it is clear the claim does not repeat what Google has already credited.
Printable summary	A one-page overview of the period, the accounts and campaigns, the counts and the main patterns. Open it in the browser and use "Save as PDF" to attach it.

Next to the files, the claim shows ready-to-paste texts for each field of Google's form. They are generated from a fixed template, from your data only, and describe the request as prepared by the advertiser with AxiTrace tooling.

Working with a claim in the panel

Open Fraud Detection in your workspace and choose the Refund claims tab. The list shows every claim with its period, Google Ads account, number of clicks, estimated cost, status and creation date. A ready claim also shows the date to submit it by and a Submit button; the other claims open with Open. When the cost of the clicks cannot be priced (no Google Ads spend was available for them), the estimated cost reads Unknown.

When a claim is ready, a notice A refund claim is ready to submit appears at the top of every panel page with the number of clicks, the estimated cost and the date to submit it by. Its Open the claim button takes you straight to the claim; you can dismiss the notice.

Opening a ready claim walks you through four steps:

1. Review the summary. The claim card shows the period, the Google Ads account, the clicks, the estimated cost, the clicks left out because their address could not be verified, why the claim was prepared and the date to submit it by. Below it are the number of addresses, the clicks that never reached your site, the clicks from high-risk addresses, the invalid clicks Google already filtered, the campaigns with their ad groups and the top addresses with their busiest hour. Open Printable summary and use Save as PDF in it: the PDF is one of the attachments.
2. Download the evidence files. Download clicks.csv, ip_summary.csv and daily.csv. If your access to the workspace does not include personal data, the addresses in the files are shortened to their network and the screen says so.
3. Copy the texts into Google's form. Open Google's form opens the Invalid Clicks form. Each text (Summary of the issue, Impact, Request type, Date range, Campaigns and ad groups, Attachment description) has a Copy text button; paste it into the field with the same name. The texts are in English on purpose, because Google reviews these requests in English.
4. Enter the case number. Google e-mails you a case number after you send the form. Enter it under Google case number and choose Mark as submitted.

Once the claim is submitted, the Google's answer section records what happens next:

• Google asked for more information. Optionally paste what Google asked for and choose Save request. Answer Google by e-mail; the evidence files stay available on the claim.
• Paste Google's reply. Paste the text of Google's e-mail and choose Save reply, so the history stays complete.
• Google's decision. Choose Credited or Rejected, enter the credited amount in the claim currency for a credit, and choose Save decision. The claim is then closed.
• Read the credit from Google. For Google Ads accounts invoiced monthly, Read credit looks for an invalid activity credit on your Google Ads invoices for the months of the claim and records it. Invoice credits cover all invalid activity Google credited for those months, including Google's automatic credits that are not tied to the claim. For other accounts, enter the amount by hand.

While a claim is open you can also:

• Rebuild the evidence pack. Recalculates the summary and the files from the claimed clicks with Google's latest figures.
• Withdraw the claim. Closes the claim without a decision from Google.

The History table at the bottom lists every step with its time in UTC, who made it (you or AxiTrace) and its details, such as the case number or the credited amount.

Settings

The Refund claims card in the Fraud Detection section of the workspace settings holds three settings, applied from the next daily check:

• Prepare refund claims. Switched off, no new claims are prepared. Existing claims stay.
• Minimum invalid clicks. A claim is prepared once this many invalid clicks add up (1 to 10000, default 30).
• Minimum estimated cost. Or once their estimated cost reaches this amount in your Google Ads account currency (default 50).

Sending the claim to Google, step by step

Google Ads offers no programmatic way to send a refund request, so the form is sent by a person who can sign in to the Google Ads account (a user of the account or of its manager account). It takes about five minutes:

1. Open Google's Invalid Clicks form. Go to https://support.google.com/google-ads/contact/click_quality while signed in to the Google Ads account, or in Google Ads open Help, then Contact us.
2. Choose the topic. Select Invalid Clicks, then Other, and choose Email as the way to be contacted.
3. Enter the account and dates. Enter the 10-digit Google Ads customer ID shown in the claim, and the date range of the claim period.
4. Paste the texts. Copy each text from the claim into the field with the same name: the summary of the issue, the impact, the request type, the campaigns and ad groups, and the description of the attachments.
5. Attach the files. Attach the three CSV files and the summary PDF.
6. Send the form and record the case number. Send it, wait for Google's confirmation e-mail, and enter the case number in the claim in AxiTrace.

Claim statuses

Status	Meaning
ready	The pack is built and waiting for you to send it. Expires after 7 days if it is not marked as submitted.
submitted	You sent the form and entered Google's case number.
info_requested	Google asked for more information and you pasted its request into the claim.
replied	You answered Google's request and the case is back with Google.
credited	Google credited the account. The amount is entered by you, or read from the monthly invoice for accounts on monthly invoicing.
rejected	Google reviewed the claim and did not credit it.
expired	The claim was not submitted within 7 days. Its clicks were released for the next claim.
withdrawn	You withdrew the claim. Its clicks were released for the next claim.

Claims in ready, submitted, info_requested and replied are open; while one is open, no new claim is prepared for the same Google Ads account.

API and AI assistants

Claims can be read, never changed, through the public API and the AI assistant connector, with the fraud:read scope on the Business and Custom plans. Submitting a claim, entering the case number and recording Google's answer stay in the panel. Every address leaves the API and the connector masked to its network (IPv4 /24, IPv6 /48), in the summary and inside the form texts alike; the files with full addresses are downloaded in the panel only.

Endpoint or tool	Returns
GET /api/v1/workspaces/{workspace_id}/fraud/refund-claims	The claims of the workspace, newest first, paged. Filter with status (one or more, separated by commas) and from / to (the claim period overlaps these days).
GET /api/v1/workspaces/{workspace_id}/fraud/refund-claims/{claim_id}	One claim: its header, history, evidence summary with the top addresses, and the texts for Google's form.
GET /api/v1/workspaces/{workspace_id}/fraud/refund-claims/{claim_id}/clicks.csv	The listed clicks of one claim as CSV, addresses masked.
list_refund_claims	AI assistant tool: the claim list, with the same filters.
get_refund_claim	AI assistant tool: one claim with its history, evidence summary and form texts. It returns counts and the top addresses, not the click list.

Need help?

If Google asks for something the pack does not contain, or a claim looks wrong, write to info@axitrace.com with the claim period and the case number.