Click Protection Report 2026

Key takeaways

How many shops have no click protection?

Of 439 German online shops with confirmed Google Ads spend, 429 show none of the seven click protection tools we check for. That is 97.7%, with a 95% range of 95.9% to 98.8%.

Does it differ by shop system?

Only groups with enough data are shown: at least 30 shops and a range of at most ten percentage points either side. For the spread of shop systems across the whole web, see the Web Almanac 2024, e-commerce chapter.

11 more groups do not have enough data yet. They appear here as soon as they do.

What does this mean for your shop?

If your shop runs Google Ads and you use no click protection, you are part of the large majority. That does not mean you lose money on every click. Google filters part of the invalid clicks before they are billed and credits invalid activity it finds later on following invoices. What Google does not catch, you pay for, and you see it nowhere. Three things you can check today:

1. Look for credits: check your Google Ads invoices for lines about invalid activity. If they are missing for months, it does not mean there were no invalid clicks, only that Google found none.
2. Show the column: in the campaign view you can add the column “Invalid clicks”. A high share in single campaigns shows you where to look more closely.
3. Mind the window: Google's automatic checks cover traffic from the last 60 days. Older clicks can hardly be proven any more. Every day without your own evidence is a day that is missing later.

How was this measured?

1. Population: 7,176 German online shops in our database that run Google Ads. Of these, about 6,300 (range 6,100 to 6,500) have confirmed spend, which means one of: a Google Ads conversion tag on the page or in the tag manager container, an ad of the shop seen on a third-party website, or a marketing mix that shows paid search. Shops that only carry the Google base code do not count as confirmed.
2. Sample: every shop has a fixed rank number derived from a seed. The sample is always the first shops by rank, so a larger sample contains the smaller one. 550 shops were drawn, 501 home pages could be read, 439 of them with confirmed spend.
3. Detection: we read the public home page and the tag manager container (where the Google tag sits) and look for the signatures of seven click protection tools. A page counts as read only if the check patterns for Google tags are found, so an unreadable page never counts as unprotected.
4. Range: the 95% range is a Wilson interval. It is wider for small groups and narrower for large ones.

What does the number not say?

• Tools that run on the server or only inside the Google Ads account cannot be seen from outside. The true share of unprotected shops can therefore be somewhat lower. Google's own filters are not counted either: every account has them (see Google on invalid clicks and invalid traffic).
• The shops are those our database found. This is not a random sample of all German shops. Both points belong to the method, otherwise a statement about our data would sound like one about Germany.
• seacashback arranges click protection solutions from partners. The measurement does not distinguish between providers.

Does the number change?

Yes. With every new measurement the sample grows, only missing or outdated shops are fetched again, and the range gets narrower. Last measured: November 2, 2026.

What comes next?

These analyses are next. Each one appears here once it has been checked, with method and range.

• How certain is the number? We correct for the errors of our detection, measured against a hand-checked list of shops, and show the number with its new range.
• From the sample to all 7,176 shops: a multilevel regression with post-stratification by shop system and size. Small groups in which every checked shop is unprotected today get a realistic value.
• Who protects themselves, and why? A regression tests whether size, the paid share of traffic and the tracking setup are related to click protection.
• Shop types: we look for groups of shops with similar technology and a similar marketing mix and show click protection per type.
• Trend: every measurement is dated. From next quarter on, this section shows how the share changes.

Frequently asked questions