Last updated: 6 July 2025
Performance Max campaigns often attract fake leads. This article explains why that happens and how you can address the problem.
What is Performance Max?
Performance Max is a Google Ads campaign that advertises your products across the entire Google Ads network, including Search, Discovery, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and more.
A key feature of Performance Max is that Google controls where your ads appear and who sees them, limiting your control. As a result, your ads can end up on scam Display and Search Partner websites, making them vulnerable to click fraud.
What is click fraud?
Click fraud is an online scam that steals billions of dollars from advertisers every year. It works like this:
Criminals create fake websites that look legitimate and monetize them using audience networks like Google Display.
They program bots to visit these scam websites and click on the ads.
Advertisers pay Google Ads for each fake click, and the scammers receive a share of this money.
Why isn't Google detecting click fraud?
Google Ads makes some effort to detect click fraud, but criminals evade detection by making their bots mimic real users.
For example, scammers route their bot traffic through residential and cellphone proxies to ensure each fake click has a unique IP address, and use anti-fingerprinting techniques to make clicks appear to come from real devices. These clicks are then considered valid, and advertisers get charged.
Scammers also increase bot stealth by occasionally generating fake conversions after ad clicks.
Some might argue Google has a conflict of interest - they earn revenue from every click, whether it’s genuine or fraudulent. This raises the question: what incentive do they really have to stop click fraud? It’s striking that a small cybersecurity company like Polygraph can outperform Google when it comes to detecting fraudulent clicks.
What is conversion fraud?
Bots generate millions of fake clicks daily. If none lead to sales or conversions, Google may detect the fraud. To avoid this, bots are programmed to sometimes produce fake conversions after clicking ads-such as creating accounts, adding items to shopping carts, or submitting spam leads. These conversions cost scammers nothing since no real purchases are made.
Spam leads are the most common type of conversion fraud. Bots often use real people’s contact information, which is why these leads either don’t respond to your calls or emails or have no idea who you are.
How to prevent spam leads?
Spam leads are a form of conversion fraud, which itself stems from click fraud. To stop spam leads, you need to stop click fraud.
Polygraph detects and blocks these bots in real time. We stop them before they can submit fake leads - so the only conversions that get through come from real people.
This has a second, powerful effect:
Since Google Ads optimises for conversions, it learns to send you traffic that looks like your leads. Because Polygraph filters out bots and only allows real conversions, the system re-trains itself to target real humans instead of fraudsters.
The result?
- No more fake leads.
- More real leads from genuine prospects.
- A big boost in revenue, because your traffic is now made up of high-quality humans.
Performance Max doesn’t give you the control you need to fight click fraud on your own - but with Polygraph protecting your campaigns, you can finally take back control and scale safely.
Let Polygraph filter out the fraud and re-train Google Ads to deliver the results you’re actually paying for.
In summary
Spam leads come from conversion fraud, a tactic click fraud scammers use to make their fake clicks seem legitimate.
Performance Max forces your ads to appear on scam Display websites and doesn’t let you opt out of this click fraud. To avoid wasting money, use Polygraph to re-train Google Ads to stop sending bot traffic and instead send high quality visitors and real leads.